Apostles' Creed Sermon - 5
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Apostles’ Creed – Suffered Under…
1 Corinthians 1:18
1. Introduction – So I used to have an app on my phone called “Logo Quiz.” It would show a company’s logo and you have to guess what it is. I was scary good at it.
a. Restaurants, clothing companies, shoes companies, sports teams, car companies…I could recognize a lot of them.
i. Branding is the prime objective of any company. They pour millions and billions into advertising and designing a recognizable logo.
1. Even churches try to come up with a logo to represent their mission or their focus. They design logos that adorn their website, emails, letterhead…whatever.
b. But the church as a whole, we have one of the most recognizable logos around. It adorns more buildings, more flags, and more necks that almost any other symbol. We have the cross.
i. The most cruel, inhumane, torturous act of execution – has been transformed into a symbol of hope and forgiveness.
ii. Let me be straight with you…no one who witnessed a crucifixion thought a cross would make a great logo.
1. People who witnessed a crucifixion didn’t see any hope in it. It was a grotesque event. It would have left them scarred for life.
iii. No one stood around a crucifixion scene and thought, “Hey, if we sand it down, round over the corners, maybe put a nice detail on the edge…square it up, varnish it up…BAM! – brand recognition.
1. No one who saw a crucifixion thought about turning the cross into a piece of jewelry.
c. But something strange happened, and the Creed explains it to us very simply and factually. Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.
i. Remember we’re in the section of the Creed where God is dealing with humanity’s sin problem. It started last week when we studied Christmas. Jesus was conceived and born.
1. There’s a comma, and that comma represents the entire earthly existence of Jesus and the next line skips to the incredible drama of Good Friday.
d. And what happens after the events of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday is that for some people…for follower of Jesus, the image and the meaning of the cross suddenly transforms.
e. Pastor and author John Ortberg writes, “The cross was changed from the symbol of a human empire’s power into the suffering love of God.
i. It was changed from an expression of ultimate threat into an expression of ultimate hope. It came to express the exact opposite of its original purpose.
2. Historical Facts – So we are going to do two things this morning. First we are going to look at the historical facts of Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion. These two lines are very factual.
a. But after we spend a little time looking at the facts, we are going to spend the bulk of our time looking underneath the facts at the reason Jesus suffered and died.
b. So far in the Creed we’ve been soaring across mountain tops. We’ve seen some beautiful scenery, haven’t we?
i. But all of a sudden, as Karl Barth writes, Pontius Pilate shows up like a mangy wet dog into a nice room. And he stinks the place up. And every time I’ve recited the creed, I often thought, “Why is Pilate’s name mentioned?”
1. One would expect the name of a great biblical figure – Abraham, Moses, Paul or Peter.
a. Or maybe Herod, or Judas, or the chief priests…why single out Pilate?
i. There is his name, right the beside the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Mary…and Pilate. Mangy wet dog indeed!
c. But the answer to Pontius Pilate’s inclusion in the creed is actually quite simple. He is there for dating purposes.
i. Our modern calendar and our modern way of dating significant events wasn’t invented when the creed was written.
1. So in ancient history, events were dated based on who was ruling in power. We say, “Oh that happened in…pick a year.”
a. But the ancient world didn’t do that. We see this throughout the Bible actually.
i. Luke 2, we read in every year, has this kind of dating in it. When was the census called by Caesar Augustus??? When Quirinius was governor of Syria.
1. In Isaiah 6, Isaiah records for us a magnificent vision he had of the throne room of God, when did it happen? In the year that king Uzziah died.
d. So Pontius Pilate’s name in the creed answers the question, “When did this happen?” When did Jesus suffer? When was he crucified? Well, it was when Pilate of the prefect of Judea.
i. And history tells us that Pilate ruled from the years 26-36AD.
1. Facts, historically accurate facts show us that the Son of God lived on this earth, he died at the hands of a brutally cruel tyrant, sometime between 26 and 36 AD. And all of this can be backed up by sources outside of the Christian tradition.
e. I could go on and on about the facts – what crucifixion was, what it looked like. I could get all gory this morning describing the sheer brutality of it all.
i. We could look at the fact that Jesus really was dead. We’re actually going to study that in detail next week.
1. But how do we know Jesus was actually dead? Well, he was buried. You don’t bury a half dead person. “Well, I’m not dead yet…” A half dead person is still half alive.
a. We could probably spend the rest of our time looking at the facts laid out in the creed, but I want us to get underneath the facts and look at the reasons behind Jesus suffering, crucifixion and death.
3. Reconciling God and Humanity – So why did Jesus die? I’ll sum it up with one word applied two different ways.
a. The word is reconciliation. Jesus suffered, was crucified, died and was buried to reconcile a broken relationship with God and humanity.
b. As we started looking at last week, the Creed is showing us how God is dealing with humanity’s sin problem.
i. When sin entered the world, it shattered the perfect relationship between the Creator and his creation. And really, the whole story of the Bible, as we saw last year, is God moving and working to restore his creation.
1. And part of that restoration is reconciling a broken relationship that exists between himself and his prized creation - humanity.
c. The climax of God’s salvation plan was the sending of his Son into the world…not to condemn the world, but to save it. Look at John 3:17. Not 16 – but 17 is just as good.
i. Also, look at 2 Corinthians 5:17-22. In Christ, through his life, death, resurrection and ascension, God has reconciled us to himself. What was fractured by the curse of sin can be made right through faith in the blood of Jesus.
1. God didn’t leave us wallowing and flailing in our sinfulness. God sent his own Son into the world. The Son laid down his life as a ransom for many.
a. Nobody killed Jesus; Jesus willingly gave up his life so that the many could be saved.
d. Jesus laid down his life so that sinners could be reconciled to God. We’re going to look at this in more detail in a few weeks when we study “I Believe in the forgiveness of sins.”
i. But for now, just think of the words of this song, “Because the sinless Saviour died, my sinful soul is counted free; for God, the Just is satisfied, to look on him and pardon me.”
4. Well-Rounded Faith – I said in the 1st week of this study that the Apostles’ Creed does two things for us. First, it gives us a well-rounded faith, and causes us to think about and study subjects that we’re not necessarily drawn to.
a. And the Creed also refocuses us on God. It takes the focus of ourselves and puts it where it belongs.
i. So how does this line about Good Friday round out our faith? How does it help bulk it up? What does reconciliation with God mean for you? A couple things to think about.
b. First, maybe you’re here this morning and you have a hard time believing you sins can actually be forgiven.
i. You have a hard time believing that Jesus’ suffering, death, burial and resurrection are sufficient to forgive your sins. Maybe this area of your understanding needs to be bulked up a little bit.
c. First, know that there is no sin imaginable with more power than the cross and shed blood of Jesus.
i. If you are in Christ, you are fully and completely forgiven. All of your sin – past, present and future – has been fully absorbed into the cross of Jesus.
1. If this is you, you need to spend time reading and studying and meditating on God’s words about forgiveness, about being made a new creation upon your conversion, about your adoption into God’s family, and about the totality of Christ’s work on the cross. There are Scripture references listed on the handout.
a. Yes, you may not be as far along as you’d like to be, but God is still pleased with you, and he still loves you and has forgiven your sins.
i. There is no sin and there is no sinner with more power than the cross of Jesus.
1. If God can forgive David’s adultery, Solomon’s idolatry…Saul of Tarsus was a hateful murderer – and look at what God did for him. Forgave him and turned him into the greatest missionary this world has ever seen. If you are in Christ, forgiveness and reconciliation have happened for you.
d. Or maybe you’re here this morning and you suffer from the opposite problem. Maybe you don’t take sin seriously enough. Maybe you think you’re good.
i. Maybe you don’t always tell the truth, but you’re not a liar. You’re good. Maybe you have a lust problem, but you’re not an adulterer, you’re good.
1. Maybe you have this unquenchable urge for stuff, but you’re not greedy, you’re good.
a. Maybe you like to tell stories that aren’t yours to tell, but you’re not a gossip, you’re good, or you like to talk about people behind their backs, but you’re not a slanderer, you’re good.
e. Maybe you’re here this morning and you’ve become lazy about how you deal with sin and how you put sin to death in your life, but know this, God isn’t lazy about sin. God doesn’t turn a blind eye to it. Yes he forgives sin when it is genuinely repented of, but know that God takes sin…all sin very seriously.
i. How seriously? He sent his Son into the world to die in order to eradicate it. To God, your sin IS a big deal. Big enough that his Son came into the world and died a brutal, grotesque and horrific death in order to deal with it. And when you look at it that way, you’ll begin to see there’s no such thing as a ‘little’ sin.
1. If this is you, if you’ve become lazy about sin in your life, then you need to read and study and meditate on the Scriptures that are listed on the handout. Verses about fleeing from evil, verses about God’s displeasure that disobedience.
a. How seriously does God hate sin? All sin? Look to the reality of the cross and you’ll see the answer.
f. So, we need this symmetry to our faith that either assures us of our forgiveness before God, but also doesn’t allow us to take advantage of God’s grace and love and turn it into what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace.’
5. Refocused – But the creed also refocuses us on God. When we look to ourselves, we get lost. We get confused.
a. Maybe, when you look at yourself – at your sin problem and everything you’ve got going on – maybe you begin to think you’re the exception. “My sin can’t be forgiven.”
i. Maybe you think you’re the caveat – you think there’s an asterisk beside your name in the Lambs book of life. “Saved, but…” “Forgiven, but read the footnote…”
b. “Mike, you don’t know what I struggle with. You don’t know what I’ve done.” And as long as you have your head down staring at your belly button, you aren’t going to find your way out.
i. But what the Creed does is it takes the focus off of ourselves and puts it on God. Look at the lengths he went to for you. Sending his Son, living, suffering, dying – for you.
c. I don’t know all the inner workings that make you tick; I don’t know the sin that you struggle with, but God does.
i. God knows, and the cross is a visible reminder that God knows about your sin, and he’s already provided the solution.
1. But as long as you’re down here, picking your belly button lint, you’re going to miss what God has to offer.
d. What does the author of Hebrews write? “Fix your eyes…where??? On Jesus.
i. God tells you – I know about your sin, I know what you struggle with – but get your eyes off of yourself for a second. Get your eyes of your problems and focus on cross – focus on the solution that I have already provided for you.
1. In the cross of Christ we glory – and it is by staring at that, at the glorious and beautiful, no longer grotesque image of the cross, that we are transformed.
a. We aren’t transformed and we don’t progress in our sanctification by staring at ourselves and our glaringly obvious shortcomings.
i. We are transformed by looking to Jesus and to his cross.
ii. Look to Jesus. He’s awesome – so why don’t you fix your eyes on what is awesome. Let’s refocus ourselves. Let’s not focus on our many faults and failures, but look to the cross of Jesus – the ultimate expression of God’s love for you.
1. God has reconciled us to himself, through Christ, and if you are in Christ, that means you.
6. Reconciled to Each other – And not only did Christ die to reconcile us to God, but he suffered and died to reconcile us to each other.
a. Through the blood and the cross of Christ, God has created a community of believers. Here in this church, we are a local expression of God’s universal people.
b. In the book of Ephesians, Paul writes to the church at Ephesus about how through Jesus, God’s people are one people. There is no longer Jew and Gentile, for they are now one body in Christ.
i. And he same is true for us here in this place. Just look around this room right now. Look at the crazy assortment of people we have here.
c. Think about this, we have people in this church who weren’t even born in Canada, and we have people who have lived in the same house their entire lives.
i. We have people who have a Master’s degree, and people who didn’t even make it through elementary school.
1. We have teachers and healthcare workers, and farmers and social workers and stay at home moms.
a. People who have struggled with addictions and people who have never struggled with anything at all.
i. People who have been saved their whole lives and people who are just beginning their faith journeys.
d. Now let’s be honest, based on our differences, and based on basic societal standards, we shouldn’t be hanging out together. Honestly, we are that different.
i. But look at us, we have been reconciled to one another through the cross and the shed blood of Jesus.
e. We are a people of God, called by God to be a family. And for all our differences, we have one thing in common. We have all been obtained and purchased by the blood of Jesus. And what makes us the same is stronger than what makes us different.
i. We are family – and let’s be honest, family life is hard. It’s messy, it’s sometimes dysfunctional; but through the blood of Jesus, we have received from God his love, grace, mercy and forgiveness.
1. And because we have received those things and because our lives have been transformed by those things – we extend love, grace, mercy and forgiveness to others.
f. Look at what God has done here. He has taken people from all different walks of life, backgrounds, birthplaces, education levels, struggles, heartaches, and issues – and God has brought us together.
i. Logic and society tell us that it shouldn’t and can’t work. But we have been brought together by the suffering, crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
1. It is his shed blood that unites us.
7. Conclusion – Look at what God had done in this church. Reconciled us to himself and he has made us into his own people.
a. Look at all God has done for us – because his only Son, our Lord, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.
i. Next week, we’re going to study the most peculiar, most misunderstood line in the Creed.
1. What does it mean that Jesus descended into hell? Stay tuned for the answer next week. You’re not going to want to miss it.