Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. Let us pray.

Father, we thank you for your word and pray your spirit would illuminate it to our hearts and our understanding. May we, Lord God, receive this word to the end that we might preach it forth to a rebellious people and may we not be rebellious this day to strain out the truth of your word here but help us Lord God to eat this word and take it into our bellies. May it be sweet to us. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The title of my talk today: We live in the context of a rebellious church. We know that we are like Ezekiel, commanded by God to take his word and go forth to a rebellious people. That very word is what changed, changes history. It’s empowered by the Holy Spirit and used by him to create change in the world round about us.

The church has rebelled against the use of creeds and confessions. By the church, I mean the large bulk of conservative Christianity. There is an assertion that we have no creed but Christ. No creed but the Bible. What does that mean? Well, I guess it’s up to you to decide what it means. That’s the whole point.

We’ve just read for the sermon text a piece of scripture which I believe is a creedal statement. One could say that in the basic sense of the term all the scriptures are a creedal statement. To say that I believe in no creed but Christ is to make a creedal statement and to be self-contradictory.

Creeds are expressions of belief. That’s what the word credo means—to believe. The church today and its rejection of creeds and confessions rejects the very word of God itself in my estimation. We have texts such as this one where apparently Paul is quoting a creedal formulation or a part thereof, probably sung in the early church.

The church today has rejected such creedal formulations and we as a group of men and women, boys and girls, have come out of many churches that have rejected creeds and come into a creedal understanding of the faith. And I want to talk about that today.

I want to talk first of all about this word confessedly. “Great is the mystery of godliness.” That first word I believe gives us the basis for an understanding of this as a creedal formulation. “Without controversy” is the way the King James translates it.

I want to talk a little bit about creeds and confessions. I want to talk about Jesus Christ and the substance of our creed. Our confession is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Six lines here, all referring to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is at the center of our creed or confession. I want to talk about the form of this confession a little bit. Then I want to look at these particular lines briefly and then conclude with an exhortation to perseverance in the true faith of the Lord Jesus Christ as expressed in this particular creed.

So if you’re keeping notes, that is: first of all, a short talk about creeds; followed by an emphasis on Christ; followed by an examination of the form of this particular creed; followed by a brief explanation of the six lines found in this form; followed by a statement of perseverance in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me first begin though by tying this back to our other text. We are in the context of 1 Timothy 3. We jumped over most of 1 Timothy 3 because we dealt with it early on in this series. We were at the conclusion of chapter 2 the last Lord’s day. But remember what Paul has done here. He’s gone through an exhortation of Timothy to discipline men who are teaching different doctrines other than those expressed by this creed. It’s how he began this.

So we’re at the center of the book. You know, we’ve got six chapters and at the end of chapter three—right in the center—is this creedal formulation: the person of Jesus Christ as expressed in this hymn of the faith.

So he starts: in chapter one, discipline men. In chapter two, he talks then about the need for men to lead in prayer in the church and gives instructions about that. And he gives us the proper place of women in the context of the worship assembly—not to lead, not to teach, but to be submissive hearers of the word and how they’re to attire themselves. And then in chapter three, he talks about the role of men again in terms of the institutional church.

And he concludes then the verses just leading up to this one, talking about the church being the pillar and ground of the truth. And so this whole thing focuses on the institutional church.

I think the church has become prideful in its assertion that they have no creed but Christ or no creed but the scriptures. And there’s a relationship we could draw then between them and women who believe that their outward appearance is what is important. They get taken up in that.

I brought a picture the kids might want to look at later. I’m going to have it downstairs. You probably can’t see it too well. Probably some of you have seen this before. It appears to be—well, it depends on what your perspective is. You probably see it as a skull. But if you look in the detail here, we have a woman at a mirror or a looking glass and she’s gazing upon herself. Pride and self-absorption is death. It’s a skull there.

And the church today, in its pride and absence of creeds apart from saying that we have no creed but Christ or no creed but the scriptures, has become prideful I believe and is staring at itself in the context of death and doesn’t even know it.

Now why do I say that this is a creedal statement? Because this first term here—confessedly in some translations or “without controversy” in the King James translation—the word here is a compound word of “to speak the same”: basically homo and logos, the same speaking. And it can be translated, and actually is in one or two translations, as “we confess thus” and “confess confessedly.” We confess might be a bit of a stretch for the translation, but it really means the same thing: to say that confessedly, and this is a confession of our faith—it’s a confession found in holy scripture itself.

The use of confessions and creeds in the church are tremendous tools. Matthew Henry, in writing on the use of creeds, says this: He says that the great truths of the scriptures are here put into a few words. That is, in terms of this particular creed or confession. “Brief summaries of Christian doctrine are of great use to young beginners. The principles of the oracles of God brought into a little compass in creeds and catechisms have, like the beams of the sun contracted in a burning glass, conveyed divine light and heat with a wonderful power.”

In other words, the creeds and confessions such as this one are an embodiment, a kind of a distillation of the truth down to a few short, simple lines.

Now, of course, you’ve got to be careful. The truth is complex. We have the scriptures here with nearly 1,200 chapters and three-quarters of a million words in this particular book. And simplicity and boiling things down is one of the big problems that men run into that leads them to say “no creed but Christ.” But here the inspired word of God itself distills down the message of what it is that we confess.

Confessedly, this is what we must agree with over and above the true faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a statement of the creedal confession.

Now, I want to spend a couple of minutes here giving you a summation of a little pamphlet by Ken Gentry on the usefulness of creeds. And I just want to briefly go over what Ken Gentry has to say about creeds. It’s important for our day and age.

He begins by saying that part of the problem for us today in America in the 1980s is that we have an existential concern for the moment. We have a loss of a sense or significance of history. We have a democratic concern for the non-coercion and individual freedom of belief and a pervasive tendency to simplification.

And so we have these things at work. This is the ethos in which we live in the context of our day and age—being cut off from history. It’s evolutionary. We’re Darwinian. We’re past all that stuff. We don’t want to look back. We want to look at today and the moment. And we’re existentialist. We don’t want explicit propositions of truth. We want to experience things today and in the now. And we’re simplifying everything down to nuggets. And so it’s too complex. We don’t want it.

And then finally, we have this tremendous democracy at work in the context of our day and age that wants a pluralistic Christianity. And if nothing else, I want you to go away from this sermon with the re-exhortation to you that we do not have a pluralistic Christianity.

This creed and confession states historical facts about the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And these facts are exclusive in their very nature. These facts are true for no one else. And everyone outside of the confession of these facts is outside of the church of Jesus Christ and is damned, being outside of that faith.

We have a horrendous Christian pluralism in our day and age. “I’m okay. You’re okay. I believe this, you believe that. Everything’s fine.” Well, it’s not fine. Because if you don’t believe what this asserts, you’re on your way to hell. That’s what the scriptures say. And you manifest hell in your walk. This is a tough message. It doesn’t sound tough, but you take it out to the world. It is a tough message to go into this world with.

And I exhort you, in spite of the briars and brambles that you will face as Ezekiel was to face when he took that message and delivered it, to stay firm, to stay steadfast in the declaration of this creedal statement and the necessity of belief in this to avoid eternal damnation.

Gentry rightly says that we live in a day and age which has tremendous pressures against creeds and against the articulation of Christian positions in creeds. Gentry then goes through a brief biblical exposition of why creeds are legitimate.

He says first of all, the biblical call—the Bible calls for a public affirmation of faith and as a result prompts men and perpetuates, or gives an impetus rather, to creeds. A Christian must confess with his mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. That means he must make a confession. He has to speak a creed of what he believes in order for salvation to be evidenced in his life. So when the scriptures say that we must make profession of our faith, they say we must engage in creeds. We must assert the legitimacy of creeds and confessions.

Secondly, Gentry points out that in various portions of scripture, creeds are found. The scriptures itself, in the inspired word of God, tells us in the biblical record there are indeed many creeds that are developed here. And here we have one. Here we have a ancient creed. Everybody understands that Paul is quoting something here—probably in use at the church, a creedal statement that had come to be for him. And he takes that portion of it that is here cited and says, “This is the inspired word of God.” And he puts it into the holy canon of scripture.

Now we can’t do that with our creeds and confessions. We must understand that what we write apart from the direct words of scripture are subordinate to the scriptures. But nonetheless, it is, as it were, an affirmation, a statement of good faith, a statement of approval I think that God gives us here to the church as it creates creeds and confessions and summations of the faith. Gentry notes that this is provided for in scripture, and here we have an example of just that.

And then finally, Gentry points out that in the Council of Jerusalem and in other places in scripture, we have records of men coming together to take the truths of the word of God, apply them to a particular difficulty, and come up with an authoritative proclamation, a creedal formation which has authority that is found in the word but is binding upon churches. And so we have the responsibility of churches to make declarations. They have problems. They get together to solve those problems. And as a result, founding statements working with those problems demonstrates the legitimacy of creedal formulations.

In fact, Old Coleman, in his book The Earliest Christian Confessions, his basic premise is that creedal confessions were in the first place necessitated by the difficulties of men who would persecute the church. In other words, the affirmation that Jesus is Lord was an affirmation that had to be made in light of the persecution of the church by the Roman Empire, who believed—as we talked about last week or a couple of weeks ago—that Caesar was Lord. Caesar was savior.

And so Coleman writes that it really is the opposition of men to the church who create the need for the earliest creeds, and that is a proper response to those. So we have that and we find evidence from the scriptures, as I said, in Acts 15 where the doctrine of justification by faith comes under fire and a creedal formulation or a confession in terms of the application of God’s word is produced by that church council.

Gentry then goes on to cite the usefulness of creeds and I’ll just go over these very briefly.

First, he said creeds are useful for ecclesiastical fellowship and labor. They show like-mindedness. We’re in the process of writing missionary criteria. Why do we do that? Because we want a like-mindedness in missionary work and labor and activity. Gentry says that creeds and confessions are useful for that particular purpose.

Secondly, creeds serve as tools of Christian education. I mentioned this because again at our head of household meeting Friday night we talked about a Christian theology of education, and here we see a Gentry point—and probably easily deduced from this particular text today. Such statements are, as Matthew Henry wrote in the commentary that I quoted earlier, good useful devices to teach young believers in the faith the essence of Christian faith. And they’re useful to educate our children. They’re also useful to educate new members—creeds and confessions, distillations of the truth of the whole of scripture down into creedal formulations.

And so they’re useful, Gentry says, for that particular purpose—like the Old Testament Shema. Remember that was a creed or a confession here: “O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” And that was a creedal confession to be posted and used as a tool to educate the children of those who were followers of Jehovah God in the context of Israel.

The New Testament, the Great Commission can be said to be a summation creed—what Jesus Christ has commissioned us to do. And in the same way that should be taught at an early age to our children and to those who are new to the faith. These sorts of truths are articulated from the scriptures and provide a good basis for Christian education.

A. A. Hodge, as quoted by Gentry, says this about the defense of creeds: “While the scriptures are from God, the understanding of them belongs to the part of man. Men must interpret to the best of their ability each particular part of scripture separately and then combine all that the scriptures teach upon every subject into a consistent whole and then adjust their teachings upon different subjects in mutual consistency as parts of a harmonious system. Man is a system-builder. That’s his image as God has given to us that image. And it is in that role that we produce creeds and confessions.

Creeds are simple distillations of what the scriptures teach and are very useful therefore for Christian education.

Third, Gentry said that creeds provide an objective concrete standard of church discipline. Without a creed, without a confession of things you believe in, discipline can be arbitrary on the part of the officers of the church. Plus people just may not understand what the church teaches in particular areas or how we understand scriptures to speak to a particular area.

Fourth, Gentry writes that creeds offer a witness to the truth to those outside of the church.

And sixth, creeds provide a standard by which to judge new teachings arising within the context of the church itself. It’s like scaffolding. We look at the scriptures as the base and foundation. And then we can look at these scriptural creed formulations, such as we have here in these six lines, as scaffolding—actually part of that truth but scaffolding nonetheless.

The creeds and confessions of the church are sort of built upon that scaffolding. You can’t build apart from that. Not part of the base of revealed truth and knowledge, but you build on that base. And as those creeds and confessions are tried over time and judged by the church, then new teachings can be judged in the context of those creeds and confessions.

That doesn’t mean the creeds and confessions can’t change. They do. But to the degree that they have been consistent with the word of God, they are simply articulated in further fashion.

Example: the Apostles’ Creed, God is talked about as the creator. The Nicene Creed, we talked about God as creator when we recited that and when we’ll sing it here at the end of the service. And then later on in time, the Westminster Standards are written. You have to say, “Well, he created the earth in six days.” People are saying, “Well, creation can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.” Well, no, it was six days. Well, now we’ve got people who accept the Westminster Standards that say, “Well, six days doesn’t really mean six days.” And so now there’s a need for creedal confessions and statements to articulate that even further and to say “six ordinary days” or “six mostly 24-hour periods, give or take a few seconds.”

You see, an increasing articulation of the truth is a result of this creedal formulation and judging new teachings on the basis of it. So that’s another benefit of it.

Bannerman wrote this in terms of this particular point: “Had the adoption of confessions and creeds not been a duty laid upon the church by our regard to her own members, it would have been a necessity laid upon the church by a regard to those not her members, but her enemies.”

So if the church doesn’t do it for itself, it’ll have to do it in terms of an articulation of defense against enemies.

Gentry, in terms of the usefulness of confessions and creeds: well, let’s look at the particular text we have here of this particular confession and creed and see the importance of it to us.

We begin this statement in this particular verse by saying that “without controversy, confessedly, great is the mystery of godliness.” Great is the mystery of godliness. So that’s what this creed is really going to talk about.

Now he then articulates what that mystery of godliness—that is great—is in these six lines that follow that particular statement.

Godliness refers to the godliness of God’s people. It refers to goodness in actions, actions that conform to God’s standard. But it also refers to an attitude of submission to God himself. In other words, the scriptures tell us that there are those who have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. Godliness is not moralism. If you do things that look externally good—if you help somebody out, if you know, the Boy Scout helps the little old lady cross the street—he may have a form of godliness or goodness. But without the power of it, without the basis being this confession, it really isn’t godliness.

What it is, it’s moralism, and it’s repugnant to God in terms of its being done for the wrong reasons. So godliness doesn’t just speak about external actions. It refers to the profession that drives our actions, attitude and actions. But more than that, this text tells us that godliness refers down to the root of the system by which we live our lives. It’s not an idea or an attitude and it’s not actions. In essence, it really is the foundation of our lives—the Lord Jesus Christ.

So without a proper understanding of the centrality of Christ as expressed in this confession, we have no godliness. This is a very significant point. It may sound real simple. Yeah, we know that too. But think of the significance of this for us as we instruct our children. What do we teach them? Well, we teach them the law. We teach them if they break something, they’ve got to make restitution. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. But this doesn’t say that the mystery of godliness is found in a correct exposition of the law. No. The mystery of godliness is founded in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see, we don’t want to raise up good moralists or Pharisees or lawkeepers if the basis of the lawkeeping, the basis of their morality, the basis of their consecration to God isn’t the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and him at the center of that. You see what I’m saying?

Our education of our children, our training of them in righteousness must repeatedly refer them to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, to these six lines—that he was incarnate, that he was resurrected, that he was seen by angelic beings before us, what the scriptures say here, that he was proclaimed and preached, that he was believed on in the world, and that he was taken up into glory.

Now, that’s what it says here is the mystery of godliness. If you want your children to be godly, you must give them the truth of this assertion or confession or creed. And you must see that this is the root of their actions.

Now, it’s not going to be automatic. When children come forth from the womb—we’ve talked about this a lot—they come forth like that shark in the womb, devouring their brothers and sisters. I mean, why do our kids fight? Well, that’s why they fight. They’re fallen. They’re depraved. Total depravity. But as God brings them to the faith, he changes them to give them godliness.

You see, their natural bent, their old man, if they’re regenerate, will manifest this desire for self-morality. They’re probably not going to rebel overtly against you in the teaching of the church, but they may hold that form of godliness, denying the power thereof.

And it is very important that we evaluate our children to see if they know the Savior, see if they have at their basis, at the center of their being, the Lord Jesus Christ—not just a sense of goodness.

So great is the mystery of godliness. Godliness stems from this. And it is a mystery. Great is the mystery of godliness.

What does mystery mean? Well, it’s something you don’t know what it’s about. Wrong. In the scriptures, a mystery is something revealed. That’s an interesting term. I’ve pondered this for years: this term “mystery.”

Mysterion in the Greek—you know, in Greek cultures, mysteries are things for the initiates. You strive after the mystery of the universe. You strive after the mystery of the order of [things] or whatever it is, and you attain to that mystery and an understanding of secret knowledge that you get to control God or men or whatever it is. See, it’s something that somebody else doesn’t know.

Well, it is that according to scripture. Something that other people don’t know, but it’s something that is sovereignly revealed by God. You don’t attain to this mystery. You don’t in your flesh or in your works acquire this mystery. Mystery in the scriptures is the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mystery is what God sovereignly does to a man or a woman who is depraved and who is in rebellion against God. He reveals the Lord Jesus Christ to you and reveals the mystery of truth and godliness to you.

The fact that this is godliness focuses on the work of Jesus Christ. And the fact that this is spoken as the mystery of godliness focuses again on the sovereignty of King Jesus. He reveals this stuff to us. We don’t attain unto it. And it’s not as if we can’t understand what it’s about. We can. And it is revealed. And it’s revealed right here. It’s about Jesus. And he reveals Jesus to us. And he reveals thus the mystery—that cannot be seen by means of our intellect, by means of our power and strength and our activity, by means of anything apart from the sovereign work of the Lord God regenerating us and revealing these things to us.

It is a mystery and it is great. Great is the mystery of godliness. The mystery of God and this is the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to his elect.

It says here he was “vindicated by the spirit.” What does it mean? Justified. Well, men don’t vindicate Jesus. The Spirit vindicates Jesus. The Spirit sent forth from the Father, in raising him up from the dead, he’s justified—not like you and I. We’re justified by the imputation, legally, of Christ’s righteousness. He was justified because he was seen as totally righteous in his being and as perfect and sinless and he had accomplished his mission.

And that mission was vindicated, justified, declared, was declared justified by the action of the Spirit in terms of his resurrection.

Well, I bring this in because again this is related to the greatness of the mystery of godliness. This is it. You see, it’s a manifestation of the Spirit of God. He is revealed in the context of being approved by God.

So this confession, this creedal statement found here in Paul—probably sung by the early church—by the way, just as we just did with the Nicene Creed and we’ll do it with Luther’s version of the Nicene Creed at the end of the service—all indications are there were a number of different confessions and creeds and portions of scripture that are found, that are fragments of these songs that were sung in the early church. Timothy probably sang this six-line song here and maybe more to the song that wasn’t inspired. I don’t know. The church probably sang it.

This confession or creed is then, like ours and like the confessions and creeds we should develop, it is not a philosophical statement. It is not a set of abstract ideas. It is personal. It relates to the being of the Lord Jesus Christ and his actions.

Okay. Now that also is very significant. I think I mentioned this last week that our revelation tape from Reverend Jordan last week—he talked about the Greeks and philosophy as opposed to the prophets of God, the people of God, the sons of God with prophecy—one being a call to contemplation and drawing within oneself and the other being a call to action and engagement, going outside of oneself. And the Greeks—you know, in the Old Testament it said that the sons of Greece war against the sons of God. And that’s what’s happened now for thousands of years. We got it today in our culture and right now the Greeks are winning if you look at it from man’s point of view.

The idea is philosophy today and the idea is contemplation and the idea is inward meditation. And the idea then becomes homosexuality, okay—implosion. But the word of God is a prophetic word of engagement. And is a word of engagement then, explosion into the world. And that word is not a philosophy. It is a prophecy talking about the statement of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit’s work in ministering Christ in the context of our world.

Jim Jordan again wrote about this recently in a short column that I thought was excellent. In the Westminster Shorter Catechism, there’s a question: “What is God?” And the answer is given: “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”

And Jordan says he doesn’t like that answer. He’d like to rewrite the question. And particularly, he’d like to rewrite not just the answer but the question itself—from “What is God?” And you know, our little kids learn “God is a spirit and is not a body like men.” That’s their version of what is God. That’s a shortened form of the Westminster Shorter Catechism here. But we’re using the little children’s catechism with little kids. For instance, in the two and three-year-old class today.

But Jordan likes to change the question. Change it to: “Who is God?” Okay? “Who is God?” is not a “what.” God is a “who.” And this creedal statement is not a philosophical abstraction. It is a statement of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And again, this is quite important. If our kids are going to be sons of God or sons of Israel instead of sons of the Greeks, and understand that this culture is going to press your children to be sons of the Greeks with philosophy and contemplation and inwardness—God is reminding us of all that with this homosexual movement. You don’t just want to, you know, if you want to get to the problem of the homosexual movement, go to the base of where it’s coming from.

You got armies attacking you out here? Go back to the country they came from and kill the king. King came. And world end. Spend all the rest of your life fighting against these armies out here. Go to the source and cut it off there. Homosexuality, same thing. Go to the Greek philosophy and go to the idea of pluralism, every man to his own philosopher king, etc.

Well, in any event, Jordan says that he doesn’t like this question, “What is God?” Said the answer is a good description of the god of Aristotle or the god of Islam or the god of deism. There isn’t anything specifically Christian about this answer. And instead he posits this answer: “Who is God? God is the triune creator, ruler, lawgiver, empowerer, and judge of all things in heaven and earth.”

And those of you who are familiar with the five-point covenant model will see that he gave five things there in terms of that model. You’ll also notice though, if you remember what I preached from the book of Acts—what is God? Paul, always when he spoke to the pagans: God made you. God’s creator. God takes care of you. He’s provider. And God will judge you. Creation, providence, and judgment are the manifestations of God in the context of Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles.

Well, in any event, so this text tells us a creedal formulation based on the personal work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is a beautiful statement.

On your outline, no, this isn’t higher math. This is a chiastic structure. And in fact, the pictures you have there are from William Hendrickson’s commentary and he calls this a chiastic cumulative parallelism. Chiastic cumulative parallelism. Gee, Dennis, you just said we weren’t into speculations and philosophies and stuff, and it sounds like you’re using some pretty philosophical terms here.

Well, I’m really not. Chiastic—if you look at the structure of how this is laid out, the way he’s got there with that big X, we’ve talked about chiastic structures before in the scriptures. The term chiastic comes from the Greek letter chi, which is X. And the chiastic structure means the way it is formed out here in the poetical device that God inspired and used forms an X. And so that’s why it’s referred to as a chiastic structure.

Okay? So you’ll know that. Well, it’s a chiastic structure. It has this back-and-forth stuff: “He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, heralded among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory.” You see the bouncing back and forth between heaven and earth, heaven and earth, heaven and earth, earth, heaven, in heaven, earth, etc.

And there’s a correlation between the flesh and the nations and the world and the Spirit and the angels in glory that form these structures. You see these chiasms. And so it’s a chiastic structure.

Now he also calls it cumulative. It’s a chiastic cumulative parallelism. You see the parallel part, right? And there’s a parallel between the idea of the Spirit—the Holy Spirit, the angels in glory—and there’s parallelism between the flesh and the nations and the world. Parallelism, but it’s not antithetic.

In other words, the world and the flesh and the nations are not seen as evil. We begin the description of that side of the equation—the earth side of the equation—with “He was manifested in the flesh.” He brings glory in the Spirit and the angelic presence to the flesh, you see. And he brings that message and that truth and his person to the world. So the world is changed and he’s preached in the nations and believed on.

So everything changes here. Heaven is the model and earth becomes heavenized, you see. It begins with them coming down. It ends with them going up. We’ve talked about that a few weeks ago. That big theme throughout the book of John—the descent and the ascent, coming from the Father, going back to the Father. But it’s not as if things have remained the same because the middle of this describes his work of changing all of it.

Everything’s different now. Those Gentiles outside even of the revealed truth of God, hated God—terrible and wicked people—they’re all changed. He’s proclaimed to them in the nations. And he’s believed on in this world system. And so the world system is changed by that activity.

See, everything’s changed. Christ came. His incarnation is the turning point of all history. And as Jordan taught us last year at family camp, you know what it means—the good news is everything’s changed. And all that wicked stuff that goes on, that all has got to come to an end. And when the gospel is preached to a people, the Holy Spirit begins to move and things change and the wickedness stops and people don’t burn up their kids anymore, okay? And they don’t shoot their wives anymore.

In a Christian culture, all that’s put to an end. And this great message here is that the Son comes and goes affecting definitively that total change of the world and the nations and the flesh.

You see, so it’s a parallelism. It’s not antithetic. It works together and it’s cumulative because it moves the flesh to glory. He takes his humanity into heaven with him in his ascension. And by doing that, he opens the door, so to speak, for the humanity—the redeemed humanity in Christ—entrance into glory. And the Jacob’s ladder, Jesus’s ladder, goes back and forth and God’s glory is manifested more and more in the context of our world. And so it’s cumulative. It builds.

You know, I was thinking of this—none of the commentators I read mentioned it—but the Aaronic Benediction. Remember you don’t remember? Most of you probably weren’t here. Don’t remember back that far. I remember because I prepare all this stuff. But when I preached on the Aaronic Benediction, one commentator—I’m not sure who—called it a torrent of blessings. A torrent. It’s a six-fold structure. And in the Hebrew, each one of those six lines in the Aaronic Benediction gets bigger. So it’s like the blessings just get bigger and bigger. The actual grammatical structure enlarges in terms of the number of letters. It doubles, I believe, or something like that.

It is this torrent and the concept is a torrent of blessings. Well, this is the same way. You could see this in a way as kind of like the Aaronic Benediction in terms of this brief creedal formulation of the person of Christ. It builds in terms of what’s going on here. It’s going back and forth between earth and heaven and it builds to the reception of Christ in glory at the end of it.

It’s lovely—is not the right word. It is lovely, but it is the kind of poetry only God can write. Let’s just put it that way. I don’t want to call it lovely. I mean it is beautiful. It’s striking. And if you get into a meditation upon these truths, six verbs form the beginning of each of these lines and then these correlations in terms of the development.

I could say more but I think that gives you enough to at least appreciate some of the beauty of what’s going on here.

And again, why does God do this? We know that all the scriptures are inspired. But here we have a distillation, a creedal formulation of the early church written in a way that only God can write. So this is important stuff. This is big concept stuff that’s laid out in this one verse here at the center of this book.

And this big concept stuff is what is at the center of our being, God willing, which will manifest itself in the godliness that is developed in the context of our lives. Okay.

So one other thing is that there other commentators have seen a correlation between the particular structure here and the enthronement liturgies or poems of near eastern cultures. And you know, there’s a liberal commentator speaking, “Well, these near eastern guys, they had these celebrations whereby you know the human could become divine. And this looks like one of those sort of structures.”

Well, it looks like one of those sort of structures because the pagan idea of man becoming divine in an enthronement ritual, okay, is really a perversion of the enthronement of Yahweh in the Old Testament culture. If you look at various Old Testament works, there are enthronement liturgies there in terms of the enthronement of Yahweh as king of God’s people. So they pervert it, and now we have the reassertion of the enthronement of Christ.

What I’m trying to say here is this particular form also could be looked at as an enthronement liturgy or ritual in terms of the enthronement of Christ Jesus in glory, having completed his work, sent forth from the Father, the power of the Spirit.

It’s not the human becoming divine. It’s emphatically—in the very first line—the divine God was manifested in the flesh. Divine becomes human. Okay.

So let’s just look briefly at these statements then.

First, that Christ appeared in the body. God. And that’s very significant. That’s the kind of the object of all of these six statements: “God was manifest in the flesh. God was justified in the Spirit. God was seen of angels. God preached unto the Gentiles. God believed on in the world. God received up into glory.”

See, God is the opening point here. And God was manifested in the flesh. This refers obviously to his incarnation.

And let me just also say that the word “manifested in the flesh” does not simply refer to his birth or his conception. The word—the particular tense used—is what’s called an aorist tense. And what that means is that all of the manifestation of Christ in the flesh is seen as a single act. So he was manifested in the flesh in all of his life thrust on incarnation of course. But understand that it’s the manifestation of all of his life.

And so the scriptures talk about that in a similar fashion throughout the scriptures, how God was revealed in the flesh and then God was manifest in the flesh.

And he was justified in the Spirit. I’ve already talked about that a little bit. This means that this refers to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was vindicated. His acts were proclaimed as effectual for the salvation of the elect by means of the resurrection.

Look at Romans 1:4 if you would. Let me start with verse three: “Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, that is the Holy Spirit, by the resurrection from the dead.”

So it is in the resurrection from the dead that he’s declared to be the Son of God with power by the Spirit of holiness. So he was justified. Now again, as I said earlier, this is put in the context of the fact that John tells us that he became flesh, light came into the world, but men rejected the light because their deeds were evil.

Christ was counted as a curse by men. He was placed on a tree, which according to the Old Testament is a sign of curse. Every man’s judgment and evaluation is that Christ is cursed. But God’s evaluation and judgment is that Christ is the Son of God with power and he is holy and he is righteous. And God demonstrates that in his resurrection. It is in your face to every man who put Jesus on that cross, including you and I, from God. It is the correction of our evaluation by the Holy Spirit.

And so Christ’s resurrection is spoken of here in this text. I believe that this text goes through a chronological view of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was seen of angels. Again, the preeminence of God’s perspective. The Apostle Paul in writing apologetic that people were to use for the defense of the faith, but men talked about the fact that Christ was seen by over 500 people in his resurrection. That’s not the purpose here. The purpose here is to instruct the people of God in what it is we believe.

See, so the preeminence is given here not to the human witnesses but rather to the first witnesses of the resurrected Christ, which were angels. Christ was seen by angels.

And then fourth, Christ was preached unto the Gentiles. You wait a minute. And it didn’t happen after the ascension? No. The Great Commission was given in the 40 days between his resurrection and his ascension. The commission to go and preach unto the Gentiles was given in the context of pre-ascension. And he has preached to the Gentiles.

The word “preach” there is not “good news.” The word “preached” there is the word “to proclaim as a herald.” And we’ve talked about that a lot. It’s a correction for the day we have of invitational preaching. This is proclamation here from the herald of the king. And so he is proclaimed by men according to the word of God to proclaim just what God has commanded him to teach. Not to teach, not to proclaim it as some sort of invitation, but as a reality and as a fact.

This is what we’re to proclaim: the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in his work. So he is proclaimed and he’s proclaimed to the Gentiles, to the nations, in other words.

And he is believed on in the world. This preaching, this proclamation is not in vain. Definitively, he is believed on in the world. Okay. The message here is optimistic eschatologically—that the nations will hear this message and flow up to the mountain of God. That’s what’s being referred to here. He’s believed on in the world.

He was believed on in the world prior to his ascension. There’s the Great Commission and men, 500 people seeing the message going out that he was resurrected, that being believed on.

And then finally, the culmination of all of this is that he is received up into glory, taken up into glory. And the glory of God the Son going up into that glorified realm in terms of the throne room of God—received up into glory.

This is the essence of our confession or our creed as Christians. This must be the sum and substance of what we teach our children and what is the mystery of godliness for us in terms of this ascension to glory.

Let me read a quotation from Spurgeon. Hark how the song swells high. It is a new and sweeter song. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, for he hath redeemed us unto God by his blood.” He wears the glory of an intercessor who can never fail.

Now remember, he had glory as God prior to this work on the cross. But Spurgeon writes that now the glory—by which he is received up into heaven as a result of his redeeming work on the cross—he has the glory of an intercessor who can never fail, of a prince who can never be defeated, of a conqueror who has vanquished every foe, of a Lord who has the heart’s allegiance of every subject.

Jesus wears all the glory which the pomp of heaven can bestow upon him, which 10,000 times 10,000 angels can minister to him. You cannot with your utmost stretch of imagination conceive his exceeding greatness. Yet there will be a further revelation of it when he shall descend from heaven in great power with all the holy angels. Then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. Oh the splendor of that glory! It will ravish his people’s hearts. Nor is this the close. For eternity shall sound forth his praise.

“Thy throne, oh God, is forever and ever.”

Reader, if you would joy in Christ’s glory hereafter, he must be glorious in your sight now. Is he so? Is he at the center of our being? Is he at the center of our instruction? Is he at the center of our creedal formulations and our confessions? And is he at the center of the manifestation of what we see as godliness in terms of our actions?

That’s what this scripture calls us to do. To meditate upon this One who has all glory, to meditate upon his historical acts—his incarnation, his resurrection, his being seen by angels, the preeminence of heaven over earth. And yet the movement of heaven to earth that he has then preached on to the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up into glory.

One commentator, noting the juxtaposition of this in close connection with the officers of the church in 1 Timothy 3, says this: “This verse is a summary of the great truth upon which the church is built, of which the church is the prop and support, and to which pastors and deacons are dedicated. From the greatness and importance of this truth, pastors and deacons should judge their office so that they may devote themselves to it with deeper reverence and greater care.”

This is what we’re called to as church officers. But not just as church officers—as men and women, boys and girls, as Christians. This is to be the center of our being.

Another quote by Spurgeon. Spurgeon says that perseverance is the badge of true saints. So we’re talking here about a doctrine…