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The Nicene Creed: We Believe (Advent)

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Listen to this week’s sermon, The Nicene Creed: We Believe (Advent) preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Matthew 28:16-20.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando. At New City, we long to see our father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com. Advent series, which is around the Nicene Creed. Uh, but we we've also got a sense of, and if you look at the the slide for this series, you'll notice a few things. One, you've got the church praying. This is the Acts One picture where the Holy Spirit comes down upon the church in that prayer meeting. But the second thing you'll notice is that the Nicene Creed is in the background behind Advent. And so this series, like last year's series, really is progressively building towards this culmination when we come together as one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to pray and praise the Triune God. And so to that end, I'm going to invite you to stand as we pray together aloud this prayer of illumination and hear God's word. Join with me. Promise Savior, as we remember your first advent and wait for your return. Help us to see your glory and love through the reading and preaching of your word. Through Christ our Savior, we pray. Amen. Our scripture reading this morning comes from the gospel according to Matthew chapter twenty eight, starting in verse sixteen. Hear now the word of the Lord. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. In August of 2023, I was sitting at a cafe in Jerusalem having a conversation with my Jewish guide about his faith. And according to him, Judaism is less about believing the right things and more about doing the right things. You see, you're a practicing Jew if you eat kosher, honor Shabbat, and go to synagogue. And so asking him about his faith was actually a distinctly Christian way of framing the question. It's not only modern Judaism, but I know some Roman Catholics who will make this distinction will say, I'm a practicing Catholic, right? And not just like just any Catholic, I'm a practicing Catholic. And I was listening to a podcast with, it was about Greek mythology with the historian Tom Holland, the historian, not Spider-Man. And in the podcast, he was asked this question Did the Greeks believe in their gods like Zeus? To which Tom Holland replied, that's a Christian question. In other words, they would have never asked a question like that. You see, because for Greeks and Romans, their religion was about rituals and practices, not about doctrines. And yet, since Acts 5, 14 until today, Christians describe ourselves as believers. There's something about Christianity that causes us to ask the question about what do you believe? You see, because the heart of Christianity is faith, not merely a mental ascent, but a confidence in God. That's the heart of the Christian religion. And if we have a confidence in God, we got to ask the question, which God? Who is this God? What is this God like? And our fathers in the faith, they fought for clarity to answer that question, and that's what we get in the Nicene Creed. We get a clear answer to the question of what is God like? Who is this God that we believe in? And so the reason why we're spending the next five weeks in the Nicene Creed is because 2025 is the 1700-year anniversary of Christians in all times and places using these words to give voice to our faith. That's why we come up here and we say, Christian, what do you believe? We believe in one God. That's the way that our creed articulates our faith. And so this advent, we are returning to the heart of Christianity, that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we're exploring this ancient pledge of allegiance together. But here's something that you you want to know about early Christianity, and Christianity honestly, for the last two millennia, is that our prayer and our beliefs and our living are in a symbiotic relationship with one another. What you pray, what you believe, and how you live are all interrelated. It's actually hard to tease them out as if they're separate. And so in the early church, there was this phrase that became known as a way to describe how the church developed its beliefs about things. And so I'm gonna ask you to repeat this after me. You ready? Here we go. Lexorandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. Some of y'all just came back to church for the first time. You're like, they're casting spells in there. The dude's been watching Stranger Things all weekend, like it's getting weird. Listen, that was Latin. It's a Latin phrase that has a great ancient pedigree in the Christian church that simply means this is kind of my translation, as we pray, so we believe. And as we believe, so we live. And those are our three points for today. As we pray, so we believe, as we believe, so we live. And so let's look at our scripture and the Nicene Creed together as we get a glimpse into who this God is that we pray to, believe in, and live in light of. If you have a Bible or device, get Matthew 28 out in front of you. Look with me at Matthew 28, verse 16, and we're gonna see as we pray. Says this. And when they saw Jesus, this is key, they worshiped him. But some doubted. You see, I want you to imagine for a moment a line, okay? Just a just a flat line like this. And God, the creator of all things, is above the line, and everything else, all of creation, is below the line. It's really important. This this creator-creature distinction is the fundamental binary of Scripture. It begins in Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created. Okay? God created. All right, that's super important. Because the people of God have always been very careful not to worship anything created as if it belonged above the line and worthy of worship. So where does Jesus belong? Does he belong above the line or below the line? In the creator or the creation category? Well, verse 17 says, when they saw Jesus, they worshiped him. You see, the disciples are worshiping this man, Jesus of Nazareth, as if he belongs above the line where only God belongs. This is either blasphemy of the worst kind or a revolution in our understanding of who God is. And so, Robert Lewis Wilken, an ancient church historian, says it like this as early as the beginning of the second century, outsiders, so this is non-Christians, outsiders had observed that when Christians gathered together, they sang hymns to Christ as to a God. They worshiped Jesus. And because they worshiped Jesus, they started thinking about what that meant about their view of who God is. You see, this is what lexeroni lex credendi means. As we pray, so we believe. And so verse 17 says they worshiped Jesus, but some doubted. You see, doubt about worshiping Jesus is what led to the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. In 318, a preacher from Alexandria with a black hood and a pale, sunken face, like a Sith Lord, came walking into the room chanting, There once was a time when the sun was not. I'm just kidding, that's not how it worked because that's rarely how false teaching comes. False teaching looks more like preachers and sneakers on your Instagram reels. Now and then. In fact, his motivation for denying that Jesus was God is to preserve a transcendent view of God. That God is to be unoriginated, and so therefore, Jesus couldn't possibly be God. You see, Arius was attempting to be devout, which is why he could not extend worship that only is deserved by the one true and living God to a man, Jesus of Nazareth. He couldn't go there. And so listen, heresy works like bacteria in our theological immune system. It's not until false teaching arises that the church develops doctrinal antibodies to fight it off. And so notice within the first few hundred years, the Christian church is having to work hard to articulate who is God. We got to tackle that one first because it's the heart of our faith. And so this theological immune system fighting off the bacteria of Arianism reached a fever pitch. So much so that Constantine, the newly converted emperor of Rome, called together a council of over 200 church leaders from all around the Christian world. And he made it in a city called Nicaea, which is in northwestern Turkey because it was more accessible by the sea. And so leaders, 200 leaders came from all across the Mediterranean world, from the west, places like Italy and France and Spain, and from the north, it was Greece and Turkey, and from the east, it was regions like Syria and Lebanon, Armenia and Iran, and from the south, places like Egypt. And these bishops, these leaders, these church leaders all came together, over 200 of them. Why? Because of their fierce devotion to Jesus Christ. You see, the Council of Nicaea gathered in 325, but in 303, an intense persecution came against the Christian church. And so many of these pastors came to the Council of Nicaea, bearing in their very bodies the marks of persecution. There's this story of Constantine greeting one of the bishops. And when he walked up to him, this guy was from the Nile Valley in Egypt. And in order to defend the faith that he had in Jesus Christ, the Roman Empire gouged out one of his eyes because he wouldn't deny Christ. And as the story goes, Constantine walks up and kisses him on the empty eye socket as a way of honoring this man for his fierce devotion to Jesus Christ. So you ask, why did they gather? Why did Christians come from all over the Mediterranean basin to come to this council at Nicaea? Because they had a devotion, a zealous love for Jesus Christ. They suffered for the gospel. They died for Jesus Christ. And these are the remaining few that lived and endured the Diocletian persecution. Of course, they're going to gather to defend the faith once for all, handed down to the church. And so this is what we see as they come together, they debate and they disagree and they argue and they wrestle with words and they come to hammer out what we call the first edition of the Nicene Creed. And this is the first creed to obtain universal authority in the church, which means all Christians in all times, in all places say, yes, that's what we believe. Let me just say that the inverse of that. If you do not say yes to the Nicene Creed, you are many things, but Christian is not one of them. That means that anybody who professes the Nicene Creed is a friend of mine, it's a friend of yours. We have a heart cry that this is the true and living God. And so as we pray, so we believe. Let's look together at what we believe. This is the Lex Credendi part of this. Look with me again at Matthew 28. Verse 18 says this, and Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You see, Jesus says with his resurrection authority, he says to his disciples, as the church spreads throughout the world, immerse new disciples into Trinitarian reality. That's the translation of it. And notice that the Nicene Creed is actually built around the framework of Jesus' Trinitarian baptismal command in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You'll see those three movements in Matthew 28, 19 represented in the creed. Why? Because when we articulate our faith using the words of the Nicene Creed, we are speaking forth our baptismal identity. This is who God is, and therefore this is who we are. We are those who have been immersed into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And so those three sections, I want to do just a quick flyover because we're going to spend five weeks, this is the first of five, walking through these sections, but I want to do a quick flyover right now. And so if you look on your worship guide, you've got the Nicene Creed printed there. I want to read some of this together. It says this, we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. If I were to tag this sermon with a title, it would be We Believe. We believe. You see, it's not we believe that, but rather we believe in. Confessions are really important. We have a confession, the Westminster Confession of Faith, which really tells us what we believe. Creeds are more about who we believe in. In that way, it's more of a pledge of allegiance, if you will. And so this is significant because it's not necessarily saying simply what do you believe, but in whom do you trust. And so it goes on. We believe in one God, the Father Almighty. This is actually really important. We call God Father before we call him mighty or maker. Why is that such a big deal? Well, Adolf Hitler actually was known for he loved calling God the Almighty. That was his favorite term for describing God. And God is Almighty. That's true. It's just not the whole truth. There's far more to say about God than the fact that he's simply Almighty. And since Hitler was influenced by his Nietzschean philosophy, Hitler wanted to be an ubermensch and he needed an uber God who was all strength, all domination, all force, and all power. And since we become like what we worship, you could see how Hitler was shaped and formed by worshiping God the Almighty. But our fathers in the faith were so wise, and they knew it was important to say, God the Father Almighty. Why? Well, because God's maker might is guided by the heart of a father. To call God Father implies that he has a son as well. In other words, God the Father is known by the fact that God the Father generates the Son. Inherent to the very identity of who God is, is not maker, otherwise, God would be dependent on his creation, but father. Because in the life of God, God the Father generates God the Son. So we turn from the Father to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Look with me again at the creed. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. You see, the authors of the Nicene Creed were careful to draw every single word from the Bible. Because they were Bible people. Like we are Bible people. But there were a few words that were not drawn directly from the Bible, and here's one of them. Now I'm going to invite you to lean in for a moment, because I know everybody in this room is not a nerd like me, but I just, this is important. Nicaea contended for a word here, this word substance, which in Greek is homoousia. The Arians contended for a word very similar, homoeousia. Notice the similarity and the difference. It came down to is God, is Jesus one and the same substance with the Father? Or is Jesus similar, just simply similar in substance to the Father? It all came down to the symbol, the single Greek letter iota. Homo homoi. And this was worth fighting over. This was worth debating. This was worth arguing. You see, because this was the place where the contested territory was between the Nicene Christians and the Arians. Now, I know this is family worship Sunday, and so I lost some of y'all. Let me get you back together with a fake story. Um, this is this is a legend, a medieval legend, uh, that says that the debate got kind of heated. And so there was a fan favorite in the room named St. Nicholas of Mira, who had a little round belly like a bowl full of jelly. AKA Santa Claus. And he had had enough, and so he stepped up and slapped an Arian at the Council of Nicaea for denying the deity of Christ. Now, when I tell my kids, I make sure that they know that Santa Claus was a pastor. That's really important. They need to know that gives me some cred as their dad, alright? And and so long before Santa Claus was handing out presents, he was handing out smackdowns to Arians for denying the deity of Jesus. Some of the kids in the room, the main takeaway is gonna be like, Santa Claus punched an Arian. Is that what he said? Merry Christmas. I don't really know where we go from here. But but the significance of this is it was worth debating and discussing and even dividing over one letter, the iota, because it had everything to do with who Jesus was. And so not only does the Council of Nicaea focus on the person of Jesus Christ, but also his work. Look at the count the creed with me again. It says this, who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he shall come with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. That language, for us and for our salvation, he came down. That's what we celebrate in Advent. He came down. He didn't have to. For us, for our salvation, he came down. That's the point of Advent. And the point of Christmas is in these words right here, and was made man. The incarnation. That's what Christmas celebrates. You see, Jesus Christ is the center of the creed and the center of Christianity. This is inherent, this is the heart of what we believe right here. Because the all-powerful creator of the universe entered our humanity and our history. This is the gospel. The Nicene Creed is the gospel. This is the good news that we proclaim and that we believe and that we live. Listen, just notice these verbs. Jesus came down, was incarnate, became man, was crucified, suffered death, was buried, rose again, ascended, is seated, and will come again. That is the good news that we proclaim. And Jesus is this revelation of who God is, this unfolding of the heart of God. We cannot overestimate what the advent of Jesus means to our theology, our understanding of God. One theologian put it like this: through the sun, we see behind creation into the eternal and essential identity of God. It is as if through Christ we step inside the front door of God's home to see who he is behind what he does. More simply put, Archbishop Michael Ramsey said, God is Christ-like, and in him is no unchristlikeness at all. You see, not only the Father and the Lord Jesus, but also the Spirit together are worshipped and glorified. Look at the creed with me again. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. Christians would say that it takes God to know God. We call this regeneration. You see, we need the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life to make us alive to God. We are born dead in our trespasses and sins. We do not know God as God is, unless the Lord and giver of life comes. One person said it like this: the Spirit's abiding interest is to bind us back to the Father through the Son. I love that language. What's the Spirit up to? What's on the mind and heart of the Holy Spirit of God? The abiding interest of the Holy Spirit is to bind us back to the Father through the Son. Always, the Lord and giver of life is moving outward to do that. And to this end, the Spirit, quote, spoke by the prophets. That's the Bible. That's why I'm not merely preaching on the Nicene Creed, I'm preaching on Matthew 28. Because the text of Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit. It's unique. You see, the Bible is not only a witness to God's activity in the world, the Bible is a part of God's activity in the world. God is, by the Spirit, spoke by the prophets and is still speaking by the prophets through the Word of God, through the Bible. And the Bible is a testimony, a witness to Jesus Christ. Jesus says so himself in Luke 24 that all of the law and the prophets and the Psalms are about me. You can't read the book properly unless you see Jesus in it. That's why the Spirit spoke by the prophets. And so the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, Christianity is deeply God-centered. It's not about any other peripheral doctrines primarily, it's about God, who this God is. So what? You might be thinking that. Some of y'all are like, dude, this was heady. Okay, so what? I was meeting with a guy who was a not yet disciple of Jesus, and in our conversations, it became clear that he grew up in a spiritually abusive environment. And during our time, he would regularly cuss God out. He would talk about God in ways that were, God was like a bully on an ant hill with a magnifying glass, just like burning ants, making his life miserable. He would utter all these blasphemies about God to the point where I was super uncomfortable. Sometimes I'd get angry, sometimes I'd be sorrowful, and I didn't know what to do. And so I talked to an esteemed mentor and I said, Hey, here's the situation. I feel something welling up in me. I want to defend God's honor in these conversations, but I don't think that's the right way forward. And do you know what my wise, venerable mentor said to me? When I described how this guy's blaspheming God, he said, Why don't you join him? I was struck by that. What do you mean, join him? He's like, Well, you don't believe in that God either. The God he hates is not God. And so now, actually, when I'm talking to not yet disciples, I asked him this question: tell me about the God you believe in, or tell me about the God you don't believe in. Because if it's not the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally existing in a self-giving, others-oriented love relationship of communal identity and activity in the world, I don't believe in that God either. And neither do you, Christian. And so, what does this matter? What difference does it make? It makes all the difference in the world. If this is your God, if this is your God, this Trinitarian God, you see, we don't have to defend theism in general. I don't care about defending any God. I will die for this God. The God articulated in the Nicene Creed. Because this is the God, the true and living God, the one who's made known to us in Jesus Christ. This is what creedal Christianity is all about. It's all about God. Well, almost. You see, we didn't finish the creed. And my third point, as we believe, so we live. The creed ends like this. We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. Let me pause here and just slow down for a moment. The church is an article of faith next to the Trinity. What do we do with that? Like, Christianity is not a solo sport. Our fathers and mothers in the faith believed that there is no salvation outside of the church. Cyprian of Carthage, who died in 258 AD, said, No one can have God for his father who has not the church for his mother. If that's too, you know, ancient or Catholic for you, this is what John Calvin said. Beyond the pale of the church, there is no forgiveness of sin, and no salvation can be hoped for. Why do I say that? Listen, I'm aware that the strongest argument against Christianity is Christians. But one of the best arguments for Christianity is Christians. I get it. The church is, it can be hard, it can be hurtful, it can be hypocritical, but be a nicene Christian, not an American individualist on this point, please. A few years before his death, John Stott wrote this. He said, An unchurched Christian is a grotesque anomaly. Tell us what you really think, John. He says the New Testament knows nothing of such a person, for the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. Listen, we confess by faith, not by sight, because we don't always see this to be true of the church. But by faith we believe, we confess that the church is united, set apart by God for all peoples, places, and times, and sent to carry the gospel forward. Why is this such a big deal? Why would you append this to the creed about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Well, because if God's inner life is triune, then the deepest reality is communal. You can't be a And so if this God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is this communal God who is an outgoing God who shares and gives and pours out, then we as worshipers of this God, because remember what I said earlier, we become like what we worship. As worshippers of this God, we become a communal people who is outgoing and overflowing and self-giving to others. And this is why the first thing the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ did with all authority in the heaven on earth is to tell his people, Go. Go. As the Father sent the Son, and the Father and the Son sent the Spirit, so the Spirit sends the church. Go. That's what the text says. Look at Matthew 19. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into this Trinitarian reality. And Jesus promises as we're about that, he will be with us always to the very end of the age. And so if Jesus' call is to make disciples, I want to close with three quick pictures of how the Nicene Creed helps us make disciples. It's a map, it's a bumper, and it's a rope. It's a map, it's a bumper, it's a rope. Here we go. The Nicene Creed is a map that's important because it's not the terrain. The happy land of the Trinity is the terrain. But the Creed is like a map that charts this landscape of who God is and what God does in the world. We need that if we're going to make disciples. Second, the Nicene Creed is like bumpers, like you know, the bumper lanes at the bowling alley. We bowl a lot in Detroit where I'm from. Maybe not so much here. The Nicene Creed is like bumper lanes at a bowling alley for how we read the Bible. An RUF campus minister who works with college students said it like this: nobody simply inherits packages of belief anymore. We choose to believe and even construct the packages for ourselves, often as part of our self-actualization project. It's a choose your own adventure, God, these days. That's the spirituality of most universities. And in that, Christians say, hey, who has a better chance of reading the Bible? You alone with the book in your room or the church throughout all times and places? And so there's a there's a humility that the creed invites us to as we read the Bible. We want to read the scriptures with our big brothers and sisters who have gone before us. And so this became, this is like bowling alley bumpers. You're you're you're not going to veer off too far if you maintain the truths of the creed as you read the scriptures. Third and finally, the Nicene Creed is a rope. I said a moment ago, I'm from Detroit, and there's stories of uh centuries ago in the Midwest, where farmers in the winter would tie a rope from the back door of their house to the barn door. And the reason why is because they all had had stories of friends or neighbors who had gone out to their barn with a clear sky and gotten trapped out there because a blizzard burst through and made it impossible to navigate their way back to their house and they die in the storm. So you tie a rope from your house to the barn so that when you get to the barn, you can follow the rope back home again and stay alive. You see, this is what the Nicene Creed is for us. In an age of fake news, alternative facts, and following the science, we need a lifeline to find our way back home. Back home to the God man who promised to be with us always to the very end of the age as we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. Let's pray. God, our Father Almighty, we praise you. Our Lord Jesus Christ, very God of very God, we praise you. Holy Spirit, Lord and giver of life, we praise you. Thank you, God, that you have made us your own. Thank you that our identity is wrapped up in your identity, that who we are is that we are yours and you are ours. So be it. Holy Spirit, I pray that the truths of the Nicene Creed and the truths of Matthew 28 would be impressed upon our hearts, that we would receive all that there is for us from you, God, in Jesus Christ. It's his name we pray. Amen.