Acts Chapters 2,3,4,5
Well, good morning, Saylorville! If you brought a copy of scripture with you this morning, you can find the book of Acts in the second chapter, Acts chapter two, and we’ll be going to the very end of that chapter in Acts chapter two, as we look at the church that honors Jesus Christ. The Christ-Honoring Church is the title of this message, this final installment on our We Believe series where we have crafted a creed which we have been sort of chunking through the last several weeks. And today is the last time together before we begin a brand new series in the Book of Luke next week. But Acts 2 and verse 41 is where we pick it up. This is, by the way, this is day one of the Church… day one. This is the… when the Church began, this is it right here… and then the following days that would come after day one. So this is sort of a template of the earliest church right here. All right? Beginning in verse 41, it says:
Acts 2:41-47
41 ‘So to those who received (Peter’s preaching of the gospel, that word) they were baptized, and there were added about 3,000 souls, day one, 3,000 people in the church.
42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, and to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
44 And all who believed were together, and had all things in common.
45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.
46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they receive their food with glad and generous hearts,
47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Will you pray with me? Our Father in Heaven, we come before You today with glad hearts because we’ve just taken another look at the early… You’ve given us that look in Your word of what the early Church was like… So much joy, so much enthusiasm, people coming to Jesus, identifying with Him, coming under Your Word and spreading the Word wherever they went. And as we look at the Christ-honoring church today, we pray that You would be glorified, because we know that in our midst and amongst the… in this room… from everyone in this room, we have different circumstances and experiences that we’re having. Some are outside of You, kind of knocking on the door, looking in to see what the church is all about. Others love You dearly and deeply. And then there are just those who are hurting. We have people who are mourning over the loss of loved ones and we have those who are hurting because of other physical health issues. We ask, Lord, that You would lift up their chins and thus their faces before You as we look into Your word and give You the glory today, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Have you ever left a church? You went to their service, you heard the preaching, you got everything in, all the bells and whistles and you went away thinking, ‘You know, it’s not what I heard that bothered me. It’s what I didn’t hear that bothered me.’ I’ve had that experience. Countless churches are all across the land today, especially in the United States, that strive… their goal is to meet the felt needs that people have, make ’em feel good about being there. What a goal. And then there are the churches that actually… you could sign, many of you could sign, as myself… you could sign their doctrinal statement. You believe… they believe just like you believe. They believe in the Gospel, but they don’t regularly preach the Gospel. and on any given Sunday, you might not hear the Gospel! And those are those churches that have sort of lost sight of the commissioning words of Jesus who said:
[Matthew 28:19-20]
19 ‘Go into all the world and make disciples amongst all nations,’ and in the course of so doing, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and
20 teaching them, whatever I’ve commanded you, and I’ll be with you always, even to the end of the age.’
And we’re doing a series called We Believe, and we put this creed together, and in the course of doing so, we examined almost all of the historic creeds of the faith. They are great creeds. We have great admiration for those creeds. And we realized… not that we had to discover… but we realized once again that most of those creeds were reacting in some way to some false teaching that was taking place in their day. So for instance, the most famous of all historic creeds… we saw this several weeks ago… was the Nicene Creed, and built right into that creed are these words referring to Jesus that Jesus was begotten, not made. It was pushing against the false teaching of Arianism. Modern-day Jehovah’s Witnesses are Arians. So that was prevalent in those days. If we were to do that… and we did not do that with our creed. We stayed with the things we believe, the summation of what we believe. The creed isn’t all that we believe. It’s a summation of what we believe. I use the metaphor of the bowling alley. It’s like the bumpers up there. It keeps it from throwing theological gutter balls. Okay? That’s the whole idea here.
But if we were to do that, we were to get after some of the false beliefs of our day, we would be getting after the prosperity gospel… which is no gospel at all. It’s a false gospel… or Christian Nationalism. That’s a false gospel… or liberalism… which has been around for generations now… which take a very low view of the Bible and thus have a false gospel. But the final words… and we’ve been taking this through chunks… the final words of our creed are sort of that summation… sort of cinches it all up… and here they are.
The Saylorville Creed
We believe the Bible is God’s Word and our final authority. (Yeah, and if you feel like saying, ‘Amen,’ Amen! Any given time that encourages the preacher, go right ahead and do it. Okay?) We believe Salvation is by grace through faith in Christ.
We believe the Church is the body of Christ.
We believe Believer’s Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are commands from Christ.
We believe those who reject Christ face eternal judgment apart from God.
(I just want that to sit for a moment, because…)
We also believe that those who receive Christ experience eternal joy with God.
And so my friend, Kermit McElvain, who went to be the Lord just the other day… member of our church now in the eternal hands of our Heavenly Father and in the company of the saints… he has that joy. ‘In Your presence there’s fullness of joy in it, and at Your right hand, pleasures forevermore.’ Amen? But I’m not amiss…That is, I’m guilty. I’ve been guilty of addressing felt needs. I even wrote about it in a book I wrote a number of years ago. There’s a chapter that I titled, Stop Selling Your Church and what had happened when I told the story that I was literally doing that.
Our church that I was pastoring had doubled in size. It… don’t be impressed. There were only 27 people the first time I got there. But by then we had a Women’s Ministry, a Men’s Ministry, and we even had a choir! And I was in the home of this couple, and I found myself selling the church, telling this couple about everything we had. And I kid you not! It was like the Spirit of God spoke to my heart in the moment to say, ‘What are you doing?‘ I mean, it was so disruptive, I almost stopped talking, which is a shocker in and of itself! It was like He said, ‘You know, you didn’t talk about these things when you first got here. You just talked about Jesus. I like that better. Get back to talking about Jesus.‘ And that was a rebuke to me for addressing felt needs.
And so, when I wrote about that in my book, I asked myself when I came to the end of that chapter, I asked myself this question: “What are the basics of a Christ-honoring church?” What are the bare bones essentials of a Christ-honoring church? And so I went back to the early church where we just read and beyond, all the way through Acts 6. And I just immediately saw 10 realities of a Christ honoring church. And then it hit me. You know, if your church is honoring Jesus Christ, you don’t have to sell it. It’ll sell itself. And I remember when I wrote those 10 things down that day and then incorporated them into my book, I remember thinking, ‘You know what? One of these days, I’m gonna preach this.’ Today’s the day… so buckle up! There’s 10 of them.
10 realities of a Christ honoring church.
Here’s the first one: a Christ–honoring church regularly sees people come to Jesus. You saw that at the very end of Acts chapter 2, where the Lord added to their number… added daily to the Church… those who were being saved.
Now when I came to Saylorville Baptist Church in 1998, the leadership brought me here ostensibly because this was not a Gospel-centered church. They believed the Gospel, but it wasn’t something they were hearing every week, and certainly people weren’t being saved. And when I came, they said, “Will you come here and lead us in that way?” So I have to be honest. For the first year or so, I felt like I was a solo act. I’m not saying others weren’t trying, but I felt like I was the only one out there beating the bushes and such. And then, along came, several people, like Dave Heisterkamp, and Chuck De Cleene, and Lori Taschner, and John Nemmers, and Colton Willey… now, one of our pastors… and, most recently, a bunch of guys, some 20 guys formed a group, they called themselves the Saylorville Witnessing and a Apologetics Team: S.W.A.T. And they go to malls and stuff and they’re just laying the Gospel out to people and just, I love it! I love it! — And I’m not alone! I’m not saying that I ever was completely alone, but I am not alone, and there are many of you doing the same. And I rejoice! I just want you to know, I’m not done doing it myself.
Just the other day, I was in a coffee shop… I know that’s a shocker… but I was sharing Christ with a friend of a friend who’s now become my own friend. And I was in the midst of it, and he stopped me and he said, he said, “Hey, Pat, you do this with anyone else?” — and almost instinctively, I looked at him and I said, “I live for these opportunities!” And just as instinctively he said, “I believe it!” I think that might have been the best compliment been given in years!
The Christ-honoring church regularly sees people come to Jesus.
Secondly, the Christ-honored church regularly sees people identifying with Jesus in baptism, and you saw that right out of the shoot. ‘Those who gladly received Peter’s word…’ That’s one word in the Greek: “Apodechomai.” “Dechomai” means “to welcome or receive,” and the “apo” is a prefix, and it basically intensifies the word. So it means… I love the New King James… “those who gladly received.” And why I say that is because when you place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you don’t… if it’s real, if it’s true… this has nothing to do with your personality. You want to make Him known. You want to let everyone know that you have placed your faith in the living God and in His Son who died and rose again for you. So ‘those who gladly received his word were baptized.’ And we are seeing many people gladly receiving His Word! Amen? In fact, often… some of you are probably amongst them who came to Saylorville, ’cause you went on our website. You saw the stuff that Doug and company were putting up there, and you saw all those… we’ve heard it so bad… ‘When I saw those baptism videos…’ ‘When I saw those baptism videos…’ ‘When I heard those testimonies…’ because that’s what a Christ-honoring church does! It leads people to Christ, and then leads them to the waters of baptism where they identify with Jesus.
I was in a conference, a State Conference, I was preaching at. I was invited to be the keynote speaker at in Colorado a few years back. It was kind of a musty old church, but there was going to be a bunch of people there. I got there early, and I was kind of getting the lay of the land, feeling the pulpit, and walking around the platform, and I walked right by the baptismal, and I looked in… and I saw a couch on the bottom of the baptismal! — and a bunch of books on top of it. I mean, I was so incredulous, I just sort of stared at it for a while! And all of a sudden, I looked up and there was the pastor of the church there. And he looked at me and… I kid you not… no hyperbole here, he was leaning on the pulpit. He said, “I’ll bet the waters of Saylorville Church are stirred all the time. Aren’t they?” I didn’t… I looked at him and I said, “Well, apparently more than these.” This guy had put such an emphasis on history, he even had a mini museum in his church! I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty much what your church is… a museum.’ A Christ-honoring church regularly sees people identifying with Jesus in baptism.
Thirdly, a Christ-honoring church regularly worships around the Word of God, the ordinances of God, and the people of God. Now I’m going to come back to this one.
4th: A Christ–honoring church generally conveys a spirit of awe from seeing miraculously changed lives. You look at verse 43 again. I know we read it, but it says:
Acts 2:43, “… And awe (there’s the word, awe) came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs…”
That word awe is the Greek word “phobos.” We get our word “phobia” from the word. It means “to be stunned by what God is doing!” And that takes place in all kinds of ways. But when you see a miraculously changed life, you’ve just gotta look at it. Don’t you?
I mean, just the other day, I was talking with the son of a mother… his mother, that is… we had to remove from this church many years ago because of an ongoing, unrepentant, adulterous relationship she got into with another guy. Now this son was raised by a godly father and he’s going on for Jesus, which is wonderful, but you can see his heart was heavy for his mother. And so I said to him, I told him the story of Barb… many of you know Barb who for 8… was removed from the church 18 years earlier, and God was still working in her life. She repented of her sin, she came back to the church! She’s rejoined the church, because ‘He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.’ [Philippians 1:6] And, you had… if you had seen the face of this young man, it just lit up with hope, because God is into the long game. Amen?
And so, it was just such a thrill to hear of the awesomeness of God in this woman’s life.
And we’re seeing it all over the place! Look around, Saylorville Church.
Just the other day I was at a wedding, sat with a couple who were a couple of drunks and drug addicts. They met in GCR, our Gospel Center Recovery Program. Got saved. They’re married and walking with God in one of our church plants now! That’s awe–some is what that is! But I must move on.
Number 5, a Christ-honoring church regularly seeks to meet the needs of one another. And you saw that in [Acts 2] verses 44 and 45. Nobody was going without, nor should we, be it through our Community Groups, meal trains, hospital visits. We’ve had a recent surge in health situations. There’s a couple of deaths. But we are witnessing the body beautiful… jumping in there, helping out, bringing meals, visiting people, loving on ’em, sharing truth. My My own wife has got a busted wheel. She’s such a servant, but now she has to let others serve her! — which is pretty cool! And Jesus said in John 13:35:
John 13:35, “(By that, by what you’re seeing) by this all people will know that you are My (followers, My mathētēs, My mathētēs) My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
And this is why the great church father, Tertullian, said, he said:
“Even the pagans of his day in the second century were saying,” when they looked at the church, they were saying things like, “See how they love one another!” Tertullian, church father
Drawn in.
6th, and I just have to say it, the Christ–honoring church is known for it’s joy, generosity, and praise to God. And you see it all over… when you read the text again and again, which I just read, it’s like these people can’t, they can’t wait to get together! They love it! And they’re generous. Nobody’s going without, and they’re praising God, and they’re having favor with all kinds of people.
Number 7, the church that honors Christ makes clear that the glory of changed lives belongs to Jesus. You really see this throughout the book of Acts, and it’s important that every generation hear this, and here’s why… because it’s your nature, it is your nature…
I don’t care if you’re a child of God or not… it’s your nature… to take the glory. I have seen it. I’ve seen it in godly people. I have seen godly men and women in our church doing everything but taking glory to themselves at times… and I want to rebuke them! Stop that! ‘I don’t share My glory with anybody.’ That’s what God says. The glory is to go to God. Right? And you see throughout the book of Acts a constant deflecting. They’re always deflecting. And in the very next chapter, [Acts 3] for instance, Peter… remember? — he walks into the temple. The church is just weeks old, so they’re gonna walk in, and he saunters in there, and there’s a guy begging. He’s been doing it for years, you know, ‘… just a little pocket change, please…’ and Peter’s says, ‘I don’t… I ain’t got nothing at… but I do have Jesus, and in His name, get up and walk!’ He gets up and does a two step in the temple! And everybody just goes nuts! — they just surround him, and, ‘What is this?‘ — And the implication is Peter… Peter… Ahh… Peter!’ And so, what does Peter do? Look at chapter three and verse 12. Peter rebukes them and he says:
Acts 3:12,16
12 ” … when Peter saw it he addressed the people: “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk?”
(And he finishes in verse 16)
16 And His name—by faith in His [Jesus’] name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.”
Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, preached a message one day and had a woman come up to him and say, “That was the greatest message you have ever preached!” And… he said, “Yeah, I know.” She said, “You know?” He said, “Yeah. The devil told me the same thing about five minutes ago.”
Because it’s in your rotten DNA to take the glory whenever you can. But a Christ-honoring church doesn’t do that. We keep giving the glory back to Jesus.
8th: A Christ-honored church knows that its power comes through the filling of the Holy Spirit, fasting and prayer. Again, next chapter, [Acts] chapter 4. Now, the church is exploding! 3000 a day…3,000 on day one, 5,000 more come to Christ! I mean, the whole place is getting turned upside down! And so, the religious leaders haul ’em in. They threaten them. They just… they’re incredulous because they’re just a bunch of country bumpkins, and you… look at verse 13. It says:
Acts 4:13, ‘Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they perceived that they were uneducated, common men, and they were astonished! And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.’
… which makes all the difference, right? And so they just threatened them even more. And as a result, the disciples come together, and they just gather together and they turn it into a praise, meeting! They lifted up their hearts to God, and they worshipped the living God for allowing them to suffer. And at the end of it all, it says in verse 31, it says this:
Acts 4:31, “And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken! They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the Word of God with boldness!“
I don’t know if any of you saw it, but there was like a swarm of many earthquakes in Iowa recently. I don’t know if anybody felt them, but I thought, man, I’d like to get one of those earthquakes while I’m in a prayer meeting here! How cool would that be? — God give that to us!
I was at a conference just the other day and I was in line with one of our other pastors getting some food. And this gentleman I had never seen before who’s a pastor of a decent-sized church came up to me and said, “Are you Pat Numbers?” And I said, “I am.” And he said, “Hey, I just want you to know, I so appreciate… I’ve been watching what you guys are doing. I so appreciate what God is doing in your church and in that network of church planting. I really want to glean from that. Can we get together? Can we just meet sometime?” “I’d love to do that!” — so we’re going to set that up. But I’m afraid I could disappoint him, because the secret sauce of the Saylorville Church and the Engage Network for 20 plus years is not strategy, even though we have a lot of strategy. It’s power! It’s power; the power of prayer and boldness, in the faith to preach with boldness the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s where the secret sauce is. A Christ honoring church is known for its power that comes through the filling of the Holy Spirit, fasting and prayer.
9th: A Christ honoring church practices church discipline with unrepentant sinners. You know, if I had music behind me now, we’d hear it… dun dun dun dun!... Well, if you go to [Acts] chapter five, it’s a famous story. So the church is exploding, and what happens is Satan starts to sow stuff… to ruin it if he possibly can. There are a couple of individuals, Ananias and Sapphira… a couple, in fact… who come and they say, ‘We sold everything and here it is.’ I mean, sounds real generous. They could have said, ‘We sold some of it, and here’s a part of it,’ and that would have been just fine, but they sold everything, and only gave a little bit back indicating they’d given it at all back. In fact, in Greek it uses the word, we get our English word, “embezzle” from this. And Ananias drops dead right on the spot! Later on, his wife comes in. Sapphira… she too drops dead! — and this holy fear comes over everyone to say… By the way, aren’t you glad God isn’t dropping people dead for hypocrisy today? But as a result, look at verse 13 in chapter 5. As a result, here’s what it says:
Acts 5:13-14
13 “None of the rest dared join them, (That’s the outsider, not a Christian) but the people held them in high esteem.
14 And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women…”
So in juxtaposition, the Christ-honoring church repulses people and brings them in. That’s what’s supposed to happen. But I’ll just tell you this. Now we are given actual words and direction in how we conduct church discipline. We don’t just say, ‘You’re dead,’ and you die. We don’t do that. Okay? We take it through the process in Matthew chapter 18, but I’ll tell you this. The church that doesn’t practice church discipline is not a church. The church that doesn’t practice church discipline is not a church, even though they’ll claim to be one. All right, let’s go positive one more time.
10th: It raises up godly leaders from within the church. And that’s what [Acts] chapter 6 says when the church is growing, It tells us in verse 2:
Acts 6:2-4
2 And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.
3 Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.
4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
And that’s what they do. Stephen is amongst them, for instance. If you look at the Engage Network, which is a fellowship of churches that began here at Saylorville Church in 2005… and there are now 9 churches and some 6,000 to 7,000 people coming to these churches. If you look at those 8 churches, the 8 other churches are loaded with hundreds… I mean plural… hundreds of former Saylorville Church people and members, both men and women, vocational and voluntary. And it’s one of the joys of my life to see them serving!
And just the other day, while at a conference in Kansas City, I saw one of those servants in our newest church plant, Atlas… at this conference. Several of our church plants were represented, and one of them was an elder in waiting. His name is Steve Houg. Many… a member of our church, now at Atlas church. He… I’d never seen him at a conference before, and he was just ahead of me in another aisle singing hymns with about a thousand of us. And I saw him just maybe 8 feet away from me, just wiping tears, wiping tears the whole time he sang. And I was just moved! So I walked up and I squared him up. I said, “Steve, I saw you. I saw you crying during that hymn. Hey, what’s going on, man?” He looked at me, still tears in his eyes. “I am just so overwhelmed by the responsibility and privilege that God has given to me!” And I thought to myself in that moment, ‘Lord, You’re raising up more Christ-honoring leaders. That’s what You’re doing!’ And I praise the Lord for that!
So I wanna conclude before we go to the Lord’s table with the one I just read, the 3rd point which is regularly worships around the Word of God, the ordinances of God and the people of God. You see this throughout the text in [Acts] chapter 2, they just centered around, they couldn’t wait to be together around the Word of God and the message that’s being preached, and the ordinances of God, the Lord’s table, baptism and the people of God, the fellowship. In other words, not just sermons… the church!
Just last week, in our Repentance module… which was excellent…. Dr. Chris Braun’s… also a pastor… made this comment. He said, and I quote. He said it twice:
“You can’t grow if you’re not regularly in church.” Dr. Chris Braun
I remember thinking, that is so simple and so true. Years ago, before towns and cities, and… this shows you how long I’ve been around… before towns and cities began to pack sports into Sundays… because when I began, it was absolutely unheard of 40 years ago! Nobody was doing anything on Sundays. That was a family day. The communities in the States, they recognized that. They honored that. And then, slowly but surely, they started packing Sundays with sports. I remember being very upset, bothered by that. Ticked me off! But then, I remember thinking, it’s like the Lord said to me, ‘Pat, the world doesn’t owe you anything. The world doesn’t owe the church anything.’ It was at that time that I warned a father whose son… I warned a father that his son might reject Christ if He continued to over-emphasize sports and de-emphasize church. And He was understandably upset with me! And by the way, His son rejected the faith. Let me just say something before you think this is a guilt trip. It’s not. I love seeing uniformed kids in church! I love seeing the baseball uniforms, the soccer uniforms… not gymnastics. Don’t bring those in here, please! But I love it! I love it, because it’s almost like those parents are declaring to their kids without words, ‘We’re not going to miss the game… but we’re not going to miss church either!’ Did you know that 70% of high school grads walk away from the church? 70%! Why would you want to threaten to pad those numbers? And I know that just saying this would upset some of you and may have, but I’m not hating on you, and I’m not judging you, and I won’t say another word about this… Well, I’m not gonna promise that… but I’m not gonna say anything now. I was actually called out about a year ago from people that I, that loved me that I was going too far on this matter. But I probably was. Just as a pastor, I’m begging you… I’m literally begging you with children… to take this to heart. The Apostle Paul said it best in 1 Timothy 3:
1 Timothy 3:15b, ‘The church is the pillar and foundation of the truth.’
Have you ever read that? Speaking of foundations, there is no other foundation that can be laid than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. And some of you aren’t on that foundation. That’s where you’ve got to go. You’ve got to find the foundation and, thus, the fountain of faith, believing that God’s Son, Jesus, who is represented in symbolism in these elements, died for you personally and rose again for you personally so that you could place your faith in Him and be born into the family of God. That’s the one foundation you need to be on. Amen? And so we celebrate the church that honors Jesus Christ. And as the deacons come to prepare for the Lord’s table, let’s bow for word of prayer.
Father in heaven, we thank You for the Lord’s Table and all that it represents, the Person of Jesus. If anything should humble us, Lord, from ever taking the glory to ourselves, it should be this moment when we remember the perfect life represented in the bread, the sacrificial death represented in the juice of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, help us to examine ourselves. Are we on that foundation? Do we know Jesus as our Savior? And if we do examine ourselves, confess sin, if we’ve been glory-stealing, Lord, forgive us. Help us to walk humbly and joyfully before You, the living God, in the church that honors Jesus Christ, and we pray this in His name. Amen.
I really love the worship this morning with some of the songs that we’re not as familiar with, but more worshipful with the concentration around the Lord’s Table. At least one of those songs, if not two, I think, were creedal. Did you notice that? They were very creedal in nature, declaring what we believe.
The Bible tells us that the Lord Jesus on the night before He would die gathered with His disciples, and He took bread, and He broke it, and He distributed it amongst them. And He said, “This… this… this… represents My body which is given for you, so do this in remembrance of Me.” I’m always taken up by the fact that there are two elements and not just one; the bread, the perfect life of Jesus, and that qualified Him to become the perfect sacrifice… and thus the cup. He said, “This cup is… it represents the New Covenant… the one which we live under now… in My blood. This do as often as you drink it… in remembrance of Me.’
Let’s stand together.
We’re going to say the creed and then we’ll sing. This is going be something we want to do at the Lord’s table on a monthly basis. Now that we’ve concluded this series, the cards are out there for you to take if you don’t have it, and our Community Group is actually memorizing them by chunks. That’s a good idea. You might want to consider doing that. And if you recall again, this is a summation of our faith. It’s not all of our faith. It’s a summation. Okay? It’ll keep you from throwing theological gutter balls. Okay? Say it together. You don’t have to put your hand over… We’re not doing the Pledge of Allegiance here. Okay? It’s a higher pledge than that.
We believe in One God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – Three Persons, equal and eternal. We believe in God the Father, who created everything from nothing. He rules with wisdom, and power and love. He is holy, just, merciful and kind. He gives life and every good gift. He is in control of every nation and every moment. Everything exists by His will and for His glory. We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Sinless Savior. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, fully God and fully human. He died for our sins, was buried and rose again. He ascended to heaven and will return in glory to judge all people, the living and the dead, and to reign forever. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Person of God in us. He convicts us of sin, opening our eyes to our need for grace and leading us to repentance. He conforms us to Christ, helping us to live like He did and giving us gifts to build up the Church. He comforts us until the end, sealing our salvation and strengthening our hope. We believe the Bible is God’s Word and our final authority. Salvation is by grace through faith in Christ. The Church is the body of Christ. Believer’s Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are commands from Christ. And those who reject Christ, face eternal judgment apart from God. And those who receive Christ experienced eternal joy with God.
And all God’s people said, [Amen] Let’s sing.