Third in the series.

Apostle’s Creed III

This is the third in my series on the Apostle’s Creed. The Creed begins with “I”. Your faith is your choice and your responsibility. The definition of “believe” applicable here is an unequivocal belief in a truth with or without proof. That is what you are affirming when you recite the Creed. “I believe in God.” The existence of God can be proven deductively. It has been done by better minds than mine. “God the Father”. God provides for and protects His children just as our earthly fathers do. “God the Father Almighty.” “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” A few years ago, I was watching a series on TV about the evolution of the earth. It was the work of Carl Sagan a fairly well-known astronomer and writer. His series began with the Big Bang theory. According to Sagan, 13.8 billion years ago all the matter in the universe was compressed into one little marble about the size of your thumb nail. The marble became so dense it imploded, and matter scattered in all directions. Hence the Big Bang. After a while, the matter cooled and became gas, then the gasses condensed into distinct clouds, and finally into solid balls of various sizes. One of these balls became our sun, and its gravity captured several other spheres in orbits around it. The third body from the sun is earth. This process took a little over nine billion years. As the television show began to explain how the earth cooled, clouds cleared up, and water formed; I was struck with the similarity between the scientific explanation and the creation story in Genesis. I actually prepared a sermon comparing the two. I stretched a fifty-foot string from the pulpit to the back of the church. The string had a small knot in the end representing the compressed universe. John Quinton helped me, and as he progressed down the time line toward me, I compared Genesis to Sagan’s theory. Humans were created in the last quarter inch, by the way. The two creations are almost identical. Try it. Read the first chapter of Genesis. The earth was created formless and void on the first God day. The earth was divided between land and water on the second God day. If you continue through all seven God days you will find the explanation in Scripture the same as the scientific theory -- with one exception. Nowhere in Sagan’s explanation tells us where the super dense marble came from. The first chapter of John says it beatifically. “In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Genesis says it plain and simple. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

“I believe in Jesus Christ.” There is ample documentation of Jesus. You are familiar with the story of Saul of Tarsus who was an avid persecutor of Christians. Jesus appeared to him a year or so after the crucifixion and turned him into Paul, one of the most prolific evangelists. After the ascension, the followers of Christ scattered just as He had instructed them. Joseph of Arimathea went to England. Mary went to France. Peter and Paul planted churches in Rome, Greece and the Middle East. Others started ministries in Spain, Africa and Asia. Thomas started a church in India. All of these churches had the same doctrine based on the teachings of Jesus. The consistent, universal message of Jesus Christ could not have traveled around the world had it been untrue. As the word of Christ grew, they were persecuted by the Romans. Nero blamed the great fire on the Christians 30 years after the crucifixion. The Emperor of Rome believed in Jesus Christ. There can be no doubt that Jesus lived and taught in Galilee.

“I believe in Jesus Christ His only son our Lord. The claim to be the son of God was not unusual in the Old Testament. At one point all the descendants of Abraham were called sons of God. Both David and Solomon referred to themselves as sons of God, but there is scant real evidence that Jesus is the son of the living God outside the Bible. If, however, we can trust scripture as factual; we can easily build a case. The son of God was prophesized over five hundred years before the New Testament was written. Prophecies included being betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, soldiers gambling for his clothes at the foot of the cross, and being crucified without breaking his legs. These miracles could only have been accomplished by a higher power. He turned water into wine. He walked on water and fed the multitudes with a few fish and barley loaves. His greater miracle was the resurrection. Only the son of God could have returned from the grave to instruct His disciples in their life long ministries.

“His only son our Lord.” Lord has several meanings in the dictionary. In general terms Lord is a title for someone of with power, authority, or influence. From the time of the Old Testament through the middle ages, Lord was the title of a feudal land owner who received the land and authority directly from the king. Jesus meets all of these criteria. He certainly had power and influence. He drew crowds of thousands when he preached. His authority came from two sources. He was the descendant of King David. Thus, he was the legitimate ruler by hereditary right. His authority also came from God, the ultimate king. After the resurrection, to call Jesus, Lord, took on an even greater meaning. When Thomas looked at the nail holes in Christ’s hands, he acknowledged Him as all authority on earth and in heaven. I believe Jesus is Lord of all.

I believe Jesus was, “conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.” This takes a leap of faith. The Holy Spirit is the third and most misunderstood leg of the Trinity. If you look up “Holy Spirit” in Christian reference books, it says that The Holy Spirit is the agent of God, God’s force. I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t clear up any confusion I might have started with. The best I can do is use my earthly father, my Dad, as an illustration. Dad loved athletics. He played all three major sports in high school and boxed professionally for a few years. He was the little league baseball coach, pee wee football coach, and scoutmaster in our small town for a full generation. He was a positive influence on hundreds of boys. There were too many at his funeral for the chapel to hold. Men, who had been his boys, spilled out into the parking lot and stayed for hours telling Clarence Watson stories. His ethics were part of who those men had become. His body was buried, but his spirit lived on. The Holy Spirit is within all of us and is eternal. It is the force of an almighty God who has the power to create the universe. His is the spirit that breathed life into a lump of clay such that it became our first ancestor. If He can create a human being with no more than a breath, He can certainly conceive a son with a virgin. We have no proof, no evidence except the word of a pregnant teenage girl, yet millions around the world believe this is true. I believe.

According to the book of John 11:23-27, When Jesus went to see His friend Lazarus, he was informed that Lazarus had died. Jesus went on to see Martha and Mary the sisters of Lazarus and told them: “Your brother will rise again. Martha said to Him, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me will live even though he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ Martha said to Him: ‘Yes, Lord; I have believed You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.”

We need to believe like Martha believed.