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Apostles Creed 7: Our Lord

Ben Zornes on July 30, 2017

What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction:
The foundation Christian confession is that Jesus is Lord. We find this at the very beginning, and there is no hope without it. As we have been making our way through the Creed, we have addressed who Jesus is. But what do we mean by Lord?

The Text:
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hades. On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Summary of the Text:
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. 10:9–10). “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13).

This is the confession that is unto salvation. Two organs are involved—the mouth and the heart. If you confess that Jesus is Lord with your mouth, and if you believe in your heart that God raised Him up from the dead, then the end result is that you will be saved. According to this message, salvation is the result of believing something about Jesus and confessing something about Jesus. But what?

Jesus is Jehovah:
First some background. YHWH (or JHVH) is the covenant name of God, the name by which God was known to Israel. These are four consonants in Hebrew known as the Tetragrammaton. The vowels can be supplied in different ways. One common way is to speak of Yahweh. Another is to take the consonants JVVH and combine them with the vowels of Adonai (another name for God), which then gives us Jehovah.

And now it gets interesting. The prophet Joel says this: “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered” (Joel 2:32). Joel was obviously written in Hebrew, and the word rendered here as Lord is YHWH. This verse from Joel is quoted by Paul, and is part of our text (v. 13).

Now the Greek word for Lord (kurios) has the same range of meaning that it does in English. It can refer to God, Lord of heaven and earth, and it can also be used of Lord Highfalutin, stone cold member of the aristocracy somewhere. So when we are called to confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, which kind of lord are we talking about?
The answer is straightforward. In Romans 10:13, the word kurios is used to translate the Hebrew YHWH. Whoever calls on the name of YHWH/kurios will be saved. But just a breath earlier, Paul had insisted that we had to confess with our mouth that Jesus was Lord in order to be saved. Piece all this together, and it is most plain that the fundamental Christian confession is that Jesus is Jehovah. Jesus is to be identified with the covenant God of Israel.

Authority in Relationship:
Christ does not wield authority over His people from a remote distance. He has true authority, but He holds this authority in a particular way. His is the authority of bleeding sacrifice. “Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:13–14). The fact that Christ washed His disciples’ feet did not detract from His authority; it was the foundation of His authority.

But in case we are tempted to hide our emotional cowardice under the camouflage of something we like to call “servant leadership,” it must be emphasized that servant authority is true authority. “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).

As we come to imitate the Lord in all that we do, it must be said that feminism comes in many forms, including the kind that pretends to have nothing to do with feminism. We need to take care not to confound sacrificial leading with cowardly following.

Savior and Lord:
Christ is not divided. That means we cannot shop for different aspects of our salvation a la carte. In some fundamentalist circles it is common to hear people saying that receiving Christ as Savior and receiving Him as Lord are two different things—as though someone could be saved by Jesus without paying the slightest regard to what He taught. But half a Christ is no Christ, and no one was ever saved by no Christ.

Our Lord:
It is also worth mentioning that we have confessed our faith in “Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord.” We are confessing the fact that Jesus has been enthroned over absolutely everything that is, which means that His Lordship of Heaven and earth is the basis for my confession that He is my Lord. He is a king who has been crowned and enthroned, and the message has now come to me that it is time for me to bend the knee.

He is a king who has been crowned and enthroned, and the message has now come to me that it is time for me to bend the knee.

It does not run in the other direction. Jesus is not campaigning for president. It is not the case that if we only get enough people to “make Him Lord of their hearts,” then we could really get some momentum going, and then elect Him to something. Jesus is Lord already. This fact is declared to us. It is preached. We believe it, not to make it true but because it is true.

The Brightest Light & the Blackest Night

Ben Zornes on July 30, 2017

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Introduction
In Adam the human race declared war with God. We became a rebel kingdom; sunk in the darkness of the blackest night of hatred toward God. We want to rule ourselves, to determine good and evil by our own reckoning, and worship at the altar of self-glory. Our position before God is that of traitors and rebels. Left to our own devices we will not seek God, nor reconciliation with Him. Yet, we were made to enjoy the fellowship of His glorious presence. We hate this darkness, but we hate the light of God’s holiness more. The good news is that the Son has risen; and His light brings life.

The Text
1 John 1:5-10
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Summary of the Text
John’s introduction (vs.1-4) is no innocuous greeting. It is laden with theological and philosophical claims regarding Jesus Christ, concluding with the crescendo that this is all written that our joy may be full. The message which John heard from Jesus and declares unto us is that God is light, and there is not a shred of darkness in him (v5). This is followed by five “if/then” statements; these are foundational to John’s later discussion of antichrists (1 Jn. 2:18, 4:1-3) and assurance (1 Jn. 2:3).

First, claiming to have fellowship with God, yet continuing in the darkness of error, is evidence that you are a liar like your father Satan (v6, cf. Jn. 8:44). Second, walking in the light results in fellowship with God and His people, and being cleansed from sin through the blood of Jesus (v7). Third, claiming to be without sin is self-deception and is a tell-tale sign of the absence of truth (v8). Fourth, confessing our sins brings the assurance that Christ is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse from unrighteousness (v9). Finally, claims to sinlessness blaspheme God’s holiness, and prove that His word (by which we are born again, cf. 1 Pt. 1:23) is not in the one who claims to be without sin (v10).

God is Light
This is Jesus’ message, not John’s. John has simply been sent to proclaim. While later on John teaches that “God is love (1 Jn. 4:8),” he doesn’t lead with that. Rather, Jesus’ message is: “God is light!” Light here encompasses all of God’s perfections: His white hot purity of being. All of His divine attributes in perfect concord, no disharmony, no external source. As the hymn states: “Self-fed, self-kindled like the light, changeless, eternal, infinite.” His holiness, wisdom, understanding, and power. All without mixture, defect, or deficiency.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ declared: “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life (Jn. 8:12).” Following Jesus, then, is man’s only path out of the darkness of sin and into the glorious light of God’s favor in which is found abundant, eternal life. Jesus’ Gospel is quite simple: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him (Jn. 3:36).” This is why we confess our belief that Jesus is “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made.”

Light for the Greek mind would signify knowledge, wisdom, understanding; for the Jew, it would be understood in the context of God’s creating power and thus His holiness as the Almighty God. The Jews’ longing for the promised Messiah who would restore holiness to the people of God, and the Greek longing for true wisdom are found in the light of Jesus Christ: God in the flesh, the eternal Word of Life, and the lone Mediator between God and Man, our only way to fellowship with God (Jn 14:6). The pathway to life was not through the dark promises of the gnostic’s hidden knowledge, nor in the shadowy figures of the Old Testament. The life-giving light of God’s holiness and wisdom shine in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.

However, “What communion hath light with darkness (2 Cor. 6:14)?” How can God’s holiness and our sinfulness be reconciled? By a Mediator of the covenant: the man Jesus Christ. While many attempt to exalt the love of God to a place of supremacy within God’s attributes, and while it is a glorious reality that God is love, we must remember God is light and God is love. Light before love. Holiness which endures no sin subsisting with affectionate charity which grants mercy. John lays the foundation of God’s holiness, in order to reveals His lovingkindness.

If Then
These if/thens are promise language. You experience the light of God’s holiness, wisdom, and power as either wrath and justice or love and mercy. In order to be saved from God’s wrath we must be convinced of our positional guilt in Adam, and receive the positional righteousness of Christ. False Christology always leads to man’s sin not being dealt with or forgiven. These false gospels explain away sin. Covenant breakers insist on finding in themselves, or in some antichrist, a savior. They always run to one extreme or the other: hedonism or asceticism; intellectualism or sentimentalism; traditionalism or spontaneity; legalism or licentiousness. So they remain under the wrath of God.

New Covenant Saints walk in the light–which is the Lord Jesus Christ–for in His light is the only hope for propitiation of our sins (1 Jn. 2:2) and eternal life (1 Jn. 2:25). Tozer once said: “We must hide our unholiness in the wounds of Christ as Moses hid himself in the cleft of the rock while the glory of God passed by. We must take refuge from God in God.” Matthew Henry put it wonderfully: “[Jesus Christ’s] blood applied to us discharges us from the guilt of all sin, both original and actual, inherent and committed: and so far we stand righteous in his sight; and not only so, but his blood procures for us those sacred influences by which sin is to be subdued more and more, till it is quite abolished.”

Do The Truth
False saviors can only offer false righteousness. Jesus Christ offers cleansing from our unrighteousness. Antichrists command us to do; Christ commands us to rest in His doing. Claiming to have fellowship with God, while walking in the darkness of a false gospel, is the vanity of “doing not the truth (v.6).” They remain blind corpses.

By contrast, if you are to “do the truth,” you must believe in Jesus and all that He claimed to be: the one mediator between God and man. By faith you are united with Him in His righteousness. The light of Christ pierces through the darkness of unbelief, and by grace opens the eyes of your faith to behold in Him your only salvation from sin and means of fellowship with Almighty God (cf. Ps. 36:9 & Is. 45:22). Christ is the only channel whereby eternal life is extended to you, along with the fullness of enjoying the Father’s love. So as you walk in the light of Jesus Christ, you are reckoned righteous and may say with John, “what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God (1 Jn. 3:1).”

Humble Before the Lord

Ben Zornes on July 23, 2017

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Text: James 4:1-17

Introduction

No doubt you have heard enough sermons or attended enough Bible studies to know that pride is bad. And so, pride is easy to ignore, minimize it, or pass it off as that guy’s problem. That guy does have a pride problem, and the Holy Spirit is now speaking through James about your pride. The only solution is to be humble before the Lord because God gives more grace.

You and Your Desires (vs 1-4)

“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among?” James is clear on the source of the problem––You! You desire and your desires collide with the desires of others. Desire is a womb that gives birth sin. Sin grows up and goes on a spree of coveting, fighting, manipulating (James 1:14-15).

James levels a surprising charge, “You adulteresses!” (vs 4) The broken relationship that James identifies is not between husband and wife, but between God and his people and their adulterous relationship with the world. What husband would allow his wife to cuddle with another man pretending she’s not a married woman? So why would God allow a Christian to cuddle up to the world pretending she’s not a Christian who has pledged herself to love God. Faithfulness to God does not flirt with the world. To be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God. And of course, your life can not have peace when you are at war with God.

Pride and Humility (vs 5-10)

Our natural tendency is to love the world, envy others, war against God. But God gives grace. Therefore, Proverbs 3:34 says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” The difference between pride and humility is whose opinion of yourself takes priority––yours or God’s. Pride prioritizes your own opinion of yourself over God’s opinion of you. Humility prioritizes God’s opinion about you over your own opinion about yourself. If you skip over “But God gives more grace,” then the following list of commands is reduced to seven tips for a happier self that don’t really help. “Submit yourself therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (vs. 7). To submit means to place yourself under the authority. Your will, your desires, your agenda, your life is to be placed on God’s will for you, God’s desires for you, God’s agenda for you, God’s life for you.

But what’s the devil doing here? Well, what does the devil do? The devil stirs up conflict. The devil attributes false motives to others. The devil loves to see the righteous fall and chips away at their reputation. The devil sounds a lot like the person James described in the first verses of James 4. So the danger is that you become like the devil. To prevent this, submit yourself to God including your tendency to act devilish, and the devil and your devilish desires will flee from you. You do this through humbly repenting and confessing your sin (8-10).

Pride and Playing God (vs 11-12)

And in case we still haven’t got it, James comes in for anther pass. “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers” (vs 11). When you slander, you’re not just speaking evil against your brother, but against God’s law. The problem James sees are those who climb up on top of the law and hurl eggs at those below the law. If you use the law to gain elevation to better beat down your neighbor, you don’t really love your brother, the law, or the Law-giver. This again, displays pride rather than humility before the Lord. “Who are you to judge your neighbor?” James asks, “Oh, you’re not God. Fine, don’t play God.”

Life with a Question Mark (vs 13-17)

Come now, you movers and shakers, you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? It’s a large question mark. How can you presume to mark your calendar a year from now when you don’t know what the next minute will bring? So James instructs us to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” We live in God’s providence. In His plan, there are no accidents, no flukes, no plan Bs, no maverick molecules. We ought to plan and schedule and have a full day set out. But write in your calendar in pencil knowing that God holds the eraser. If you don’t submit to this reality, you are arrogant and evil.

This returns us to the absolute need to be humble before the Lord. You don’t know what your future holds, but you do know the One who holds your future. Oo be humble before the Lord. Do you have any doubt, any pride, any conflict? Are there deep disappointments in your life, dysfunctional family, an unfaithful spouse, a lonely, dark period, a harsh dad? In all of these, the answer is same––humble yourself before the Lord because God gives more grace. God begins to give you grace in Jesus, who is your peace, your humility, your assurance in judgment, your confidence for the future.

Apostles Creed 6: His Only Begotten Son

Ben Zornes on July 16, 2017

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What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction:
What we know as orthodoxy is of course taught in the Bible. But that does not mean that every orthodox truth is found everywhere in the Bible, or that every verse that is used to defend the truth is being used appropriately.

Summary of the Text:
“In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). It is a commonplace among us that Jesus was the “Son of God.” But the Bible talks about this in different ways, and so should we. One word in Greek is translated in our two words—monogenes is rendered as only begotten. Looking at the context, John uses this as a technical phrase, with a precise theological definition. That definition is the same as what is used in the Creed.

This verse may be summed up in this way. God loves and we live. The bridge between these two realities is the only begotten Son. By this phrase we are referring to the unique status and nature of Jesus of Nazareth. Our confession is this—He is the Son of God by virtue of the divine nature that was united with our human nature

Only Begotten:
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). These are all references to the Incarnation of the Son of God. They are references to Immanuel, God with us.

Chalcedon:
It would be absurd to ask you all to grasp in the course of one sermon what it took the whole Church three centuries to formulate. But we are part of that same Church, and so let me summarize what our confession is. We confess that our Savior, the Lord Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, is one person. He is one unified, well-integrated person, but He has two natures. These two natures are connected in what is called the “hypostatic union.” (Hypostases was the Greek word for person.) So there was a “one person” union that possessed two natures that were not comingled. And the result was not schizophrenia.

That which is predicated of one nature may be predicated of the person. That which is predicated of the other nature may be predicated of the person. But that which is predicated of one nature cannot be predicated of the other nature. This is quite important as we shall see.

So then, human nature has a particular height or hair color and so we can say that Jesus of Nazareth was (say) 5 foot 11, or had black hair. And the divine nature is infinite, and so we can say that Jesus of Nazareth possessed that attribute. But we cannot (and must not) say that infinitude is 5 foot 11.

How and Why:
Jesus had a true mother. He was born in the ordinary way, with the one exception being the fact that His mother was a virgin when He was born. He had a maternal grandmother and grandfather, and a lineage that went back to Adam. He was true man. But He had no biological human father.

“And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).

If original sin is passed down to us from our human fathers (covenantally, not genetically), then this accounts for how Jesus could be sinlessly perfect. He did not inherit sin from His mother because no one inherits innate sin from their mothers.

Other Senses:
But it is not the case that any references to the “Son of God” are necessarily talking about something as remarkable as the hypostatic union. Let me give you an example. “Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 3:38). There was no hypostatic union in Adam, and yet he is described as a “son of God.” And remember that celestial beings can be called “sons of God” without being partakers of the Godhead.

What Manner of Love:
We return to the earlier point that God loves and we therefore live. But remember the bridge between the two is the perfect God/man, offered up in sacrifice. This is seen in a type, when Abraham takes Isaac to Moriah (where Jesus was crucified) in order to prophetically foretell our coming salvation. “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son” (Heb. 11:17).

Because Jesus is the Son of God, it is possible for our status as sons of God to be restored. Remember that Adam was a son of God but that through the Crash, he and we became sons of the devil. How can we be restored? This includes a heart transplant, but there is something far more remarkable going on. This is a Father transplant.

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not” (1 John 3:1).

Thomas, the Skeptic

Ben Zornes on July 16, 2017

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Sermon Text: John 20:27-29

Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Introduction:
How does rappelling serve as a test of faith? What is a free hand? What purpose does a belayer play?

How can the person rappelling get the most out of their rappel?

Texts:
What are similar about the two texts containing interaction with Thomas? John 11 and 20

Why might John have taken so much of his gospel ‘space’ to include Thomas’ comments? How is this connected to the resurrection?

What does Jesus mean when He talks about there only being 12 hours in the day? What connection does He have to the light of day?

What kind of ‘evidence’ did Thomas have which he rejected as inadequate? How does it compare to the evidence that we have?

What did the Jewish leaders do with the same evidence?

How did Jesus show mercy to Thomas despite his cynicism?

What is it that Thomas missed that Jesus doesn’t what us to miss?