…In One Church, One Baptism, and One World to Come | We Believe | Rick Atchley

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father of all ages. God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, from the same essence as the Father, who helps all things remain. And we believe for us and for our salvation. He came down from heaven. He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. On the third day, he rose again according to the scriptures. We believe he ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified. He spoke through the prophets. We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sin. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and to life in the world to come. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Welcome to The Hills, Preacher Rick here. Whether you're watching online or in person at one of our four campuses, you're in for

a treat today, especially if you're in person in Dallas or West Fort Worth Keller or North Richland Hills, because today is Baptism Sunday and you are going to witness amazing, amazing things. Two days of the year that we really pray about. And so we are prayed up today and can't wait to see what God is about to do. We're not the only church that does Baptism Sunday. Many churches do. I heard about a man named Pastor Bob Beasley, and he leads a church in Canada. And recently they had a Baptism Sunday. And little Rena, who's three years old, was out in the audience with her parents watching, both enthralled and confused. So she finally turned to her parents and said, why is Pastor Bob pushing that man under the water? Well, that's a hard thing to explain to a three-year-old and mother did her best. Well, that man has not been doing good things. He's been doing bad things, but he wants to start doing good things. And little Rena said, well, why doesn't Pastor Bob just spank him? Well, we do not spank at the hills, but we do baptize and we have a high value on baptism. And in doing so, we are standing in alignment with the historic church, because you're going to see in a minute for 2,000 years, followers of Jesus have been doing what we're going to do today. This is our last sermon on a 1,700-year-old document called the Nicene Creed. And I want to remind you again, the bishops who came together, they weren't having a theological nerd fest. These men had been put in prison and tortured for their faith. They had preached funerals for people in their faith, in their churches who had been killed for the faith. They're coming together to decide what is so true about the Christian faith that we can't let go of it no matter what kind of price we must pay. And specifically, they're working out an understanding of what we call the doctrine of the Trinity.

We worship one God who exists in three equal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so, that's where the bulk of the creed has been spending its time. What do we believe about God? What do we believe about Jesus, and what do we believe about the Holy Spirit? But the very last section of the creed focuses on how the church responds. Once we have worked out and come to an understanding, this is who God is, how do we respond to that? Well, listen to what they wrote. We believe in one holy, Catholic, and apostolic church. We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and a life in the world to come. Amen. One reason I wanted to do this study with you is to help you understand and instill in you a conviction that my personal experience of church is not the whole story. I don't know if you have a church history or a history with pastors, but whatever it is, good or bad, it does not sum up the whole Christian faith. You are a part of something so much larger than your own experience of it. And that's one thing the creed reminds us of. Did you notice not one time in the creed do you find the word I? You keep finding the word we. There is no my faith or your faith, just like there's no my truth or your truth. There is truth and there is the faith. We believe is a reminder that there's just one faith. We listen and we learn from the historic church because orthodox Christian teaching is not invented and it is not edited. It is received and it is preserved. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, and he wrote this just 20 years after Jesus ascended. He said, let me remind you of the gospel I preached to you. It's the gospel I received. In other words, we're not curating this gospel. We're not making it up as we go. This is the gospel from the very beginning. It was given to me and now I'm giving it to you. He said to Timothy, I want you to guard the sound teaching that's been entrusted to you. You don't change it. You don't try to improve it. You don't take away from it. It was given to you to be guarded and preached. The very first thing we know about the early church, Acts 2, they were devoted to the apostles teaching. From the very start, there has been a faith, the faith, the core Christian understanding that we pass on to each generation. Look at Ephesians 2 with me. Now, all of us can come to the father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done

for us. You see the Trinity there? Father, Son, Spirit working together and together we are his house built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. So what is this thing called the church? It's a house that's built on a foundation. And what is this foundation? It is the teaching of the inspired apostles and prophets filled with the Spirit. That's what we're building the house on. Now, if you've traveled across the country or around the world, you know the church has many different expressions. The church looks different in many different and beautiful ways. So there's many expressions of the church, but there's just one confession of the church. We guard it, we preach it, we pass it on. The faith that we receive and we recognize that the enemy is going to try to divide the church of Jesus Christ by distorting what we have received. By trying to edit it or change it or add to it or take away from it. And we have to be on guard about this. Paul said in Ephesians 4, you make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Now, what does that look like? What is it we're keeping? There's one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all. Sounds like the Nicene Creed, doesn't it? There's just one God, the Father. There's one Lord Jesus. There's one Holy Spirit and we have one faith. Not your faith, not my faith, the faith. This is what we believe. But did you notice that Paul mentions three other truths that we unite around? One body, one hope, and one baptism. Because these are exactly the truths the Nicene Creed affirms at the very end. This is exactly how the bishops say the church responds to the one faith. Look at it again with me. In fact, this time you can stay seated. I would like you to read the creed with me. This is what the Church has been believing for 2,000 years. So let's read. We believe in one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and a

life in the world to come. Amen. Now, what did you just do? You just joined with Christians for the last two millennia in affirming one body and one baptism and one hope. What does this mean for us? Well, one body says we're all members of the same Church. We believe in one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. So the creed is declaring the fundamental unity of the Church of Jesus Christ. They chose the words carefully. Holy means set apart. The Church is unique. It belongs to Jesus, and it's set apart for Him to represent Him and to pursue His mission. It's holy. It's apostolic. We've already talked about that. The Church doesn't invent and what it teaches every so often. No, we have received our truth from the apostles, and we hold on to it, and we pass it on. And the Church is Catholic.

Now, that word, probably of all three, is the most confusing because today, when people hear Catholic, they think of a particular stream of Christianity with a pope and with cardinals and with the Vatican. That was not on the mind of the bishops because that didn't exist when they wrote the creed. The word Catholic in their day was a Latin word that just meant universal. We believe in the universal, the global, the historic church. And they're saying the Church of Jesus transcends national and cultural and ethnic and, I would even say, denominational barriers. Let me illustrate this way. Every now and then, we hear a sad story of more Christians in a mass martyrdom. Some of you remember, a few years ago, the 20 men on the sea in North Africa in orange suits that were hooded, and they were beheaded by ISIS terrorists. We hear about the killings of

Christians in Nigeria today. When terrorists kill Christians, they never ask first, what kind of church do you go to? They don't care. If you identify with the Christian faith, you need to be killed. So, this is what the bishops understood, that we belong to the oldest, the most diverse, the most global institution on the planet, and it's the only one Jesus said He's gonna build. He's not building a Christian school or a Christian business or even a Christian nation. He's building a church. That's the only thing He's building. That's the only thing He's going to come back for. So, when we say, we believe in this one, holy, apostolic, Catholic church, we're declaring our intention, we got to keep the unity of the church. Jesus, before He died, prayed this prayer for all Christians in the future.

May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me. Jesus knew people would be one to Christ when they saw that Christians were one in Christ, that our supernatural reconciliation would be a witness to His reality. Back in 1984, an actress named Sally Field won an Oscar in a movie called Places in the Heart. I recommend you see it sometime if you have a chance. In the movie, she and her husband, it's the Depression, the 1930s, and they're trying to survive on a cotton farm. But early in the movie, a young black man accidentally shoots and kills her husband. That young black man then is lynched for a crime that was not a crime. Now she's trying to keep the farm. The banker is about to foreclose and will show her no mercy. A man named Moses, another black

man, comes along that knows how to cotton farm. He helps her get a crop in, but then the Klan in town runs him out of town. There is... Is a couple in the movie that are having marriage problems because of infidelity There's just a lot of brokenness in this movie and it ends in the most interesting way She goes to church She's in church. The pastor has preached about the love of christ and she's taking communion And then she turns and she hands communion to her husband Who was dead early in the movie who takes it and hands it to the young black man that shot him and was later hung Who takes it and hands it to the banker? Who hands it to moses who hands it to the members of the clan? Who hands it to that couple whose marriage was falling apart and the movie just ends? And it's like the director is trying to say you look at all the rawness and the brokenness and the fracturedness of our world And the only thing that is going to heal us is our common acknowledgement. We all need the blood of jesus Amen This is what brings the one church together And the one baptism makes total sense then Because if one body says we're all members of the same church one baptism says we're all saved by the same gospel The bishop said we affirm one baptism For the forgiveness of sins and that order made perfect sense to the bishop We're one church because we entered through one doorway Listen to paul We've all been baptized Into one body by one spirit and we all share the same spirit Last time we talked about how peter preached the first gospel sermon The holy spirit has fallen and people are gathering saying what is going on?

And peter says this is what joel promised that in the new age the age of the messiah The spirit would come and people say what do we do and he says repent and be baptized And you'll receive forgiveness of sins and this gift of the holy spirit. This is the normative Way that people enter into the kingdom of god It's the god-ordained way to express faith in jesus And to be covered in his righteousness. Listen to paul in galatians 3 So in christ jesus you were all children of god through faith For all of you who were baptized into christ Have clothed yourselves with christ Now that metaphor was probably more powerful because we know the very earliest christians would often baptize people in the nude Women would baptize women and men men or at least you take off everything but your sheer undergarment And when you came up out of the water, you didn't get your old clothes back You got new clothes because they're picturing on the outside what's happening on the inside that you're being clothed In christ and by the way, notice he doesn't say you're clothed with christ and then you get baptized. He said you're baptized And then you're clothed with christ. Now. This is not works righteousness There is no book in the bible that condemns works Righteousness more than galatians And that's the very book where paul champions baptism because paul understands baptism is not your work. It's not my work. It's god's work Baptism is that moment where we in faith say I am trusting god and what he has done To give me the righteousness I need Baptism is this act of faith that says anyone Anyone can come into the doorway of the kingdom of god If you remember your texas history, you know that sam houston was a war hero First president of the republic of texas and he was a rascal Certainly no one's moral example, but later in life. He gave his life to christ He got baptized in central texas in stoney creek And when he's coming up out of the water the pastor says sam All your sins have been washed away and sam houston said then pastor May god help the fishes

And this is what is beautiful that the bishops understood that every baptism preaches the gospel What god has done in jesus in the death and resurrection to forgive us of our sins so that we can receive god's very indwelling presence And by the way, let me be clear. God's not bound by baptism. God can save however he wants In acts 8 some people get baptized, but they get the spirit later In acts 10 some people get the spirit and they get baptized later God is not bound by baptism, but the bishops understood that the church is bound To teach to god way for forgiveness and the Spirit to be received. And we do this by affirming the important place of baptism in the faith. It declares what God has done, and it declares what God's going to do. Listen to Paul again. He saved us because of His mercy. It was not because of good deeds we did to be right with Him. He saved us through the washing that made us new people through the Holy Spirit. God poured out richly upon us that Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Being made right with God by His

grace, we could have the hope of receiving the life that never ends. And that's how the creed ends. There's one body and there's one baptism, and then it ends, we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and to the life in the world to come. One body says we're all members of the same church, and one baptism, we're all saved by the same gospel. And one hope says we're all destined for the same future. You know, the Christian faith doesn't look at history like other faiths. There are billions of people in the world who think history's circular. You just keep going around in a circle, and who knows what you might come back as next time. That's not the Christian view. We say history is linear. History had a start. The world had a time when it started, and the world's gonna have a time when it ends, when

this current world is renewed and replaced by the world to come. And we know that this is what God is going to do because we know what God has already done. 1 Thessalonians 5. Christ died for us so that, whether we're dead or alive, when He returns, we can live with Him forever. And let me remind you, we're not gonna live with Him forever as a bunch of spirits in a fog bank. We are gonna live with Him, and it's gonna be an embodied experience. When He returns, our bodies are gonna leave the grave, and they are gonna be raised sin and sick free. And baptism is our resurrection practice. We are picturing what's coming. Listen again to Paul. For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have

died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth, will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and then we will be with the Lord forever. And this is what motivated those early Christians that were getting thrown in jail and getting tortured and getting killed. They lived in the future tense. They knew and believed in that world to come, and they lived this day for that day. And that's why they were so bold. That's why they were so courageous. That's why they were so That's why they did not grieve like people that have no hope. I love telling the story of the Christian lady, older woman who gets a diagnosis from her doctor that tells her she's got about three months to live. She invited her pastor to her house to talk about and plan her

funeral. She said, these are the songs I want sung and the scriptures I want read. This is the dress I want to be buried in. This is the Bible I want laid next to me. And he's about to leave, and she said, stop, one more thing. I want you to put a fork in my right hand. He said, what? Yes, a fork. Because in all my years of going to church potlucks, when they were cleaning the table, if they said, keep your fork, you knew something good was about to come. You knew it was gonna be chocolate cake or apple pie. So you put that fork in my hand, and people walk by the casket, and they're gonna say, why is there a fork in her hand? And you're gonna tell them because the best is yet to come. If you liked the resurrection of Jesus, you are going to love the sequel.

And we're reminded of this every time we witness a baptism. Have you thought about how baptism is basically the public affirmation of everything we're talking about in the creed? We are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit because we believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. We're baptized into... the death and resurrection of Jesus because we believe He did come and die for our sins. We accept and receive the Holy Spirit as God's gift and we believe in the resurrection that is to come. And we're saying all these things by being baptized. Baptism is we believe in practice. For 2,000 years, it's been the way people declare their allegiance to the one faith. And we know this from church history. There was a church father named Hippolytus and he literally led the church in the second century. I mean, within 100 years of the life of Jesus. And he wrote and said, when people come to get baptized, we ask them three questions. Number one, do you believe in God the Father Almighty? Number two, do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was dead and buried

and rose again on the third day alive from the dead and ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father and will come to judge the living and the dead? That's a long question. But then the third question, and do you believe in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Church and the resurrection of the body? Do you hear the creed? We're not making this stuff up. This is the faith that from the very beginning, we received and were given. And so, every time you see a baptism, somebody's publicly declaring their allegiance out of all the narratives out there by which people try to understand the world. That baptism says, this is the story I'm believing. I'm believing the story about God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit. I'm believing the story about God becoming flesh and dying for my sins and being raised again. And I'm believing the story about him coming to return and to judge and to bring in a new world. And I'm believing the story about how I'm gonna be raised from the dead to live with him forever. That's the story I'm living into. That's my story. And so, I think if you think that's true and if the bishops were here today, they would say to some of you,

it is time for you to be baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And I know some of you are wrestling with that right now and you may be having some fears holding you back. Maybe you were baptized as an infant. Your folks were doing a beautiful thing. They were wanting to dedicate you to the Lord. But you know there's a point in your life where you have to make the decision. Do I believe, is this my story too? And when you get baptized, you're actually bringing to fruition your folks' dreams when they first brought you to Jesus. Some of you are afraid of water. I understand. But when you follow Jesus, he asks you to be brave and do hard things. And he always gives you the strength to do the right thing, even when it's hard. Somebody's thinking, I don't know enough to get baptized. Do you believe in God? Do you believe Jesus was his son? He died for your sins, was raised from the dead and is returning? You know enough to get baptized. Some of you are thinking, but I'm not good enough, pastor. My life's a mess. You don't get baptized because you're so good. You get baptized because only God is good enough. You get baptized to receive his goodness.

You don't get it together and then come to Jesus. You come to Jesus and he helps you get it together with his spirit. And finally, some of you are thinking about pastor, I wasn't planning to get baptized today. You know, most of the people in the Bible who got baptized weren't planning to on the day they got baptized. But here's the thing, we've been planning and we've been praying. I got the water heated. I got the towels. We got clothes for you to put on. By the way, at the hills, we do not baptize in the nude. Sorry to disappoint you, but you got to wear something, okay? But most of all, God's been planning. God's been pursuing you. And God has brought you to this moment to make a decision people have been making for 2000 years. Am I gonna believe the story of God as it's lived in Jesus and the power of the spirit? Is that your story? So one church had a baptism Sunday and the next week a young girl came up to the preacher and said, pastor, I'm ready. I'm ready to get advertised too. Well, she got the wrong word. But she got the right message. In baptism, I am being advertised as a follower of

Jesus. And so, I'm gonna close by asking you a question, a question that a man named Ananias asked a man named Saul about 2,000 years ago. And it's just as powerful today as it was then. Here's the question. What are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on the name of the Lord. So, God, that's what I'm praying. I'm praying in the power of the Spirit that you will do a mighty work today, a mighty work, that everyone listening to me on every campus, even online, will come under conviction, I need to go public with my faith in Jesus. This is their day, Father, this is their moment. So, Holy Spirit, move. Just like you moved in Acts chapter 2, and all those people came out of thousands, do it right now, God. You're the same God, the same Jesus, the same Spirit. It's the same gospel. It's the same truth. It's the same faith. So, we're asking, God, do your mighty work and move people today. Doesn't matter where they're sitting, whether it's the top row of the balcony or the front row of the sanctuary. If they need to go public for Jesus, God, move in their hearts today. And may we see many come. And in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy

Spirit, may they get baptized today. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.