I Believe; The Son

- Well, good day, everybody. I know we've been worshiping the Lord at our campuses and all that. So let's do something. Let's welcome all the campuses. People in the jails, print attentories online on demand. As we join you and you join us, can we just praise the Lord and thank the Lord that we can do this together? Come on. Welcome, everybody. Glad you're all here. Thank you for joining us today. My name is David. I get to serve under the leadership of Pastor Randy and Amy as part of the team here, Bayside. And if you're a guest, this is the first time you've come in here. You're gonna have to come back to hear our lead pastor preach. Today, you're stuck with me. So let's pray as we've been exalted in the name of Jesus. We're gonna open his word and I pray. He will challenge us today. Let's pray. Lord, thank you. Thank you. Thank you that we can gather together, Lord. Thank you for technology that we can be in different places, we get united. One church in many locations.

And Lord, as we gather around your word, as we have been already exulting the name of Jesus, Father, be glorified. Jesus, be glorified. Spirit, be glorified. Now Holy Spirit, we pray you will minister to our souls. What I pray, I pray as Paul prayed to the, wrote to the Corinthian church, Lord, that the message and the preaching would not be with wise and persuasive words, but Lord, but with the demonstration of the spirit's power. So that our faith may not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power. So Lord, I pray today, be exalted in our midst. In Jesus name, amen, amen. If you and I had a conversation, and if we were, we saw each other, I don't know in that while or something, and I looked at you and you said, you go to base and I'm like, great. And I asked the question, are you a Christian? Are you a Christ follower? And you would go, yes, yes I am. I go to base and I would ask the question, well, what is it that you believe? What Christ Jesus do you say you follow? And does that Jesus impact your life? Now, none of you are gonna talk to me in public anymore because I'm gonna ask you that. (congregation laughs)

I joke, I jest. I challenge. One of my professors at seminary, which is a place you go and study the Bible, and I think he got it from A.W. Tozer, which was a famous author, said this. The greatest thought you will ever have is the thought about God because from it flows everything else. What we believe, what you believe determines how you live. If you have a view of God that he doesn't exist, that there is no such thing as God, well, then you're gonna live your life accordingly. You're gonna do whatever you want. You're gonna be your own God. Good luck. You're gonna have to tell us where we come from, why we're here, where we're going, evil, good. You're gonna have to come up with the answers. If you have a view of God, that's a distant God. He's our dear God. You're gonna live a life that, well, he doesn't care. If you have a view of God, that he is mad all the time. He's angry with a bat, he's about to beat you over the head if you don't know your Bible. Well, then you're gonna live in a fear of that God. How do you view God? You say you're a Christian. What do you believe? What does it mean?

What Christ do you follow? We are in week two of a series we have called, I believe, and I love this series because we are actually talking about our church history, our history. I love history, especially church history. If we do not understand our history, we will not understand our present. Have you ever thought maybe you haven't? Why is it that in Europe you've got these big cathedrals? How did they do that? And why in the American church, and especially some of the churches that we're some of us are grew up in, we have more amphitheaters type thing. Why is it that some churches have stained glass window? Beautiful, and some churches don't. Why is it that some churches have this organ going? And other churches have the racket of a drum kit. Why do we do what we do? History, church history, it answers the question. Why is it that we open up campuses? Why is it that the Presbyterian, the Anglican, the Lutheran way of doing church is different than what we would call the non-denominational church, church history. So as we are walking through, I love this series because we're gonna connect with something At the time period, Jesus, the apostles, which were the disciples of Jesus,

and the early witnesses, eyewitnesses to hearing who Jesus was, Jesus who he told us he was, those guys were dying and they had written letters, their eyewitnesses account. And this is what I love, because in the first century, second century, but 100, 100 to 200, we have the writings of the leaders of the early church, and they help us, why? Because they could authenticate exactly what letters, or that letter from Paul, and that letter was from John Mark, and that letter was from Luke, and his eyewitnesses account, and that letter because they were able to help us. We have the writings of people like Pauli Karp, ladies, if you're pregnant, I'm having a baby, Pauli Karp, and by the Pauli Karp, he was actually the disciple of the apostle John, and Irenaeus, and then you got Athanasius and Tertullian, and we got these writings that help us know that the scriptures that you and I have today are the eyewitnesses account, guided by the Holy Spirit, word of God. That's the setting. Also, you need to remember, in those days, people didn't have their little copy of their Bible. There was no such thing as a Bible app. They couldn't open the Bible in the morning with Instagram,

having their coffee, and share with the world what they read. That didn't exist. They had to gather together. They had to, and hoping that one of the letters, one of the writings, one of the teachings of the apostles, we had in our church gathering that day. Most of the people couldn't read. So, the early church leaders gathered together, and they wrote creeds. Creed, a creed is a formal statement of Christian belief. It comes from the word Latin word credo, I believe. If you speak in one of the Latin languages, you cred the word cred in Spanish. I believe. These creeds were designed to summarize what the apostles, what the Bible had been teaching. First of all, to teach. Second of all, to bring unity to the body. And third, to protect from false teachings. Why? Because in those days, oh, Jesus is this way. God is this. Jesus did that. And they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no, no, no. What is it that we have learned from our teachers, from our apostles, from the people who heard Jesus speak, who heard Jesus teach, what did they say? And they wrote it down as a creed. By the way, in modern scholarship, they're attacking this

because they say that those councils and those leaders were a bunch of old guys smoking a cigar, having a bit of whiskey, to control the masses. The early church did not come up with the doctrine and theology. They just wrote it down what the church already believed. And in the creeds, they summarized in a way so people could memorize, so people could travel. For example, if they were going from Athens to Rome to Alexandria to wherever it is, and then someone says, you're a Christ follower, you're a Christian, great, what is it that you believe? What Jesus do you believe in? Because there was a lot of crazy ideas of what Jesus, who Jesus was. So today, I want you to remind you, it's a statement of faith. By the way, many of you, you should probably, before you go visit a church, you should go on their website and find out what the statement of faith is. What is it that they believe? So the creed helps us. As we're gonna read the creed together, we're gonna join thousands of years of people like you and I who put their treasures on like you and I, declaring the person of Jesus Christ, the God we worship. And today, we want to encourage you, affirm you, that the Jesus that we say we worship is the one as revealed in the Word of God.

Some of you have probably come from denominational backgrounds that reading or declaring the creeds was part of your background. How many of you like, well, had either a Catholic background? I mean, even if it's just Christmas and Easter, that you went, raise your hand at all campuses. Okay, how many had like a Presbyterian background? How many of you Presbyterian background? How many of you? It's okay, Presbyterian, it's okay to raise your hand. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Lutheran backgrounds, anybody? Lutheran, okay. Anybody like no church background didn't get a, I didn't even know what a creed was. I didn't even know what this is. Okay, good, good, good, good. Pentecostals, I'm not gonna ask you because you love raising your hands, okay? So we're going to read together, and by the way, what we're going to read, if you go on to the Bible app, the Bayside app, the Bayside app, on the Bayside app, on the next steps, there's resources there. And there's a video that summarizes the Apostles' Creed and it's really, really, really good. It's excellent giving you a foundation of why, how, where, when, it's only about 13 minutes. I encourage you to do that on the Bayside app, under the resources for this service, or for this series. So can we do something, can we stand together, please? And as a church, if you're able and unable to stand, just as we declare, as we join, with thousands of millions of people in church history, declaring the Jesus that we believe in, the Jesus that reveals from the Word of God.

It's summarized in a way so that you and I can memorize, remember, we declare today the Apostles' Creed. So let's read it respectfully together. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to Heaven and he seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From there, he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, amen, please be seated. Some of you are going, Holy Catholic Church, if this is the first time you've come to the series, you're going, what is that about? You've got to come back in the next few weeks. By the way, this is a time period, there's no Roman Catholic, there's no Eastern Orthodox, there's no Reformation. This is Catholic meaning universal means the church, not based on local church, the church. The other statement there is like, "He descended to hell." Can't wait for you to open that one. Well let's look at it. Last week we started and we looked at God's Father and we saw that He is the Creator Almighty, but yet He is a personal, relational God. Today we're going to talk about Jesus. If you're a Christ follower, if you're a follower of Christ, you follow Jesus. We should be able to talk about Jesus anywhere, anytime, any place. So let me just open up a little bit of what Jesus, because many traditions claim Jesus. Many religions claim Jesus. Many cults claim Jesus.

Even the religion of atheism and agnosticism claimed that Jesus was a good guy. So what is it that we believe? According to the Creed which summarizes the Scripture, I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who is conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. Who is the Jesus of the Bible, His identity? He is God's only Son. He is revealed in Scripture as the Son. He is fully God, fully man, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born to the Virgin Mary. He is not half man, half God. He not just appeared God or appeared man, He is fully God, fully man. In John 3, 16 we read, "For God so loved the world, He gave His one and only Son." In John 1-1, the beginning of John, it says, "In the beginning was the Word." See that? We're going to see that. That's Jesus. And the Word was with God and the Word was God. Verse 14, this is how we know. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Colossians 1-15, "The Son is the image of the invisible God." So when we read about Jesus, we're seeing the invisible God in human form. We are declaring that this Jesus, the Christ, by the way Christ, is a transition in Greek from the Hebrew word Messiah, which means anointed. fully human, unique in incarnate who was foretold from hundreds of years. He was the promised one from Genesis chapter three. And actually in Isaiah chapter nine verse six we read, we read it at Christmas all the time. For unto us the child is born, unto us a son is given, the child was born, but the son was given. Because the son was eternal. The child was temple. But we have the human and the divine together. You see if you come or if you have people who come to your home, whether from a Mormon background, Jehovah's Witness background, they would say

they're Christian. They would claim Jesus. But the Jesus they are defining is not the Jesus of the Bible. And the early church teachers or even the Bible would say call yourself whatever your month. But that's not Christian. A Christ follower is someone who believes that Jesus eternally existed as God. Second person of the Trinity. The Trinity is the father of the Son and the Holy Spirit. That word we had to come up with that word after the Bible was written. Why? To describe this God. That's not that God. That's not the monotheistic God. The God of the Bible is the one that has self revealed himself as father, son and Holy Spirit. One God, one substance, three in persons. I don't have an illustration I can show you because every illustration falters, falls. Actually most of them are probably heresy. But with declaring it we say, no, this Jesus is God. This Jesus is man. This Jesus is the one who's worthy of our praise. So when we, guys, even in Islam, they claim that Jesus was a good prophet. Cults claim that Jesus was a good teacher actually, but we don't like some of his teachings, so we'll change it. But you can't do that for the Bible, where the Jesus has revealed in the Bible. So you call yourself a Christian. Who is the Christ that you say? You follow? So his identity, he is the Son of God. His work we hear, we read that he suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified. He died. He was buried. He descended to hell. Now the Pontius Pilate anchors us in a time in history. Historically we can go. That's when it was. And he suffered. He died. And he was buried. By the way, the Pontius Pilate is mentioned in Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, John 18. He suffered. He died. He was buried. We read about that. And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the first four books of the New Testament, actually there's even extra biblical writings that talk about the death of Jesus. Isaiah 53 in the Old Testament, hundreds of years before it happened, tells us what was going to happen. This one was going to die. And how he was going to die. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul writes, by the way, and he gives us names. By the way, go and talk to it so and so and so and so and so and so. They saw Jesus dead and alive. So you can go and prove it. Obviously you and I can't go back then, but that's why they wrote it down. And that's why we have the manuscripts today. We call the Bible. So he suffered. He died. He was buried. He descended to hell. Ready for this? As a good professor, I would say go and study for yourself and then tell me. But let me give you a little bit. In the Bible, by the way, there's three words for hell. Hades, chill, and then the lake of higher in different parts of Scripture.

Hades and chill in the Old Testament and in the New Testament and Matthew 11 and Luke 10 and Luke 16 is divided into two parts. One that was called the bosom of Abraham or paradise, where this was the place where the saints of old who believe the promises of God were waiting for Messiah Jesus. And then the other half was where those for the unrighteous, those who rejected the place where they were waiting for the eternal, the eternal judgment that would come later on will read that in Revelation 19. When we see Jesus on the cross, he actually talks to the thief and then Luke 23, 34, he says this, "Today you will be with me in paradise." So Jesus did go to the place of the dead. We just have one word for that. And into that place of the dead, he declared what 1 Peter, chapter 3 says, he declared, he proclaimed his victory. I don't know if Jesus did this, but I have this idea that the last thing he said on earth, it is finished. It was the first thing he said there. It's done. To ones you're done, You're defeated to the others. It is disciples' creed into his authority. What does Jesus of the Bible do? He has authority. He raises from the dead. He ascended to heaven. He's seated on the right hand of God, the Father almighty, and from there he will judge the living and the dead. Here we have 1 Corinthians 15, Matthew 28, Acts 1, Luke 24, all describing the resurrection of Jesus. Actually there has been people in our past who were atheists, people who didn't believe in God, who looked at them material and actually followed historically what happened and they came to Christ. Books like the case for the resurrection, the case for Easter, if you want, if you're more scientific and proof, those are great resources. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was not made up by a guy sitting in a cave hoping and having a hallucination. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was seen by hundreds of people recorded and then wrote written down so you and I have hope that the Jesus we say we worship is indeed the Jesus he says he is. He's the hope of the world. He descended. He died. He rose again and then we're told that he will judge the living and the dead. 1 Timothy 4, John 5, Mark 16, Ephesians 1. Let me just get a little bit of teaching here. This is what we're told in Revelation 20 that there will be a judgment called the Great White Throne and that is the place where those who have rejected the free offer of forgiveness from Jesus Christ, those who have rejected it, they're going to have to give an account for their sins. They're going to have to give an account for their life. We're told in Second Corinthians chapter 5 that those who have accepted the free gift of Christ,

who have acknowledged your sins are forgiven, is called the beman's seat of Christ and that's for believers and they are going to be judged for what we did with what Christ gave us. Our time, our resources, our tongue, our treasures. One will be Jesus is your prosecuting attorney. One Jesus is your defense lawyer, all dependent on what you do with Jesus. We will all, he has the authority. He conquers sin and death. This is not some mythical story. This is not something that we're just doing. A Sunday to make us feel good. Historically, all the "is" in the world help us understand that the Jesus we say we worship is true and living God. So what does that mean? What does that mean to you? What does that mean to you mean? Now let me talk to two different types of people. First, I want to talk to the people who have not accepted Jesus. Those who are on the journey of understanding and trying to figure it out, so I'm going to talk to you first. Then I'll talk to you Christians or at least those of you who call ourselves Christians. I'll talk to you in a second. So you stay awake, don't play solitaire. Okay? Let me talk to those who are here and I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're here because you're on a journey. Let me tell you what the Bible says. The Bible says in Genesis chapter 1 that God created you in his image and likeness. In the image of likeness of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. There was worth to you. He said, "Go forth and multiply." Which by the way, at Bayside, we are doing really well. There's a lot in our kids ministry. I love it. The problem was, in Genesis chapter 3, man decided to do it their way instead of God's way. And from that minute, we are told that we were dead in our transgressions and sins. In other words, we could not respond to God the way he originally designed us to. There was something we called original sin. Guys, everybody's infected. Everybody. I don't have to, if you have children, if you have children, you know original sin exists. Like, I didn't teach you that. That must be from your mother's side. Like, that will happen here. So we're bent away from God. Actually, the Bible says we're dead in our transgressions. In other words, I cannot respond to God. Religion tells you, take a box. Religion tells you, do this. Religion tells you, pray there. Religion tells you, kneel here. Religion tells you, follow this, sponsor rules. Go to a certain place, a certain time, a certain place. And it's all like, oh, the Bible says, we all fall short. All of us fall short of the glory of God. This is what I love about the God of the Bible. The God stepped into incarnate, incarnate, incarnate. That he, God, Jesus.

heard, offended, rejected God. He can pay for it. But he is man, so he can identify with us. You see how the uniqueness of this Jesus is awesome. And that this God, by grace and love and care, stepped into time to pay for your sins and mine. You see the Bible teaches that you are saved from that sin and you're saved from that judgment, that fiery judgment, that white, great, white throne, and you're saved to be with him. Not because David says it. I have no authority, but because Jesus said that he has that. So therefore, if you don't know Jesus, today in your own words, just ask him. I don't understand at all, but I believe who you are. I believe what you did. In your words, if you're sitting there, if you're watching, if you're hearing my voice and you've never trusted Jesus, just talk to him. Just ask him to forgive you. Find him for grace. In your words, in your heart, in your mind, just say, "I don't understand at all, but I know I need to start there." And in that moment, from a truly repented heart to God, there's a forgiveness, there's a change of status, there's a change of position because of Jesus Christ. So prayer like that. Talk like that. There's no keyboard playing. There's no magical lights. Just talk to God. You may have walked into this place thinking you were a Christ follower, but following a wrong Christ, this is a Christ. If you're watching the campus online in this room, we want to celebrate that you came to Christ. We want to celebrate the step. We don't want to embarrass you. We want to celebrate you. And the Bible says that you confess before men, I will stand before you. So if you trusted Christ campuses online, I'm just going to ask you to do something. We're going to celebrate, and you just raise your hand. And you say, "Today, I'm following Jesus for the first time, and I want to celebrate that." So if that's you, raise your hand wherever you are, put your hand right up if you're following Jesus. And with the rest of us, can we just thank the Lord for the lives? I don't see it, but the Lord does. Jesus does. He's your Savior. Don't just walk away today. Please come back. There's a table. The prayer team's at the front. There's a connect table at the back. Let us know we want to help you grow in the ways of God. Welcome to the family of God. He's your Savior. But let me now talk to you, Christian. You gave your life to Christ. You did that a long time ago, but let me ask you this. Is he your Lord? The Apostle's Creed talks about Jesus Christ, our Lord. It's personal. Is he your Lord? Lordship is directing your life to God's supreme rule

and reign. If God says it, I'm doing it. I'm adjusting me to him. So therefore, I come to his word. That's why I come into biblical community. That's why I get into groups. That's why I study who this God is. But by the way, it's not just for knowledge, because knowledge puffs up, but love grows up, builds up according to Paul in 1 Corinthians. So therefore, I study and I read to find out who this God is so I can come under his Lordship. I want him to be my Lord. I want him to be my master to call the shots of my life. And therefore, in my days of recreation, there's things my eye, my ear, my mind should not entertain. Just because I'm free. No, no, no. They're poisoned to my soul. In my dress code, in the way I dress, I don't want to do what TikTok says. I want to do what God says. I want to honor God. In your business, as we do business, I want to do with integrity and honesty. According to that's putting God as Lord of your life. In your language, in my language, I don't want to slander people. I don't want to use vulgar language just as a adjective. And I'm speaking as an Irishman. I'm putting the Lordship of Christ. See, all those little things, marriage, sexuality. I know my instincts. I know what I want to do, but you call yourself a Christian, but if he's not the Lord of your life, I don't call yourself whatever you want, but I want to do God's way. What do you believe impacts? Let me illustrate this, and see if I can. Imagine, imagine during the service. We have the singing time, and then And you all go, yeah, yeah, sit down, shut up, okay. Imagine the lights come on, and there's nobody here. I was supposed to be here, but I wasn't here. I mean, obviously, the teams would be running around going, "Where the heck did he go? Why is he here? Where'd he go?" And I'd come all running, and I'd come running there. Sorry, guys. I was walking here to come to church, and a bus hit me traveling at 50 miles an hour. You're probably all going there, wow. He's putting it on the Irish juice again. Or you'll probably go, "There's something not right there." Why? Because if you got hit by a bus traveling at 50 miles an hour,

there's an impact. There's an visible sign that you were hit by that. It changes what you see, it affects your life. In the same way. If you've come to the knowledge, and you've been hit, and impacted by who Jesus is, this awesome God who changed you, grace, mercy, the majesty of God. He, if you fall in love with that Jesus, it should affect impact your life. It can't say, it's like me saying, I hit a bus, but it hasn't affected me. If Jesus hasn't transformed your thoughts, if it hasn't transformed your behavior, if it hasn't transformed your worldview, I don't know if you know the Jesus of the Bible, because when you fall in love with the Jesus of the Bible, you realize it affects everything. So let me guide you. Because now we're reaching the climax of our time together. I was just a little warm-up guy, because we're going to break bread together. We're going to have communion together at all the campuses. We just want to get to this point where we talked about Jesus, so that we could celebrate what Jesus did for us, in the breaking of bread, in communion, Jesus instituted it. And first, Corinthians chapter 11, we read about it. But in all the gospels, we see them.

We see Jesus saying, do this in remembrance of me. Remember my sacrifice, proclaim my death. He's not hiding the fact. He says, participate together. This is what the church has been doing for 2,000 plus years. Anticipate my return. So in the breaking of bread, in our time together, after I pray, I'm going to hand over to all the hosts at the different campuses, because every campus is different, and the buildings are different, so the hosts will direct you on how you're doing it at your campus. Every campus will have a time where guys, this is the most important part of the service. This is the moment where we remember what Christ did, where we find the Lord for what He did, where we realign ourselves to what Jesus did. And in doing so, it's a moment of worship, it's a moment of lordship, it's a moment of celebration. And before I pray, let me just read. Read from a guy called S.M. Lockridge. He wrote a sermon. He was a pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in San Diego. And some of you have been around church, you may remember this, but I'm just a short version, a short version of what he wrote when he's describing Jesus, and I pray it encourages you today and prepares you today, that as you take the bread, the body that was broken,

and you take the cup, the blood that was shared, there will be a worship moment, a lordship moment, a realigning moment, a remembering moment, a celebratory moment, an anticipatory moment. This is what Pastor S.M. Lockridge wrote. And he describes Jesus as, I'm summarizing. He says, "He's the greatest phenomenon that ever crossed the horizon of this world. He's God's son. He's a sinner's savior. He's the centerpiece of civilization. He's Austin, he's unique, he's unparalleled, he's unprecedented, he's the loftiest idea in literature. He's the highest personality in philosophy. He's the fundamental doctrine of truth theology. He's the only one qualified to be the all-sufficient savior. He's the key to knowledge. He's the wellspring of wisdom. He's the doorway of deliverance. He's the pathway of peace. He's the gateway of glory. He's promised to sure. His light is matchless. His goodness is limited. His mercy is everlasting. His love never changes. His word is enough. His grace is sufficient. His reign is righteous.

His yoke is easy. His burden is life. I wish I could describe it for you, he says. But he's indescribable. He's incomprehensible. He's invincible. He's irresistible. You can't get him out of your mind and you can't get him off your hand. You can't outlive him, and they found out they couldn't stop him, Pilate couldn't fault him, Herod couldn't kill him, death could not handle him, and the grave could not hold him, that's the King Jesus we worship. (congregation applauding) So I'm gonna pray, and then I'm gonna hand over to the campuses, but let me encourage you. This is a worship moment. We're joining with fellow believer from generation to generation, where there'll be under a tree, in a cathedral, in a church, in a home where we remember that Jesus we say we follow. So Lord, we come before you today and we thank you. We thank you for the reminder for you are. Jesus, as we and I have time together as a church, would you break bread together, to remember what you've done, to participate in what you have done.

Lord, I pray, holy spirit that you will challenge