As you take a seat, I ask if you will keep your Trinity Psalter hymnals handy. That or have your forms and prayers book out. and turn to page 851 if you'll be using the Trinity Psalter Hymnal. On page 851, you'll be finding there the Apostles' Creed. We'll be making reference to it momentarily. If you'll be using the Forms and Prayers book, that same creed is found on page 148. Let us go ahead and pray now, asking the Lord for his blessing upon our time in his word. Our Father in heaven, Lord, indeed, we live because of Jesus Christ. We live because he lives, because he has accomplished all that is necessary for our salvation. Lord, in his death and in his resurrection, in his ascension, in his exaltation. Lord, that he has sent the spirit to us, we ask that we would not grieve the spirit or that we would not despise the sacrifice of Christ, but that we would have The ears and hearts, Lord, to receive the things of your truth, Lord, the doctrines handed down throughout the ages, this good deposit of faith in which we too then hand down to our descendants, the children of our children and our children's children's children. Father, may all things be to your glory, and may we listen and wrestle with the things of your word, to your glory. Hear us, we ask, in Jesus' name, amen. Our scripture reading will be coming from Romans chapter 10 this evening. Romans chapter 10, and we'll be reading just a small portion from there, starting from the second sentence of verse eight and reading to the end of verse 13. So Romans chapter 10, verse eight, the word is near you. in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes and is justified. And with the mouth, one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all. bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So far the reading of the word of God. May he bless it upon our hearts. I draw your attention in particular to verse 10, which will be our sermon text for this evening. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Amen. And we have a tough question to consider this evening, congregation. Who are you? How would you describe yourself to someone that you're meeting for the first time? How do you introduce yourself to people? Now, of course, you'll tell them your name. That's obviously the most common thing, but then there's three other common things that I think most people will say when introducing themselves. First, you may talk about your actions, what you do. I'm Bob, I'm an accountant. I'm Betty, I'm a homemaker or I'm a realtor. I'm Caleb, I'm a seminarian. Second, we might say where we come from, what our history is. I was raised in Waupon, in Chicago, in Sacramento. We might say something like I'm the first generation of my family to be born in America or my family has lived in the same town for over 150 years. We talk about something of our history. The third thing we may talk about is what we believe about ourselves. And that's very common today. And it can be a very, very dangerous thing. You know, you hear it all the time through the reports of media, social media and whatnot. We talk about what we believe about ourselves. Someone born a man might think that he's a woman, therefore he's a woman. Someone believes that they're born gay or developed a gay orientation. And therefore, they must try to be in a relationship with the same sex. That's just who they are on the inside, what they feel like inside. They have to be true to themselves. Someone else might start thinking that their race makes them a privileged oppressor because they're white and the society says they are oppressive, then they must therefore be oppressive. Now, gone are the days when people simply think there is no truth. What's actually going on at present in our society is that people think every person needs to figure out what makes them feel like they can live as their true self. What can make me feel like a complete, valuable, true, individual person? And this is what the society right now will call being authentic. What will help me live as my authentic self to who I am inside? So when they're asked, who are you, they can respond with a reality that they have created for themselves, a narrative of who they believe they are. They can create a story, a history of where they think they come from. And this influences their actions, the things that they do in their life. So now beloved, we have this same consideration this evening. What you believe affects your entire idea of your own personhood, of what makes you, you. Your entire life and worldview is affected by who you believe you are. And so, again, I have to ask this question to you. Who are you, beloved? Who are you, Christian? And what do you believe? Now, as I had mentioned already, we are going to be reflecting on this Apostle's Creed, which is, of course, very familiar to many of us here. And yet, even though it's so familiar and we repeat it week after week, and it is the most profound, unrivaled summary of the gospel possessed by Christians from age to age. Do we remember that? Or has it become mechanical? We have something really rich here before us in such a concise form. It's, frankly, it's genius. It's so brief though, and we say it so often in our churches, that it gets really easy to take it for granted, don't you think? Sometimes I forget it, its significance. It's easy to go on autopilot without thinking about the meaning of its words or its structure, without thinking about its history. Now, for example, somewhat of what we'll speak of later, did you know that the creed teaches about the covenant? That it teaches about the kingdom? It teaches about justification. But really, there's more going on in this compact summary than meets the eye. Tonight, we want to think about the Creed's first and most important statement that organizes everything that follows from it. The first two words of the Apostles' Creed. What are they? I believe. Everything is compacted into just those two words. But what is it we believe? Well, we're gonna speak about then what faith is. And our theme, as you'll see in your bulletin handout, is what you believe affects your entire idea of personhood, of who you are and what makes you you. We have three points for this. First, what I do. Second, where I am from. And third, who I am. And with this first point, we wanna understand first exactly what the Apostles' Creed is. And we're gonna look at three words to help us out, and then we'll talk about its content, those statements or articles that we recite. So the first word to understand what this creed is, is the word apostles. And this tells us something about its origin. Every single article is based on what the apostles were directly taught by Christ. The apostles then handed down those teachings to the church through preaching. And we still pass them on today through preaching. So perhaps an alternative word that we can use for this is the apostolic creed. It is of apostolic origin and inconsistency. It is in line with what the apostles themselves received. And the second word that we wanna know is what a creed is. Now this comes from a Latin word credo, which means I believe. But with that, note the first person. I believe. This creed is an individual person's declaration or confession of beliefs. So what we have here, even though we recite it as a body, is a confession, a statement of faith. And with that, we then need to look at our last word, faith. What is faith? The Bible gives us a definition in Hebrews 11, one, a very well-known verse. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. So faith is assurance and conviction, or as our catechism in answer 21 says, it is God given wholehearted trust. That's the assurance and that's the conviction for things unseen. Trust that everything God says is in fact true and that we can expect he will bring everything he has promised, the resurrection, the life everlasting, so on and so forth, everything to its completion. So in other words, if we're to ask this in the form of a question, what is it we are to have assurance and conviction of? In who God is, in everything he does, in his person and work as revealed in his word. And the 12 articles of the creed talk about these things hoped for. So that's the creed. It's a declaration of the sum of Christian faith that agrees with the apostolic doctrine about God and his work for his people. We confess who God is and what he does. Now I asked you to look at the creed there in your forms and prayers book or your Trinity Psalter hymnal. Now this is actually, you can see that it's in general divided in three parts. I want you to note the structure for just a moment here. So the Apostles' Creed has a very specific arrangement. Remember I had said it's all about who God is and what he does. So there's three parts to understand of who God is. Those three parts are organized by the Trinity. It begins with part one, I believe in God the Father. Part two, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our Lord. And part three, I believe in the Holy Spirit. So it has a Trinitarian organization. So it tells us who God is with that statement, I believe, in blank. And then everything that follows from that in those lines are the things what God does. So God the Father is almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, et cetera, as you see there. And the Holy Spirit You see the benefits there of confessing the Holy Spirit and His work, the Holy Catholic Church, communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. So the creed in this way, and why we're looking at that is that it is a sum of teachings on who God is and what he does for his people. You see that then just by looking at its structure. It's all about God's work as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the fruit he produces in us. I'm hammering on that because even though we gave the title to this first point, what I do, it is a little misleading to say that. When we say, I believe, we really don't do anything. We've been making clear that the Apostles' Creed is actually a declaration all about God and His saving work. When we say, I believe, we are already confessing God is God and Savior. You just need two words to confess the entirety of the Christian faith, if you understand that. We wanna be careful though, because even the faith needed to believe in these articles then also means that yes, it is by grace alone. And so no matter how smart a person is, no matter how great at theology they are, no matter how astute they are in philosophy or whatever, at best, that intellect leads to a worldly superficial knowledge and so foolishness. We wanna be careful. Again, as we said this morning, as Reformed people who do enjoy doctrinal precision, we do not believe in doctrina alone. We believe in grace alone. James 2 reminds us that even the demons believe there is one God in Tremble. The demons and Satan himself have a way better theology than us, but they will never rationalize their way into salvation. And so neither will we. Don't make your intellect or your doctrinal precision your means of grace. It's an easy trap for all of us. But on the other end, your ears can hear the proclamation of scripture. You can come here week after week and you can get excited and passionate about hearing it. You can get excited and passionate about the songs or humanitarian efforts of ministry that you might get involved with, whatever it is. But Acts 8 tells us about a certain Simon the Magician who, after hearing the gospel, believed, the scripture says. He believed and was baptized. He was astonished by the miracles he saw. But then he tried to literally buy the Holy Spirit from Peter. Simon the Magician's belief was based in his emotions and his feelings. He was astonished with the things that he experienced. But scripture says he would perish. He would perish along with that same money he tried to buy the Holy Spirit with. So you can do great works, you can do signs and wonders, you can do acts of charity. You can be the best external Christian there is. But we recall that Judas did these things too. Judas himself walked with Christ as an apostle. He too believed, he too performed miracles. He did acts of charity, but he didn't have saving faith. And so in finishing this first point congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, understand to believe these articles of faith that we confess every week, you cannot just profess with your mouth. You must also confess them with the heart, as Belgic Confession Article 1 says, and as well as our sermon text in Romans 10.10. You must believe with mouth and heart, for with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. The faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And we'll speak on that a little bit later. For now, let's turn to point two. Where are you from? Well, now that we know what we do, nothing, it's all by grace, we want to learn where we are from, though. We have a heritage. We're not believers in a vacuum, just here all by ourselves. We have a Christian tradition and faith. So here we are going to then talk about the history of the creeds and then its purpose and authority. Now, creeds aren't just a byproduct of philosophy. They come from scripture. They're modeled after scriptural patterns, such as Deuteronomy 6 with the Shema, or like we said this morning in 1 Timothy 3.16. But we're going to point to just one as a pattern for creeds in the Christian tradition, and that's in 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15, verses three to eight. There we get this early creed that Paul says was passed down to him. And if you listen closely to it, you can actually hear a part of this early creed that later gets adapted into both the Apostles and Nicene creeds. Listen to what it says here. I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. Here it is, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. He was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. That portion is adapted into later creeds. It continues that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James and all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. So for the first few hundred years of the church, statements like this would be taught to new believers so that they could declare at their baptism what the one and only true faith is. And of course, over time, false teachings were spreading, like we heard earlier about the Church of Ephesus and First Timothy. Well, those continued, those false teachings, and God would raise up pastors and theologians who consulted scripture to then form new summaries of what someone absolutely must believe to be a real Christian. Creeds then were something of a dividing line between the heretics and true Christians. So after several centuries and many battles against these heretics, the apostles, the Nicene and Athanasian creeds came about as well as the definition of Chalcedon. So there was a lot of creeds that came up in the first several hundred years of the church. But by the medieval church, as you may know, the biblical foundation of the creed started to get ignored. Most theologians became more interested in philosophical arguments for faith, and scripture was neglected, and strange doctrines and practices came up, as we know of in the Roman Catholic Church. Well, in the Reformation, theologians went back to scripture to correct these false teachings. But now, can you guess one of the main tools that they used to guide and organize their studies of the Bible? It's the Apostles' Creed. When they wrote their works, their great works, such as our Heidelberg Catechism, they used the Apostles' Creed as a way to organize the doctrine. You see this in Lords Day 7 to 22 of the Catechism. Those things were created to teach people the articles of the creed. The Belgic Confession is also very influenced by it. The Westminster Standards, John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, These are just a few examples out of, frankly, thousands of documents from that time that use the Apostles' Creed as a basis. So what we're laying here is not a history lesson per se. I want to give some additional credence, pun not intended, that the Apostles' Creed has had a major role in our faith for at least 1900 years. So when you come to think about the Apostles' Creed, you can think of it as a time capsule of the Christian faith throughout the ages. We are peering into a time capsule of the faith. In the modern world, though, many people just don't hold to creeds. They don't declare it in the churches. There's an idea that Christians don't need any other form or document but scripture, scripture alone. People will say things like, I hear this one frequently, no creed but Christ, or it's just me, my Bible, and Jesus. Just Jesus, my Bible, and me. These are good sentiments on the surface, but they're really not very helpful and can be somewhat dangerous. It builds a kind of stubbornness to how other people might articulate teachings from scripture. Now there's two things we wanna say about these things, this kind of sentiment of no creed but Christ. And it's gonna tell us the purpose of creeds. First, saying no creed but Christ is like saying no declaration of beliefs, only Christ. It's kind of an oxymoron. It doesn't make sense. One theologian puts it this way. How can you say that you are in a relationship or committed to Jesus without knowing how to talk about Him? Without being prepared to identify who He is or why He's your Savior and Lord? So how do you do that without a creed? Kids, you tell your parents, oh, I'm in a relationship with someone, but then can't tell them anything about that person or who they are, you might raise the eyebrows of your parents. That's not a relationship. This comes down to two things. You either A, need to write down your own creed and be a lone gunslinger, putting to paper your private interpretation of who God is and what he does, or B, you can learn the meaning and contents of the creeds that countless Christians have approved of for almost 2,000 years. The second thing to consider for the purpose of the creed, though, Even after saying this, some people think that subscribing to creeds is placing it on an equal authority with scripture, or that subscribing or confessing a creed is a distraction from the perfect words already recorded in the Bible. So it's something of a variation of what we just said a moment ago. Now, when preparing for this sermon, I came across one church's website that said something like this. While we admire the Apostles' Creed as a helpful historic interpretation of scripture, we do not believe it is binding. Now, this sort of idea comes from a failure to realize that you can have degrees, different levels, and kinds of authority. Think of it this way. It's like an entry-level employee saying that his manager has no authority over him because it's the CEO who runs the company. That might sound like a good reasoning, but then the employee is going to get in trouble for not listening to what his manager said, even though the manager was just enforcing the company policies and values of the CEO. A friend of mine It made a really interesting analogy we were speaking just a few days ago. A good way to help think about the creed in its relation to scripture. Think about a motorcycle and a sidecar. You know what a sidecar is, right? Those little seats that might be bolted or attached to the side of a motorcycle so a motorcycle can safely have a second passenger, perhaps a kid, in there. Now, a sidecar, all on its own, detached from the motorcycle, it's not gonna go anywhere. You're just gonna be sitting in it. And that's sort of like what it is in the relationship between the creed and the scriptures. The scripture's the motorcycle. The creed is bolted to it. We may ride alongside scripture with it safely. Without the motorcycle, the creed's, the sidecar's not going anywhere. So simply, the creed summarizes the core of scripture. If a Christian disagrees and ignores what is said in the creed, he's disagreeing with the Bible's authority. All this tells us that the purpose and usefulness of the creeds are many. And much of this is related to what we had said this morning. The creeds are then a summary of scripture. They are used to pass teachings from one Christian to another. They declare the Orthodox faith. They defend against heresy. They instruct in doctrine, and they unite the believer to the church of the ages. So the creed tells the Christian, in a word, his history, where he comes from. It helps place you in the history of the faith like a family tree, and it gives a background to further shape our identity according to who God is and what he does, as scripture says. And this is what brings us to our third point then, who I am. Now it has been my hope to make clear, at least in some capacity here, that the Apostles' Creed is much more profound and important than we often remember. But there's a further reason that we say, that we say it almost every single week. In our first point, we've shown that It's what we do as a divinely wrought trust in who God is and what he does that makes me who I am. Let me say that one more time. We were talking about the things that we do. What we do is trust in God as a fruit of what he works in us. In our second point, we said that we have a history. The creed helps aid to unite individual believers to one another. Those two things unite together to inform us of who we are. Now with this, let me ask you then one more question. What is another name for a Christian? A believer. A believer. We are creedal people. We are confessional people. Listen to what one theologian says. In the scriptures, to be a Christian is to be someone who confesses the truth. Someone who cannot escape the obligation to confess what he believes on the basis of the revelation of God's truth in his word. You are compelled to confess, to say, I believe. Now our scripture reading of Romans 10 made the same point. The word is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. That is the message concerning faith that we proclaim. If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified. And it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. Now that passage I just read mentions the word heart three times. And each time it relates the heart to belief, to faith. So this tells us the location of faith. Right? The heart. And it's not literally in the organ that pumps blood throughout your body, of course. Paul is using the heart to represent the core of a person's existence. All of your rationality, your morals, your desires, your personality, everything that makes you, you. Paul says that the word is near you. And this is the message concerning the faith we proclaim. It is so near you, it is your heart. It is the organ that pumps to every part of your body. Faith is placed by the spirit in you as an instrument that receives new life. It's like he turns your heart into a big bowl of faith that he's pouring grace into. It's an instrument of faith. And this is why Proverb 4 says that wisdom must be guarded in your heart with all diligence, for from it flows springs of life. So think about that. What is wisdom? What did the Proverbs say wisdom is? Well, it's essentially the gospel and its fruits. The truth of Jesus Christ and the benefits that we have from belief. And this is why you need to guard the heart. The grace that the Spirit is filling your faith bowl with, your heart, is gospel wisdom. And you need gospel wisdom to live righteously. You have to guard it diligently. It is gospel wisdom that the Spirit is putting in you that directs your steps. It is gospel wisdom that thinks with purity. It desires righteousness. It causes us to act as people of the kingdom of heaven in faith, hope, and love, and the things we spoke of in this morning. It tames the tongue so that what comes out is no longer perversion or vulgarities, but professes saving faith, words of life. Guard that. which has been entrusted to you in your heart. Now it's fine to say this in the abstract, to talk about this as a concept, but I wanna show us what this looks like from scripture. A great example of this is from John 4, John chapter 4. Now you might remember, this is the woman at the well passage, the Samaritan woman at the well. Okay, this is where Jesus tells that Samaritan woman that he is the Messiah, he is the Christ. when she hears that she believes and runs to tell everyone in the town. Now we learn from there in chapter four that the townspeople used to shun the woman because she was an adulteress. She was a wicked sinner and a Samaritan. She even used, pardon me, she even used to avoid them as much as possible. She didn't like to go into the town and walk around where the people were. She didn't like to be where the others were. So that's why she went to go draw water from the well at a time when no one else was there. She was ashamed of her sin in some sense. Now that's where she met Jesus. Jesus confronts her sin. He teaches her about the spirit. He tells her about kingdom worship. And he reveals that he is the savior who brings his people to this kingdom. And that's when she goes to tell the people that she used to be ashamed around. That's when she decides, you know what, that no longer matters. And she runs out to the town to the people who shunned her. And she tells the people, Credo, I believe. And now you and you and you, come and see the Christ. Come and see this man who told me everything I did, who is the Messiah. She makes a public confession, Credo. what she believes, and she becomes a witness to the townspeople. Well, listen to what happens next in John chapter four, verses 41 to 42. Many more believed because of his word, note his word, Jesus, not her word. They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world. The townsfolk, like the woman, hear the truth. Then they express their own belief into words and publicly declare it. We believe too. Credo. But they're clear to say it's not the woman in her testimony. It's not the woman's story that they believe. Like so much of evangelicalism and whatnot today, hanging so much onto the idea of testimonies and my story of how I came to Christ. No, the scriptural model here says it's not about my testimony. It's about Jesus Christ and what he says, that he reveals who he is, the Messiah, the savior of the world. And that is exactly what the people said to the woman. It is no longer because of what you said that we believe. We heard for ourselves and know This is indeed the Savior of the world, Messiah. They're confessing who Christ is, Savior, and what he does, Savior. Beloved, this is the pattern of all Christians. The Christian is a person of faith, obliged to confess. So this is why on the Lord's Day, we stand and declare from our heart to our mouth, credo, I believe we stand on something mighty, the deposit of faith, of what God has done, what has been handed down to us throughout history, and what makes us who we are, Jesus Christ. Now, of course, we do want to say that those who are not Christians have belief too. We've mentioned this several times already, such as in the example of Simon, the magician, and Judas. But their belief is a false one, it's weak, it's disordered, and it's a foolish idea about who they are. It's a lie, what they think about themselves. People, pardon me, people in our society reject God and his works in their heart, and it shows. The people in our world, worldliness, manifest in that they chase after the lies of demons, like we said this morning. People then try to define themselves by what they do, where they think that they came from, and whatever they want to believe about their personhood, what makes them feel authentic. And it amounts to a lie and denial that they are made in the image of God, as rebels in need of faith in someone else in his works, not themselves in their own works. Our world is in need of Christ the Savior, beloved. Will you teach that to them? Will you stand and declare that, not just here this evening, but to the world? So think then on that first question I asked you. What makes you you? Dear Christian, what do you believe? Guard your heart, beloved, for you belong body and soul to Him. your covenant, Lord, who has done great works. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, Lord, we stand on such a vast treasure, the riches of this deposit of faith. Lord, we stand on a sure foundation, Christ the cornerstone, Lord, The floor laid down by your apostles. Lord, the stones that have been built upon by your Holy Spirit throughout the ages in the early church, through reformation after the medieval period. Lord, to this very day, may we never take for granted saying the words, I believe. Lord, but know that