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[0:00] And we're continuing our series on the Apostles' Creed. And as a reminder, this is called the Apostles' Creed. You'll see that at the top of your handout. That's the Creed.

[0:10] And it's called the Apostles' Creed because it sums up what the Apostles taught. So it isn't written by the Apostles. It came about probably 100 years after the Apostles. And so this is basically a short summary of biblical truth.

[0:24] And it's called a Creed because in Latin, Credo means I believe. And you can see that there's lots of I believes there. And so this is just a summary of what Christians have believed pretty much for the whole life of the church.

[0:42] These are basically the core truths of the Christian faith. The truths that we build our lives on. And so when we say I believe in this Creed, we aren't just saying I like these things or I prefer them.

[0:57] Or we're not just saying some wishful thinking like I hope these things are true. No, it's not that. We are saying I know this to be true and I'm building my life on it.

[1:09] So remember, it's a bit like saying I believe that the Eiffel Tower can hold my weight. And so I'm going to climb up it. Well, when we say this Creed, we are saying I believe in God, the Father and all these things.

[1:22] And I'm putting my life on the line for it. And I'm going to build my life on this. That's what we mean by I believe. And so just remember what Jesus said.

[1:33] What is the unbeliever building their life on? It's just sand, right? Unstable sand.

[1:45] That's my best interpretation of sand, right? But we are building our lives on God's word. That's the solid foundation that we live on.

[2:01] And the Apostles' Creed is simply a summary of that, right? So if the Apostles' Creed is here, it's just a summary of that.

[2:16] So God's word is scripture. It's the whole Bible. But what is all of that in summary? Well, here is the Apostles' Creed. And so these are the essential core truths of the Christian faith.

[2:27] That if you were to take these out, the whole thing would crumble. You can almost think, in some ways, they're kind of like key pillars within this. Kind of hold it all up.

[2:39] And all these pillars, you gather together. Gather them together. That's the Apostles' Creed. And last week, what did we see? We are building our lives on God. On the reality that he exists and we belong to him.

[2:53] We're dependent on him. But also, what is important is who that God is. Come take a seat. I think there are seats at the front. Don't be scared of the front. Because many people believe in a God, don't they?

[3:07] Muslims believe in a God. Hindus believe in many gods. And so it matters who this God is. If you have the wrong God, you have the wrong foundation. And so we believe in God the Father Almighty.

[3:23] Which opens the door to the Trinity, doesn't it? And this is what the Apostles' Creed is structured around. Do you see the three different sections? And the three headings of each section?

[3:34] I believe in God the Father. And the Son. And the Holy Spirit. It's all structured around who this God is. Our God is triune. And today we're moving on to the next section.

[3:48] The second section. And it's all about who the Son is. The identity of Jesus Christ. And this is absolutely key to be clear on.

[4:01] Because do you remember what Jesus said? Look at Matthew 16 there. He said to his disciples, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ.

[4:13] The Son of the living God. 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. And I tell you, You are Peter.

[4:25] And on this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. So do you see? The church is built on this truth.

[4:37] Who Jesus is. And so get this wrong and the foundation crumbles. And so this is actually maybe the most important question you could ask anyone.

[4:50] Who do you say that Jesus is? Well here in the Creed we have the answer. This is all about the identity of Jesus. This part. But I just wanted to look at the first three lines of this next section.

[5:04] I want us to look at the names and titles of Jesus. And then I want us to spend a bit of time on the virgin birth. And why that's so important to who Jesus is.

[5:15] But first, let's look at what Jesus is called here. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. So in the Bible, names really matter.

[5:28] So they tell you about who someone is. Which isn't always the case with us, is it? Because we can be named all sorts of things. My name is Andrew. Andrew technically means strong and manly.

[5:41] I know you can kind of tell that. And I hope that's true. But it's not necessarily true. My bad back and my weak knees say that's not always true.

[5:53] So for us, names may or may not tell us about someone. But when it comes to Jesus, it's different. He has God-given names.

[6:04] And so God reveals his identity through his names. So I want us to break down all of these different names. So first of all, just Jesus. I want you to just break out.

[6:17] Just look at these two verses, Acts and Matthew. And just see, what does the name Jesus tell us about his identity? I'm just going to give you one minute for this. Just figure out.

[6:28] See, you've got to think a little bit on what Acts is saying. But let's see what we come up with. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute.

[6:39] One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute.

[6:50] One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute.

[7:00] One minute. One minute. Entreельtale. Thank you.

[7:32] Okay, 30 seconds. Okay, let's bring it together.

[8:18] What do we have? So what does Acts tell us about Jesus? The name Jesus, what does Acts tell us about that? About who he is? What do you come up with?

[8:29] Shout out. Saviour. Saviour. Yeah, yeah. Maybe more the focus of Matthew. But yeah, definitely there's the crucifixion going on there in Acts.

[8:42] Okay. What else? We say he's a man. A man, right? Of Nazareth. Yes, exactly. Right, yeah. It's kind of, you might overlook this because maybe it's just so basic.

[8:54] But look at his name. He is Jesus of Nazareth. Nazareth, right? He is a real historical person. He was a real man from Nazareth, brought up in Galilee, who really lived, really did miracles, really died on a cross, right?

[9:10] These are all historical facts given here. And so when we say, I believe in Jesus, we are saying, I am building my life, not on a make-believe fantasy, but on a real person in history.

[9:28] And he's a real human, a real man. We're affirming his humanity here. And so we thought about God and eternity last week. What we believe about Jesus Christ, he is a real man in history.

[9:48] But he's not just a real person. What does Matthew show us? Yes, he is a real person, but not merely just a historical figure like Napoleon. He's more than that.

[9:59] Judy, what did you say? He's a? He's a saviour. He's a saviour, right? That's why God gave him the name Jesus, right?

[10:10] For he will save his people from their sins. Jesus means, basically, saviour. And so when we say, I believe in Jesus, we are saying that this man is no mere man, but the saviour of the world.

[10:28] There is this real thing called sin, and it's a real problem in a real world before a real God. And this Jesus is the real saviour from sin.

[10:42] But there's another title. See it? Christ. Now, to be clear, this isn't Jesus' last name, okay? So it's not like Andrew Quay, Jesus Christ, right?

[10:53] It's not that. Christ is a title, like king. So King Charles, his first name isn't king, is it? That's his title. It says something about his role, his identity.

[11:06] Well, Christ is Jesus' title. And we use it a lot, don't we? We say Jesus Christ a lot. But what does it mean? Well, Christ means anointed one.

[11:18] So in Hebrew, anointed one is Messiah. And in Greek, that's just translated to Christ, okay? So I believe in Jesus, the anointed one, Jesus Messiah, Jesus Christ.

[11:31] And so this has a real Old Testament background to it. In the Old Testament, there were three types of people who were anointed. And anointed means an oil was poured over them.

[11:44] And it was to symbolize that God was setting them apart for a special task. And it was all to do with God saving people. And so there were three anointed roles.

[11:56] There was prophets, priests, and kings. And so you could say there were many Christs in the Old Testament, many anointed ones.

[12:07] And they had three special tasks in salvation. Prophets were there to bring God to us. So bring God's word to the world and to God's people.

[12:20] Priests were there to bring the people to God. So they would represent the people. And through sacrifices and in the tabernacle, they would bring people back to God.

[12:32] And kings were there to rule and protect the people. They were basically God's sword and shield on earth. And they were all anointed. They had oil poured over them. And these mini-Christs were so important to salvation.

[12:48] Because these offices, these roles, were all connected to our problem of sin. And I want you to break out and see that.

[12:59] So have a look at these verses. What three problems in us has sin caused? I'll be quick on this one. Another minute. Have a think. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it.

[13:10] Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it.

[13:20] Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it.

[13:31] Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Thank you.

[14:08] Thank you.

[14:38] Yes, yeah, definitely. So we are alienated from God. What's a part of that problem? Our understanding. Our understanding, yeah? We don't know God. We are alienated from him. Our minds and our knowledge of him has been shattered.

[14:58] Sin has caused a deadly ignorance in us. Ignorance of God is a part of the problem of sin.

[15:10] How about Isaiah? What's the problem? Separation. Separation, right? Our guilt, our defilement has separated us from God. It means we can't be in his presence. We are separated from him.

[15:29] Right? And then, how about John? We're slaves, right? We are enslaved.

[15:47] Sin is a power over us. It's a master that traps us. And so we're enslaved. And so if sin has kind of this threefold problem, if that's what the problem of sin is, what do we need?

[16:06] We need someone to speak to us so that we know God. We need someone to deal with our guilt and bring us back to God, close that separation.

[16:18] And we need someone to deal with our guilt and bring us back to God. And we need someone to set us free and rule over us properly, have God rule over us. In other words, we need a prophet, a priest, and a king.

[16:33] And so when God saves us, and he does save us from this thing, he doesn't just kind of zap down this thing called salvation. No, he saves us through using people.

[16:47] Oh, where's my black pen? The proper term is mediator. It's middle. Someone in the middle. He uses people to save us.

[17:02] Or offices. We've got prophets. We've got priests. We've got kings. Right? And so he uses these offices to save us.

[17:17] And throughout the Old Testament, God provides that. Anointed people, these mini-Christ that think about all the people of the Old Testament. Right? Elijah, the prophet. Aaron. You've got David.

[17:29] Solomon. The kings. But also, if you know the Old Testament, they're never good enough, are they? Prophets don't reveal God fully. Priests keep dying, and they keep needing to make more sacrifices.

[17:42] Kings fail, and they sin. And so we leave the Old Testament with this great need. We don't need more mini-Christs. We need the Christ.

[17:54] The perfect Savior. And here in the Creed, we confess, yes, I believe Jesus is the Christ. Not just...

[18:05] Not just three different types of people, but it's all wrapped into one. Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, longed for.

[18:25] And so he's the Savior of sin, and he saves me. I believe he saves me by being the ultimate prophet who reveals God perfectly.

[18:36] The perfect priest who truly deals with my sin. And the greatest king who rules over me. And I'm building my life on him. Which is why we also say our Lord.

[18:49] Do you see that's the next title? He saves me by ruling over me. He's the king over all creation. And this foundation I'm standing on isn't for me to just do anything I like on it now that I'm saved.

[19:04] No. My life is living in obedience to this Lord. But there's a final title he has. His only son. So whose son?

[19:16] We'll look back to the first section. He is the almighty father's only son. So by saying Jesus is God's son, we are saying, yes, he's a real man.

[19:31] A historical man. But that person is also more than truly man. He is also truly God.

[19:41] He is the eternal son of the Trinity.

[19:54] And in the incarnation, God the son has made, has added to himself a human nature. Remember, the horizontal lines are natures. So God has one divine nature, one essence, one being, one of what God is.

[20:09] But there are three persons. Well, the second person has added to himself a human nature. Human nature.

[20:22] Just one person, the son, but he's added to himself a human nature. And so now, so still truly God in eternity, unchanging there, but now also human.

[20:39] So obviously there's a lot more to say to this. And if you remember my other Sunday school two years ago, we thought a lot about how all this works and what this means.

[20:49] But by confessing Jesus is God's only son, we are saying something very significant here. This person that I'm building my life on, this prophet, priest and king, this savior is in a mind blowing and mysterious way.

[21:06] He is both God and man. And these next two lines show us how that happened. And so I want us to now think about the conception and birth of Christ.

[21:21] How are we for time? Might have time for maybe one minute questions just on the stuff so far. Great.

[21:37] Let's keep moving. So you might find this a bit surprising. So we're only going to look at the first three lines of the section on Jesus Christ. OK, so if you look at these next two lines, you might find this surprising.

[21:51] So we've got 18 lines in the creed, 18 lines to give the most important things about the Christian faith. And two are on the virgin birth.

[22:03] And that might be surprising, but I want us to see this is actually absolutely critical to who Jesus is. How Jesus was conceived and born shows us his unique identity and how he saves us.

[22:19] And so I want us to see before we kind of really dive in, I want to see two quick things at first. First of all, the fact that he's conceived by the Holy Spirit, it shows us there is no help by man in salvation.

[22:35] So let's just clarify things here. When we say Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, we mean there was no human father involved in how his humanity came to be.

[22:47] OK, so I'm not going to do the birds and the bees and I'm not I don't have any diagrams for that. But let's just say there were no birds and bees in this case.

[22:57] All right. So the Holy Spirit supernaturally began a new human life in Mary's womb. So no humans helped God save us.

[23:10] Right. It was all God. But also Mary is mentioned here. Mary is involved in this event. But it's mentioning Mary here.

[23:21] It's to show Jesus real humanity and he is a real person. So Mary was involved. Jesus was a fetus and a baby inside Mary's womb.

[23:34] And so mentioning Mary here, it again reinforces that this Jesus is a real historical man with a real historical human mother.

[23:44] This isn't just kind of a fairy tale or an Aesop's fable. Right. This is real history. But it's also a lot more than that. The virgin birth is absolutely key to Jesus being the sinless second Adam.

[24:05] And I want us to see why. So I want you to break out again and I want you to answer these two questions. What was the effect of Adam's sin on the rest of humanity?

[24:16] And ever since Adam sinned, how has that sin spread throughout humanity? OK, you'll see why we get to this and why we're thinking about this.

[24:26] So break out into groups. I'll give you a couple of minutes for this. Thank you.

[24:41] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[24:54] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[25:27] Thank you.

[25:57] Thank you.

[26:27] Thank you.

[26:57] Thank you.

[27:27] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[28:03] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. let's hear your thoughts so what was the effect of adam's sin on the rest of humanity what was the effect on the rest of humanity uh what what do people think so inevitable okay so it became a reality in this world yeah uh and how did that affect the rest of humanity then how did adam affect the rest of humanity that was kind of a hand up rico were you just stretching no no i heard i heard something good you say rico something about a river what was that well yeah adam's the head of the head of the stream the whole river gets infected right that's really helpful right when adam sinned it wasn't just contained to adam sin and death flowed down from him so imagine a river right so adam's like the source of the river and all of humanity is then downstream from him and so sin and death all flowed down and infected humanity and so he was the head and when he fell all humanity fell with him um or so that the picture we've used uh before is a giant right adam's like a giant with a belt and all of humanity are kind of like imagine like little people attached to his belt and so when adam falls everyone on his belt falls with him okay so you can think of a giant or think of a river he fell we fell and how badly did we fall we we fell badly right the sin that flowed down to us is deep down into our hearts our our natures have become corrupt and so that is what adam has done and how has that sin spread throughout humanity how has it spread children right birth yeah it's through birth that this that this spread uh that this sin spreads like so do you see uh uh genesis oh no it's there genesis 5 right when adam had lived 130 years he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image right and so adam became corrupt and so then fathered a son in his likeness in that corruption and he would father a son in his likeness and then so sinner would father sinner would father sinner would father sinner right it's why david says behold i was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me right we are all born with sinful fallen natures and so sin and death it all flowed down the family tree um and uh the confession of faith which has kind of been our guide for sunday schools it sums this up they adam and eve being the root of all mankind the guilt of this sin was imputed and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed flowed down to all their posterity all their children descending from them by ordinary generation ordinary birth generation just means birth so think of it like this so adam was the head this is adam he became a sinner right and from him sin flowed down and then sin flowed down generations generation by ordinary birth right just do a big one like that right sin

[32:14] sin flowed down uh and so uh that that includes us we are all attached to adam by ordinary birth so all of us here have the same great great great great great times 150 right uh great great great granddad we all have that same granddad adam and so when adam sinned and had children sin flowed down the family tree sinner fathered sinner fathered sinner and so sin spread through natural conception birth but if that's the case have a think what happens when in this family tree there is not a natural conception but rather a supernatural conception and so when in this family tree there is not a natural conception of sin and so when in this family tree there is not a natural conception of sin not by ordinary generation and not with a human father but by extraordinary generation well when that happens that there is a break in the flow of sin sin is interrupted by that kind of birth and that kind of conception and so you have then a birth of someone not infected by adam's sin still human but not tied to adam in sin anymore which also means which means you have a sinless human which also means that baby is starting something new still human but starting a new humanity so just like adam he is a new head a new start a new creation and just like the spirit was there at the very first creation well in this conception the spirit is starting a new conception a new creation and so in a birth like this you have a new sinless second adam which is exactly who jesus is he begins something new and he's a new head and so this is why the virgin birth is so important not just that it happened and not just that it's history but because this is real history it is key to jesus being the sinless second adam and it means he's starting something new a new humanity he's got a new family underneath him i'll only draw a few of them i could be here for a while he has a new people united to him and this is the church this is us but instead of plunging us all into sin and death what flows down from the head of this river it is righteousness and life that's what he gives his people right oh no oh no righteousness life right that's what he gives his people and so when we say i believe in the virgin birth

[36:15]  we are saying i believe this is who jesus is the sinless second adam and i belong to him i'm right here i'm not attached to adam anymore that's not my identity no i'm united to jesus and i'm building my life on him because only this person with this conception and this birth only he can save me i believe in jesus christ his only son our lord so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so