I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church

Text: Matthew 16:13-16

Theme: What I believe the Bible teaches about the Church: It is a Divine/Human organism that is God’s instrument for changing human lives.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,

creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the holy catholic Church.

All good Baptists should confess belief in the holy catholic church. Some of you are immediately cringing. How could a Protestant, one committed to the doctrines of the Reformation — indeed a Baptist by confession — and an Evangelical Christian by experience confess belief in the “holy catholic church”? Before you break out the tar and feathers, or before the deacons convene a secret meeting to discuss my theology, or before you begin to wonder if your pastor is really committed to the distinctives of Baptist doctrine and theology, let me explain. I know many of you are troubled by the word “catholic” because you assume it has something to do with the Holy See in Rome. Nothing could be further from the truth. “Catholic” in the Apostles’ Creed begins with a lower-case “c” and is a word we cannot and must not surrender to Rome. Ignatius Theophorus, a bishop in Antioch was the first pastor we know of who used the word. In AD 100 he wrote, “Where Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.”

The 19th century biblical commentator, Matthew Henry, once said, “When we take God for our God, we take His people for our people.” Do you believe that? If so, then you can confess with a good conscience I believe in the holy catholic Church.

In order to explain this particular “I Believe” of the Apostles’ Creed, I’ve chosen Matthew 16:13-18 as my text: "Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:13-18, ESV)

The Church has a Head

The Church has a History

The Church has a Heart

I. THE APOSTLES’ CREED REMINDS US THAT THE CHURCH HAS A HEAD

1. Matthew 16:13-19 has often been referred to as the Constitution of the Church

a. where you find people confessing what Peter confessed the Church is found

b. where that confession is found the communion of the saints is found

2. Jesus tells his disciples that upon the rock of that truth — that he is the Christ the Son of the living God — he will build his Church

ILLUS. It’s not Peter’s church, it’s not my church, it’s not the pope’s church. It’s our Lord’s Church, and he is its Head.

a. Peter is our great example of faith

b. his confession is our confession, and is how we come into the Church

A. JESUS ESTABLISHED HIS CHURCH UPON TRUTH

1. that truth is Christ’s truth and the truth of the Gospel

2. were the church makes no declaration of the Gospel it is no Church

a. if we compromise the truth at any point we compromise the faith

b. if there is not a bold articulation of God’s Word than the Church fails in its mission to be the Church

ILLUS. The apostle Paul tells a young preacher boy named Timothy that the church has the perpetual responsibility to guard the deposit that has been entrusted to it, and to perpetuate the pattern of sound words.

“Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” (2 Timothy 1:14, NIV84)

B. JESUS ESTABLISHED HIS CHURCH IN POWER

1. Jesus reminds the disciples that even Christians die, but we’re the only people who will die safely

a. the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church which means that the gates of hell cannot prevail against the individual believer

ILLUS. The mentality of too many Christians is that the Church is under attack (and it is), and that we must ‘circle the wagons’. Every good Western has an Indian attack. The wagon train is rolling along the prairie when on a hillock a band of Indians appear painted for war. As the Indians descend the slope you hear the wagon master command “Circle the wagons.” It’s a defensive maneuver. As they do the fight is on. Too often this is how the Church responds to the world. We see a secular culture — one that is become increasingly hostile to the Confessing Church and our Gospel — and we ‘circle the wagons’ in a defensive maneuver hoping to out-last the assault. The is the opposite of the promise from Jesus. Friends, do you know what the word prevail means in the New Testament? It means to stand up against. Jesus is claiming that he is building his Church, and the gates of hell shall not stand up against the onslaught of Biblical truth and the message of the Gospel.

1) it’s Hell that ought to be ‘circling the wagons’ in mortal fear of our truth and our Gospel

2) it’s the culture that ought to be ‘circling the wagons’ in panic because we have true truth, and a life-changing gospel

3) and yet denomination after denomination, church after church, Christian leader after Christian leader have capitulated to the culture sacrificing biblical truth and gospel integrity in order to be on the “right side of history” of secular issues

2. Jesus promised his Church power ... Power that comes through his presence in us, and power that comes through a revealed Word

a. if you die in the power of the gospel you die as a member of the church, and the church is kept secure by the one who founded it

b. death cannot separate us from the love of God; nothing can separate us from the love of God

1) the power of the church is not a military power, it is not a political power, is not a sociological power, is not a cultural power, is not an economic power

2) it is a supernatural power; it is a doctrinal power; it is a power grounded in truth; it is a power evident in the gospel

3. it is a power that gives new life, eternal life and abundant life

C. JESUS ESTABLISHED HIS CHURCH IN AUTHORITY

1. Jesus did not create an organization and then tell the disciples "You figure out how to make it work"

2. in our passage in Matthew 16:19 Jesus tells his disciples that “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”” (Matthew 16:19, ESV)

a. this seems strange language to us, but this was something Israel would have understood

ILLUS. Binding and loosing are rabbinical terms, meaning forbidding and permitting. In that day the rabbis would sit at the city gate of their community, and people would bring to them legal cases, personal cases or anything else that they needed decisions on and the rabbis would turn to the Scriptures, they would reason from the Scriptures, they would make decisions based on the Scriptures which were then considered authoritative. If the Scriptures commanded something that was considered binding. If the Scriptures did not command something then the person was loosed to do what they wanted.

b. this binding and loosing was not based on the capricious whims of a Rabbi, but on the Word of God

3. this remains the Church’s authority today

a. we don’t get to choose what we believe

1) there is a faith that has been delivered to the Church, and it’s found in the life of the Savior, and the Holy Spirit-revealed truth in the Scriptures

2) as we’ve been discovering in our journey through the Apostles’ Creed there is a clearly articulated theology and set of doctrines we must believe in order to be called “Christian”

b. we don’t get to choose how we worship

c. we don’t get to choose our mission

1) Jesus didn’t tell his disciples, “It’s my church, but you all figure out how to expand it.”

2) Jesus clearly spelled our mission and ministry in the Great Commission

d. we don’t get to choose who we love

1) again, Jesus clearly tells us to love each other as he loved us

2) that love extends to our enemies

4. it is the authority of Scripture — which is the authority of our Christ — that is to guide the life of the Church, and to guide the life of those people called Christian

a. it guides us in all things — great, small, or middling.

The Apostles' Creed Reminds Us That the Church Has a Head

II. THE APOSTLES’ CREED REMINDS US THAT THE CHURCH HAS A HISTORY

1. Jesus said I will build my church

a. the Church of Jesus Christ is a Church through the ages

1) it had a specific earthly beginning in an upper room of a home in Jerusalem

2) it has a specific earthly ending when Jesus comes again in power and glory to establish his Millennial Kingdom

b. in between there is a history spanning 20 centuries

2. one of the great perils in modern evangelical Christianity is that we have almost no ecclesiological knowledge; no sense of church history beyond last Sunday’s worship service

a. we tend to assume that the way the church is today, is how it’s always been

1) nothing could be further from the truth

b. ecclesiology is the study of the Church, the origins of Christianity, the history of the church and particularly the structure of the church

ILLUS. Our lack of ecclesiological memory is best illustrated by Charles Schultz, creator of the Peanuts cartoon strip. In one strip, Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally, has been assigned to write a report about the history of her church. The opening line of her report begins with the sentence, "When writing about Church History, we have to go back to the very beginning. Our Pastor was born in 1930."

3. I fully understand that the study of Church history is not on most Christians' list of favorite subjects

ILLUS. American historian Will Durant once said, "We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are not the best informed as to the events of the last sixty centuries. Our culture disposes us to short term memory. We are "present oriented".

a. there is much truth in what he says — cable news has accustomed us to the 24-hour-news-cycle

b. in a fast-paced world tied together by the “immediacy” of satellite news, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter we quickly move from story to story, from headline to headline, from picture to picture, from tweet to tweet without ever digesting the larger story

1) as Will Durant says, We are “present oriented” and what happened in church history six years ago, or sixty years ago or six-hundred years ago seemingly has no relevancy to us today

2) we forget that the saints who have gone before us have shaped the church

a) we stand on their shoulders

4. the Apostles’ Creed reminds us that the Church has a history

a. Our Church Has a History

ILLUS. It’s story is told in the lives, the ministry, and the leadership of fellow believers such at Arlene Thomas, Marvin and Betty Staley, Lucille Owens, Tom Gentges, Lem Bassnet, Leo and Mary Pearon, Rainy Robertson, Larry Schaefferkoetter, and dozens more.

b. Baptists Have a History

ILLUS. Their story is told in the lives and ministries of our Baptist forefathers. People like Roger Williams, John Leland, Adoniram and Ann Judson, Lottie Moon, E. Y. Mullins, Walter Rauschenbusch, Martin Luther King, Jr., Billy Graham, and thousands more.

c. The Greater Church Has a History

ILLUS. For two millennia the Church has been shaped by great men and great women who loved Jesus, who loved his Church, and who shaped his Church by their great minds and their great ministries. Where would the Church be without James, the Lord’s brother, or the Apostle Paul; Polycarp, Justin Martyr and Clement or Rome; Tertullian and Augustine, Martin Luther and John Calvin; Jonathan Edwards, Susanna Wesley, Count Zinzendorf, Charles Spurgeon, Amy Carmichael, and countless more.

5. in our own congregation’s history, and in the greater history of the Church are stories of Christians small and great, unknown and renowned

a. all of them were providentially placed both when and where they were in Christ’s Church, to advance his Church as he sees fit

b. so are you!

6. now, I want to be clear that when we talk about the Church we are primarily talking about those locally gathered congregations — preaching and teaching the word and taking it to the nations

a. but we are also a part of the larger Church the New Testament refers to as the Body of Christ

1) it means as Christians our local church has an identity that is unique to us, but we are also in fellowship with all true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and all true churches

b. the gospel is received individually, but it has never received alone

c. the great affirmation that we understand this morning is that even though an individual sinner has to receive the gospel on their own, true saving faith always drives that person to become an active participant of the local New Testament church

The Apostles' Creed Reminds Us That the Church Has a History

III. THE APOSTLES’ CREED REMINDS US THAT THE CHURCH HAS A HEART

1. what I mean is that the church has a core, a center, that if you remove the heart it is no longer the Church

2. there are four marks of a New Testament Church that is at the heart of who we are

a. the church is, 1) Holy, 2) Catholic, 3) Apostolic, and 4) a Communion

b. the forth one will be our focus of attention next Sunday

A. THE CHURCH IS HOLY

1. while praying on the night that he was betrayed Jesus asks the Father to sanctify them by the truth

a. he then clearly says your word is truth

1) the great sanctifying agent of the Church is God’s Word

2. we're to be holy; we're to be set apart from the world

a. in his High Priestly Prayer Jesus continually reminds us that his Church is to be different than the world and nothing marks us more as different then that we are striving for holiness in character and conduct

b. out great example, of course, is our Savior Jesus

1) God commands that we are to be holy as He is holy, and His holiness is exemplified in the Son who is the exact representation of the Father

2) our holiness in this world, and their holiness in the world to come has nothing to do with anything good or righteous in us but is a work of the Spirit who dwells in us, and is conforming us into the image of the Son of God

3. now let me say the obvious ... In this world we shall never measure up to that standard of holiness, but we are to strive toward it with the understanding that someday we shall be as holy as God is holy

a. that is the promise of the Scriptures

b. that is the promise of the Father to those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ

The Church is Holy, and ...

B. THE CHURCH IS ONE (i.e. CATHOLIC)

1. let’s be honest, right now the church does not look like "one" but "many"

a. right here in Linn there are many flavors of Christianity

b. we must recognize that the unity that exists in the Body of Christ in this world is not an ecclesiastical unity, but a spiritual unity

ILLUS. I can’t, in good conscience, worship in a Catholic Church, but I can certainly unify with them and support their pro-life position. I can worship with the Methodists, but I certainly want nothing to do with their hierarchical church polity. I love the Assembly of God folk, but honestly? ... I don’t want to remain standing for a forty-minute song service. But I am one in Christ with anyone who confesses Christ.

2. any time we attempt to make Church unity an institutional unity, it has always been at the expense of truth

a. we understand, we must understand, that not everyone whose name is on a church role is a Christian

b. but we do know that everyone whose name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life is a Christian and we are in fellowship with them even though we may not know them, but we will know them in the kingdom

3. the good news is that there will be no denominational cohorts in heaven, they will just be the one people of God

a. it will be the church of the redeemed

b. this is why we need to reclaim the word "catholic"

1) it's a descriptive word reminding us that we are one with all other believers everywhere in the world throughout time and space

c. yet, at the same time, we are to remember that throughout the New Testament most references to the Church are to a local church — a congregation of believers meeting together to worship, and to pray, and to minister

The Church Is Holy, the Church Is Catholic (I.e. One), and ...

C. THE CHURCH IS APOSTOLIC

1. what does it mean for the church to be apostolic?

a. it means to believe in and pass on to the next generation of Christians the faith that Jesus taught the disciples

ILLUS In 1987 Steve Green sang a song written by Jon Mohr that became an instant hit. It’s a hymn encouraging us to consider our commitment not only to the Father, but to generations of believers who come behind us. Listen to the words.

We're pilgrims on the journey Of the narrow road

And those who've gone before us line the way

Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary

Their lives a stirring testament to God's sustaining grace

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses

Let us run the race not only for the prize

But as those who've gone before us

Let us leave to those behind us

The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone

And our children sift through all we've left behind

May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover

Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find

CHORUS:

Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful

May the fire of our devotion light their way

May the footprints that we leave

Lead them to believe

And the lives we live inspire them to obey

Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful

2. whenever a church is faithfully passing on the faith it can rightly be called apostolic

a. even though the name "Apostolic" may not be in our church name on the marquee it better be in our character and our constitution of our church

1) our teaching and our preaching must be apostolic or we cannot claim the right to be called "the Church"

3. unfortunately, the sad truth in our nation today is that there are many congregations that have ceased to be apostolic

a. they have surrendered the truth of the gospel, they have surrendered the authority of the Scriptures and have adopted the vain philosophies propagated by the culture

ILLUS. The newest vain philosophy that is racing through the Church in North America is Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality which are now defined by the word "wokeness". It’s a false world view and ought to be rejected outright by the Church.

4. there is a forth mark of the Church that is at the heart of who we are

a. it is the Communion of Saints and will be our focus next Sunday

Are you a born-again believer who is an active member of a local New Testament congregation?

Do you appreciate the cloud of witnesses who were examples to us?

Are you striving to be an example to the generations of believers who come behind us?