I Believe in God the Father

Thank you for being here with us today. We're so glad you are in unity with the saints, inviting the presence of God here today. Those of you who are online, we can't wait to see you back in person if you weren't able to make it with us today. If you would turn with me, I'm going to be dealing with several scriptures as we start this new series. In Isaiah 40, beginning with verse 12, Matthew 10 and Jeremiah 17.

And you can go on the Bible app. All those are there if you want to go to our events area on the Bible app. If you go to the Bible app, Bible.com or on your phone and you hit the events section and you can find Salt Church Live. You can hit that and all the notes will be there so you can follow along.

But if you're a paper person, I'm sure you would want to jot those down. And as you're turning there, I want to mention that it is a time we set aside this season, 21 days of fasting, 21 days of fasting. Yeah, somebody's cheering for that. It's always a bittersweet time, you know, you're ready, but you got to get, you know, getting prepared for it. And there's different ways you can fast.

We'll have all of that available on our Bible app as well. And sent out an email earlier this week where you can link to some information there to be able to participate. And we encourage everybody to participate in whatever way you want to fast. We don't tell you how to do it, but we encourage you to be a part of that. It's just amazing how God speaks to us and if we set aside this first part of the year, it's just an amazing opportunity.

Where is God leading us? Where is God guiding us this year? So I encourage you to be a part of that. And so let's begin this new series. Let's just go ahead and dig in to Scripture here.

And if you'll follow along with me in Isaiah 40, and I'm just going to read through this as we begin. It says, Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket and weighed the mountains on scales and the hills in a balance? Surely the nations are like a drop in the bucket. They are regarded as dust on the scales.

He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. Before him all the nations are as nothing. They are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing. He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heaven like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal, says the Holy One? What are the kinds of pillars that mean? Or? Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens.

Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. And then Matthew 10, verse 29. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your father's care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid. You're worth more than many sparrows. We're beginning a series called Planted.

And we're going to be exploring the Apostles' Creed. We're going to be talking about the Apostles' Creed. What is a creed? Some of you are asking. What are we going into here?

Well, a creed is the Latin term. The Latin term credo means I believe. It simply means I believe. It's a system of beliefs in which one operates in. And as the Apostle Creed does, we're going to look into this as an opportunity to see exactly why we call ourselves Christ followers.

And I believe this is a time never before that we need to really define why we call ourselves Christians. What is it like to be a Christ follower? What is it like to be a Christian? What is contained within this thing that we are carrying, this title called Christianity, and what beliefs determine who we are. What beliefs determine who we are.

And this is the irreducible minimum. A creed, that's what it does, the irreducible minimum of all that we could talk about because there's a lot of things we could talk about as it pertains to being a Christian. There's a lot of things we could go into. But this is the irreducible minimum of what we see as Christ followers, who we are as Christ followers. And the reason we're calling it planted is because I believe, and the church believes, and Jesus believes, that if we are grounded in the essentials of our faith, and when the storms of life come, and when the questions of life come, when we question our faith, we question where we are, or we're challenged somewhere, we can stand on these core values.

We can stand on these principles, these truths, and be able to stand the heat. In fact, here's what it says in Jeremiah 17, verse 7, But blessed are the ones who trust in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him, and they will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. And it does not fear when the heat comes, right? Because the heat will come. It doesn't say if it comes.

It says when it comes. Its leaves are always green. They can always be green. It has no worries in a year of drought, and never fails to bear fruit. So we're going to look at the Apostles, It's cool.

Why is it called the Apostles' Creed? Not because the Apostles wrote the Creed, but it's a calculation of what Jesus' followers and the Apostles had communicated at every turn. Every time you hear them teach, every time they present a theological statement, it always comes through the lens of this statement. And here it is. So we're going to recite it, and this will begin our series.

First of all, it says this. Let's just follow along here. Some of you probably from your religious or Christian or church traditions may know this very well. Maybe you can recite it on your own. It says, I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead, and on the third day He rose again. He ascended into heaven, He is seated at the right hand of the Father, and He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. And everybody says, Amen.

Amen. There's an old Indian idiom that talks about, it's a story of a blind man, five blind men, who encounter an elephant. I don't know how they encountered this elephant, what happened, what got them to the same place, but they were there, and there was an elephant. And they were trying to contextualize or figure out what this elephant was like, because they couldn't see. What does an elephant look like?

How does it work? What's its construct? And what's going on with an elephant? And we hear a lot about elephants, but we don't know what's going on with this elephant, right? And each of them takes a spot on the elephant, and they touch it, and in their situation, their context, in that particular part of the elephant, they determine maybe what an elephant is.

One touched the trunk of the elephant, and they were like, okay, it's a long, slender, moving which way kind of animal or object. Another touched the foot and says it's like a massive tree trunk, just a solid trunk from a tree. Another touched the side of the elephant, which it's a wall. Another touched the ear of the elephant, just like a fanning object, and on and on and on. And in their context, even though there was a lot to see about an elephant, as we view an elephant, there's a lot there, they landed on different areas.

but if you could be really warm if it's a giant threat, you will see the shape they're gonna, there's a lot there in them. In their context, that's what they saw, and not one of them could really get their head around what an elephant really was. So that begs the question, even for us as believers, as we follow our faith, why do we have a creed in the first place? For that very reason, I want you to get your head around this. There are roughly one million words in the Bible.

And we can start at any place we want to, and there's so much information there about Christianity, about God, about His essence, about how to live. We can go into so much. And as Christ followers, we have to ask, okay, if somebody asked me the question, what does it mean to be a Christ follower, how am I going to answer that? Where am I going to pinpoint? How am I going to do this?

What does it really mean at the core to be a Christ follower? If someone were to walk up to me and say, hey, what's it like to be a Christian? Would I be able to give them a concise statement that I believe, that our church believes, that we stand on, and communicate what it's like? And that's why we have a creed. And we can treat the Bible, if we're not careful, much like a buffet.

We can just take what we want and put back what we don't like. We can skip over what we don't like, right? For instance, there's a lot of people who would say, you know, some of the stories in the Old Testament, I don't really want to deal with those, so I'll just swing over to the New Testament. Oh, I don't like that word in the New Testament, so I'll kind of skip over that as well. And if we're not careful, we believe in the whole counsel of the Bible, that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant word of God.

Every word is breathed. And why do we believe that? Because Jesus believed that. And if Jesus believed that, I'm going to believe that, right? In fact, some people would even say, and study in seminary and different teachings, that Jonah and the whale, the great fish, got to get that right, you know, it's not great fish, right?

They would say, oh yeah, that's just allegory, that's just hyperbole, it's not a real thing. But Jesus historically said it was a real thing, that Jonah was real, it happened. So if we believe that about Jesus, that everything that Jesus said is true, but don't believe that, then we've got a problem here, right? So if we're not careful, we can pick and choose things inaccurately. So that's why we have a creed for a manageable reference.

We have a reference point that we can go to and articulate why we believe what we believe. And there was an apparent need for that in the second century of the church, 140 AD, that this needed to happen for two reasons. There was heresy, there was a lot of bad teaching out there. A lot of Gnostic teaching that was going out there. Wrong teaching about Jesus and God and sex were being formed.

When he really inspired his hojas and semesters hours? So that's what he something like, Pantheon was going to be alive once he requested that he had. And there's things going on, and they needed to manage that. This is what we stand on. This is what we believe.

This keeps us focused on truth. And then there was persecution. Persecution was happening in the church, and people want to know what they are believing if they're going to die for it. People want to know that. Am I going to die for this?

Because my friends are dying. People around me are dying. I need to know that this is true. I need to know what I believe. So this helped distinguish that for them.

It's helped them see why they believe what they believe. And there's different creeds. There's all kinds of creeds in the Bible. The earliest creed we see is in Philippians, Jesus Christ is Lord. That's a creed.

We see it in other areas like 1 Timothy 3. But the Apostles' Creed is basically an enlargement of the baptismal formula that Jesus taught His followers. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If you're with us any length of time, you've been a part of our baptism, you know that's what we say when we put them in. We say, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

We believe that. That one God, three distinct persons, that's His very essence. That's the unity. The personality of God is unity. And that's a beautiful thing.

And I don't understand that, Pastor. Well, I don't understand it either, but that's what God gave us, and so I go with it. But I do like the idea that when we see God, it's unity, it's family. That's why we come together in unity to worship and praise and seek God. That's who He is.

That's His very essence. One God, His nature is one God, three distinct persons. And that's what we get from the Apostles' Creed. Now, why the Apostles' Creed? Just like the prayer of prayers, the Lord's Prayer, that's the ultimate prayer that we follow.

The Apostles' Creed is the Creed of creeds. The Creed of creeds. And Martin Luther said it like this, Christian truth could not possibly be put into a shorter and clearer statement. Good enough for Martin Luther, good enough for me. So what is a creed good for, really?

We need to understand that it's a consolidation and not an incantation. Some of you come from religious backgrounds where the recital of the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed are some kind of magical Harry Potter incantation that makes things happen in the environment, which was put in process by monks in the Middle Ages who recited those incantations over and over again, supposing that they did something in a mysterious way. And not that... And not that... It's wrong to recite these.

I mean, I think it's very good to go throughout your day. If you want to go throughout your day, there's nothing wrong with it at all. You know, recite the Apostles' Creed. It's good. You memorize it, you memorize your faith, you know, and there's things that we can stand on.

But it's not an incantation, it is a consolidation. It's basically consolidating something so big and putting it into a smaller framework that we can understand, a syllabus, so to speak, that we can memorize about why we believe what we believe. But what's in it for me? I guess that's a fair question. That all makes sense, Pastor, but what's in it for me?

Why would I need this? Why would I want to learn this? Well, first of all, it's an evangelistic tool. It's an evangelistic tool. There's something powerful about understanding these statements that moves us and moves people closer to God and closer to salvation and this creed moves people to the point of salvation and finding life and liberty and hope in Jesus Christ when we read these statements and we know these statements and it's internally placed internally placed in us and it just oozes from us.

My hope in this series is that perhaps there are people that will find hope and liberty and life in Christ through the understanding of these powerful, timeless statements that we have here in the church. So it's an evangelistic tool. It's also an educational tool. We know why we believe what we believe. Why do you believe what you believe?

It's a way of really digging in who God is and why we believe what we believe. It also is about unity. We believe that the holy Catholic Church in its original term, the church universal stands on these very tenets of faith, these pillars of faith that we do not compromise. We can have vigorous debates about certain things in Christian theology such as the working of the Holy Spirit or how salvation comes upon the believer. But we do not stray from these defined statements.

These are the things that we hold true to. We don't have to agree on everything, but we do agree on these things. No matter what denomination, your background, religious area you've been a part of, these are the tenets of the faith we stand on. And then it's an anchor to the past. It anchors us to 1900 years of history of people who have bled and died and carried these principles, this idea of God, these statements that we hold so dearly to.

They've held and they've passed that baton through centuries and centuries and centuries. Now it's in our hands. And my hope is that we are handling it with care today, that we would use it to share Christ, to share His hope, to share life and liberty in Him, and that we would handle it well, and that one day we would be able to carefully hand it over to the next generation. So that, what is it doing today? What is it doing in our culture?

That's what those who have gone before us, that's the question if they were standing here today. What are you doing with what we have left you today? So let's give it our all today. Amen? Let's be a church in this culture, in this time, that we are going to take this and we are going to make our Heavenly Father proud and the people who have gone before us proud, and we're going to have our hearts invested into those who are younger than us to give them something pure and holy that we can pass down.

So, A.W. Tozer said it, kind of paraphrasing a bit, he said the church will only be as great as its conception of God. The church will only be as great as its conception. What we understand about God, who God is, we can only be as great as our understanding of God.

So I think it's important for us to look at this creed, and we'll start with the first statement of the creed as we begin this series. And it says, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. There's two concepts here that I want to share with you in the last part of this message. The first is, he is a mighty creator.

The second is, he's a merciful Father. He's a mighty creator, yet he's a merciful Father. Y'all have heard the phrase, what does an 800-pound gorilla do? Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit, right? Where?

Anywhere he wants. Anywhere he wants. If he walked into the room, if that massive animal came in today and came to your seat, what are you going to do? You're going to get out of the way. You're not going to ask any questions.

He's not going to ask any questions for sure. If he wants to sit somewhere, he's going to do it. He's huge. He's uncontrollable. He's going to do what he wants to do.

And I'm going to get out of the way. I'm either going to align with what he's doing, and I'm going to get out of the way, okay? And I don't want to be in the way when he comes in. Whatever he wants, God is that 800-pound gorilla. As creator of the universe, he does whatever he wants.

He doesn't ask any questions. He does things his way, not our way. We either align with him. He is uncontrollable. Nobody controls him.

He created everything. Everything is in existence. You point to anything, any object, anything in this universe, that's God. That's God. God did that.

God did that. God created you. He created this seat because he created you to have it this seat. So everything is God's. God did that.

Just everything. He owns it all. He created it all. He's huge. In fact, when we look at Isaiah 40, it talks about He even names the stars, if you go back to what I recited at the beginning.

He names the stars and He stretches His hand across the heavens. Let's think about this for a minute. The sun is 92 million miles away from the earth. 92 million miles away from the earth? Yet, while I was out in my yard yesterday taking the Christmas lights off my house in 50 degree weather, I turned and felt the warmth of the sun.

Just an inkling of warmth of the sun on my face. 92 million miles away. And that's not even the biggest star in the galaxy. In fact, there's a star called Betelgeuse. And our sun fits 700 earths in our sun.

Betelgeuse fits 700 suns, our suns, in that one sun. And that's not even the biggest sun. They say there's probably stars that we can fit our entire galaxy in. I mean, it's huge. It's massive.

And then we count the universe, the expansion of the universe. 93 billion light years and expanding. Think about that for a second. The wow of that. Whoa!

All that greatness. Yet, the Bible says that His hand spans the universe. I think I get what they mean by Almighty. He's an Almighty God. He's a powerful God.

He owns it all. He's that 800 pound gorilla. He does what He wants. He is the Creator. He created you the way He wanted to create you.

We don't ask questions. We just get in line with this Almighty Creator. And the Bible says also that by His mouth, even His mouth melts mountains. Did you know that? The very voice.

Revelation even says it's like a sword that goes out and destroys. Could you imagine just in the presence of God, what it does and if we could even see it. It's a joke to even think of Him as less than Almighty. We can't think of Him as any less. And I believe in God Almighty that He made everything.

We believe that. Nehemiah 9, 6 says it like this. You alone are the God. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens. And all their starry host.

The earth and all that is on it. The seas and all that is in them. And you give life to everything. And the multitudes of heaven worship you. And of course, we have to have faith to believe that.

Because it would be nice if God gives people around the corner and say, Hey, I'm here, you know. But we would die. We wouldn't be able to. Have you seen the Raiders of the Lost Ark? I mean, we would melt.

We wouldn't be anything. He's that powerful. He even told Moses, I can't show you my face. You'll die. We're not capable.

That's why it always requires faith. That's why it requires creed. It requires, I believe. I believe. In fact, if you don't believe in God, it requires greater faith than not believing in Him.

Did you know that? That we have all this evidence. Look at Hebrews 11.3. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

We have overwhelming evidence. Just absolute overwhelming evidence. Not just the stars as I described earlier. How can these stars even be out there? They have a telescope now that's getting ready to be taken out that will surpass the Hubble telescope that will be able to even see where the universe began.

Just powerful stuff. You know, that God, there's evidence just being given to us. It's actually fulfilling evidence. Science is supporting the evidence that there is a God. The Big Bang, well, God created the Big Bang.

Everything, there's explanations for everything, but it all points to a divine creator. There's so much evidence. There's clues that God has left us throughout our lives and all around us and through nature and through everything. And the Bible says creation tells us day and night. It gives us clues.

It's speaking God. It all supports a divine creator. And as we look at the evidence, even deep in our soul and deep in our DNA, it helps us make the faith-filled decision that, you know what I believe? Just by my very, the deepest parts of me, I believe what the Bible says. And He is the Almighty Creator.

And I surrender to Him. The only thing I can surrender to. But there's a reason for Matthew 10 as well because we need a very balanced view of God. While He's this Almighty God, this all-powerful God, this all-creator of the universe, we can't even step in His side or we melt and things, you know, it's just so... We never want to lose that glory.

It also gives us this picture of a merciful Father. It gives us the symmetrical picture of God, the fullness, the very essence of who He is. Almighty but merciful. An Almighty Creator condensed or condescended in humility to give us a whole picture of Himself. So that when we saw Jesus, we saw the Father.

When we see and hear Jesus' teachings, when we... When we go into Scripture, we see the Father, a loving, almighty, merciful Father, a balance that needs to happen. We don't want to be out of balance, much like a weightlifter who probably lifts all the time his upper body but skips leg day, you know? He's like massive up here, but skinny, rarely legs, or a biker who has tree trunk legs, but Tyrannosaurus arms, you know? We don't want to be out of balance with who God is, his very existence.

He counts every bird that dies on the planet, and he knows the hairs on your head. And he even says he loves you more than even these birds, although he knows every bird that dies. That's a father. He's a good father, too. He's a good father.

And perhaps you know what a good father is because you had a good father, and you can look at your father and say, yeah, yeah, I get it. I connect with it. A good father. But maybe you didn't have a good father, but you know a good father. You've seen someone who operates as a good father, and you're like, I want to be like that, or I want to have that.

So that's our God. Our God's a good father. And we get to call him, we get to call him Abba Father. Father, Dad, an endearing, this almighty, powerful God, this being that created all things. Nothing is above him.

He is the one true start of everything. He has no beginning. He has no end. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He's all these things.

As yet, we can actually say, Daddy, that we can, and we can pray our Father, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, that he's a good father. Not only that, you are adopted. You're adopted, meaning he wanted you. He wanted you. He picked you.

He wanted you. He adopted you through his only son. If you have sons and daughters, this probably relates to you more than anything. I remember when my son was first born, and the immediate love I had for him as soon as I saw him in the hospital. I looked at him, and there's just a love in my heart, and I would do anything for this child.

I don't even know this child, and I'd do anything for it. Well, God feels that way about his son, and he went out of his way to make a way so that you can be adopted, that you can have the same relationship Jesus had with the Father. He chose to adopt you based on his Son, Jesus Christ. And you have a Father who wants to be your Father. He does.

He wants to be your Father. But here's the deal. If we acknowledge him, and this is probably a hard pill to swallow for many people, this is definitely a hard pill to swallow. Which Suzanne has cost a possibility? To pine needles, through their way, but it makes history...

I einfach go out there. If we acknowledge Him as our Maker, if we acknowledge Him as our Father, we must also acknowledge Him as our Master. He has to be our Master. And it's a fallacy to think any differently about Him. We can't separate the two.

It's who He is. It's not what He does. It's who He is. It's His very essence. And one can't be without the other.

And what happens is people reject their being a God because that makes us accountable to a God. It makes us accountable. But here's the deal. You can't do anything about that. You can't do anything about Him being Creator God.

He's done it. He's the 800 pound gorilla. He made the heavens and the earth. You can't do anything about that. He's going to have His way.

Whether you like it or not. But you can make a decision of whether He will be your Abba Father. He can be your Father. He made a way for you. Because He loved you.

We sang that song, oh how He loves us. He's jealous for me. He loves like a hurricane. I'm a tree. I know it's like a very artsy song, you know.

It's true. His mercy and His grace and His love through His Son, Jesus Christ. He has made a way for you to be His Father. And you know how that connects and bridges together? Belief, faith, creed.

I believe in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in God the Father. And I believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, who was crucified and died and was raised from the dead. And we can have that through faith. By His grace, through faith, we can have a relationship with Him.

For some of you, maybe you want to make Him your Abba Father. Maybe you've never experienced that. I want to give you the opportunity to do that today. If you would close your eyes and bow your head. Everybody in this place, if we would just relentlessly start seeking Him as His presence is here today.

And some of your hearts have been stirred just by hearing that He is the Almighty God and loving Father. Just believe and receive His grace and love. By praying this with me. Just pray this with me. Father, I believe in Jesus Christ.

I believe that You are the Almighty God who sent Your Son, Jesus Christ, to die for my sin. I'm sorry, Lord. All the things that I have done, I've sinned against you, but the day I receive you as my Lord and Savior, my King, come into my heart, come into my life, make me a new creation in you. Love you. I praise you today.

In your name. Can y'all give God a hand clap of praise? If you gave your life to Jesus today, welcome to the family. We love you so much. Don't be embarrassed to tell us and share it with us.

You can put it right there on that blue card. Provide it in an easy way. We get you connected to some things to help you grow and take your next steps. You can go by the next steps table, let somebody know. We've got some information there.

If you need a Bible, we have Bibles. We have whatever you need to get started on your walk with Christ. Amen. Amen. And we're so thankful for those of you who give faithfully to our church.

We'll be giving you some updated information in the coming weeks as we get our financial reports in to let you know how our year went. And I praise God he did provide last year. Hallelujah. Thank you so much, Jesus. But thank you so much for those of you who faithfully give.

As usual, there's three ways you can give. You can just drop a check, right? We don't pass around offering plates or anything like that. You can just put it out in the box, out in the way if you're a physical giver. But if you're an electronic giver, internet giver, you can give at saltchurch.

org. Hit the give button. Or you can text, really easy text the amount, 84321. I pray that you are blessed this year. Come back next week.

Let's begin this series. You don't want to miss one piece of this series about the Apostles' Creed. Because you need to be planted, right? Let's be planted. And when the storms and the heat come, we'll be ready.

Amen. God bless you guys. Y'all have a great day.