Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Tonight, what we’re doing is finishing off our look at the Apostle’s Creed.

It’s been a long term, with much going on.

By now, what I hope you’ve been able to see is the basics of Christian faith.

Remember, in the first session, we looked at the nature of belief.

We saw that it had three parts, knowledge, obedience and love.

Now, at this point, today, you have everything you need in terms of knowledge.

You’ve heard about God, who he is and what he’s done.

You’ve especially seen who Jesus is.

Two weeks ago, we saw that Jesus is the one who is the Son of David, the king who was promised in the line of David who would reestablish a kingdom for God, and that kingdom would have no end.

Similarly, he is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, through whom God saw fit to create everything, and who works in perfect unity with God.

So, this Jesus isn’t just an important person.

According to the Bible, he is actually God himself, come in human flesh to redeem the world.

We see this as well in Jesus’ third title, the Son of Man.

This is a reference to Daniel 7:13-14.

This chapter describes one like the Son of Man who comes on the clouds and is given the authority to rule.

By calling himself the Son of Man, Jesus takes that role onto himself.

The creed helped us to see that this was true by pointing to two parts of Jesus’ life that showed us who he is and what he has done.

The first was his virgin birth.

Jesus’ mother didn’t have sex to produce him, but he came about through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Secondly, he died on a cross and rose again.

This is significant because it brought about the forgiveness of all our sins.

Then the creed spoke about what this means for us.

We saw that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, where he intercedes for us.

In other words, Jesus is next to God, applying the work he did on the cross to us.

He is reminding the Father that he bought us on the cross, that there our sins are paid.

And thus we get to enjoy God’s fatherhood and favour.

We also saw how Jesus’ life, death and resurrection opened the way for the Spirit to come, who leads us and guides us into all godliness and life.

Through what Jesus has done, we have the immense privilege of having a full member of the Godhead living inside us, using us as his own temple.

Finally, we saw how Jesus is coming at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, and we saw how that’s a good thing because that judgement brings us into freedom if we’re in Christ, and punishes the wrongdoings of those who aren’t in Christ.

All things, on this understanding of the world, are going to be made new in Jesus, and when they’re made new all that was bad about the old things is going to be washed away, through his judgement.

Today we’re going to finish off looking at this creed, and we’re going to do that by looking at three things:

The church

The forgiveness of sins

The resurrection and the life to come.

The Church

Our first item is to look at what the creed says with regard to the church.

So, let’s read it, and then we’ll unpack it through the teaching of Scripture.

The creed explicitly says “I believe … in Christ’s holy universal church, the fellowship of Christians”.

There are three parts to this.

The church is holy, universal, and the fellowship of Christians.

So firstly, what do you understand by the idea of holiness?

What does it mean for something to be holy?

The word basically just means set apart.

Often, in modern English, set apart for God.

So, what does it mean for the church to be holy?

It is set apart for God.

This is an idea we find throughout the Bible.

Post-fall, God’s community is always called holy.

They are called to be different from the mass of humanity around them.

For example, in Exodus 19:6 and Isaiah 62:12 God is speaking about his people, the nation of Israel, and how he desires that they be a holy people.

For Israel, this means that they are to be set apart for God.

This is why we have the whole book of Leviticus, full of its laws, including the strange ones like not cutting your hair a certain way and not having tattoos.

These laws, alongside the laws about religious festivals and moral concerns, were designed to mark the people of Israel as separate from their neighbours.

They are not arbitrary, but designed to be outward markers of Israel’s difference from the nations surrounding them.

So, like Israel, the church is to be distinctive.

They are to be marked out from the rest of the world.

How are we to be distinctive today?

Obviously, it’s not the same for us because we’re no longer one nation.

Well, the church is to be marked by one important idea, that has many implications.

Let’s look at John 13:34-35

This is what marks, or at least, should mark the church out today.

Love, for both the people in the church and more importantly, for the God of the church.

That is how we are to be marked out.

How many people are in God’s church?

Is it still national, like it used to be?

To answer, look with me at Galatians 3:26-29

You see here, all types of people belong to Christ, and all types of people belong to his church.

That’s why the church is not only holy, but universal.

It is present everywhere somebody confesses the name of Jesus.

And its power is there as well.

The last thing we are looking at under this section is the fellowship of believers.

To look at this, let’s take a look at a rather long section: Ephesians 4:1-6

This passage here describes the ideal of church life.

Our life is to be worthy of our calling, which is the gospel that saved us (v1).

Look at the things that mark a life like this.

We are to be humble and gentle with one another, patient and bearing with each other.

We are to be unified, like the unity of our faith.

Look as well at Ephesians 4:11-13, because this is an important descriptor of another thing that must happen for us in the church.

We are given teachers who instruct us in the Bible, so that we may come to know God more, and in so doing become holier.

So, the church should be a place where you are loved, treated well, recognised.

But also a place where God works to save you, bring you closer to himself and challenge you in your sin.

The Forgiveness of Sins

Along these lines, the next thing the creed says is that we believe in the forgiveness of sins.

Why does this get mentioned by itself?

Well, because it’s one of the most important doctrines in the whole of Christianity.

Let’s take a look at how.

The first thing we need to do is understand sin.

The best place to do that is to look at the word itself.

The word in both Hebrew and Greek that we translate sin mean missing the mark.

They are properly used of archers who stray from a target, or anythign like that.

So, from this we get that to sin means to miss the mark.

What mark is that?

Romans 1-3, after introducing us to Paul and his mission, are there to help people understand why that mission is so important.

In this section of the letter, Paul sets about proving that everybody, both Jews and Gentiles, have sinned, that is, they hae missed the mark, and his sobering conclusion is found in Romans 3:10-11

So, that’s what sin is.

Now, what do you think it means for sins to be forgiven?

To forgive something is basically to decide that you are not going to exact payment for that thing from the person who owes it to you.

So, outside the Bible, the most common use of the word is in finance, where you can forgive a debt.

You basically decide you’re not going to collect on that debt.