Untitled - December 1, 2025

00:00:00 Speaker: So this tonight concludes our study over the last several months through the Nicene Creed. So you are all now creedal Christians in that sense. You have been exposed to the Creed, and I hope you understand the Creed, uh, a little bit better. At the very beginning, we talked about how the creed came to be, that it was Emperor Constantine, once the capital of the empire was moved from Rome to Constantinople, summoned, which he humbly named after himself. What a Christian man that was. Um. That's ironic. He it was Istanbul, which he renamed Constantinople after himself. And he summoned the bishops from the empire together to have them craft a creed that defines what it is that Christians believe. Because if only these bishops could get together, they could settle all theological disputes for all time. Or at least that was the plan. It had varying degrees of effectiveness. The creed, as I mentioned back when we started this study, was adopted by the people that were there. However, many of the Aryans signed the creed. Many of those that taught that Jesus wasn't divine signed the Creed because they found loopholes and ways to wiggle out of the language. And so, um, later, about sixty years later, they were re summoned by Emperor Theodosius, who had them come back again. And they crafted the version of the creed that we've been going through. Uh, it's, you know, not the church history snobs will say the three twenty five one is the Nicene Creed, and you're doing the Chalcedonian confession or whatnot. But it's okay to call this the Nicene Creed, too. That's what we've been been working through, because it's the seven hundredth anniversary of the legit three twenty five Nicene Creed. But the creed that everybody knows and remembers and is recited is the three eighty one. Well, I'm glad you're sitting down, because after the three eighty creed was adopted, it was immediately accepted by the Roman Empire, it became the legal standard for what it meant to be a Christian. In fact, Emperor Theodosius claimed and then declared that the empire, the official religion of the empire, was not just Christianity, but the official religion of the empire was Nicene Christianity, he called it. And that's important for you to remember because, uh, you know, you you think of the difference between Catholicism and evangelical Christianity or Catholicism and Protestantism. Catholicism has its own religion. Really didn't get off the ground until the four hundreds. So much of what, uh, was taught before the four hundreds is exactly what we believe. And, and and what we teach in areas where our doctrine has developed. The Catholic Church's doctrines developed in the same trajectory. In other words, when you're going before, uh, the, the fifth century, there's not a lot of distinction between the Catholic Church and the Protestant or evangelical belief in the gospel. That's important because when the Nicene Creed was accepted and adopted, you're dealing with the Catholic Church, looks back at the Nicene Creed and also receives it and also embraces it as Catholic doctrine and dogma. And so there's a lot of very good Catholic theologians that are writing on the Nicene Creed and the doctrine of God, because the doctrine of God is not a distinguishing feature between what it means to be Protestant and what it means to be Catholic. There's a lot of overlap in the two. And so people will ask, Is the Nicene Creed Catholic? Well, I mean, in a sense Catholic with the Roman Catholic, in a sense, yes. But also in another sense, no. Is the Catholic Church really didn't start to drift with what makes it distinct now when the Creed was accepted? If you saw in the news this week that Pope Leo the fourteenth, our current pope, uh, got together with the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and they recited the Creed together this week. Uh, Leo's Leah's English was better than the leader of the Orthodox Church. Bartholomew is his title, the Patriarch Bartholomew. Leo's English is a little bit better because he's from Chicago. He can make it, make it work. But I noticed that they both skipped the filioque clause. The clause, the idea that the spirit comes from the father and the son, which is a key part of Trinitarian theology. The Eastern Orthodox Church rejects it. And so the Pope, in order to make peace with them, skipped it as well. Sad day for Trinitarianism sad, sad day. So that's the current status of the Creed. It's not an exaggeration to say that Nicene Christianity does define what it means to. To believe in a biblical view of God. It is a creed that came down to both what's now the Catholic Church has received it, and evangelical and Protestants as well. I hope you've learned over the last several months that we don't receive the Creed because the Pope received it. We don't receive the Creed because the Patriarch Bartholomew received it. We received the creed because it is a valid expression of what it means to embrace Trinitarian doctrine. It's valid because it comes from the Bible. And I hope that over the last few months, I've showed you how every section of the Creed is rooted in a, if not many, biblical texts. Well, the Creed wraps up moving away from the doctrine of God, sort of, to the doctrine of the afterlife. The Creed ends where the world as we know it ends. It ends with the declaration, the last line of creed. I'll put it on the screen for you. I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and to the life of the world to come. Amen. There are different ways to translate this phrase. I look forward to the resurrection of the dead. That's straightforward enough. But then. And to the life. That's the biblical word for life. Eternal life. Um, just the idea of eternal life in the world to come. It's that word world there that can be translated differently. It's not the normal word for world, like the flood waters covered the world kind of thing. Not that word. It's the word that is used more for, uh, the, the era somebody famous throughout the world. It's that word. It's throughout the era through through that epoch or through that period of time. And so it's translated very differently. The one in the the screen is the English translation that they just rendered it world. So the world to come, a creed that some of you memorized if you grew up, uh, in a Catholic church, might be in the age to come. And age is probably a better translation, but it's just a word that means an era of time. So the creed closes out by saying, we believe in the resurrection of the dead and of this future age or era that is to come. Now, there's two things going on here, and we want to talk about both of them in this last sentence of the Creed. The first is just the reality of the resurrection. Christians believe in the resurrection. It doesn't get more basic than that. Christians have bold faith because we believe that our Savior was crucified, killed, buried, descended into Sheol, and then resurrected. Now that's repeated earlier in the Creed. Remember, earlier in the Creed, it describes the death and descent and the resurrection of Christ. But at the end, it has this optimism to it that I look forward. I'm eagerly expecting. It's not just that I believe that it happened in the past, but now I'm looking forward to this corporate resurrection. If Christ's resurrection resurrected, which he did earlier in the Creed, now we believe and we look forward to the time we will resurrect. Likewise. It's a statement about the kind of faith Christians have. We don't merely have faith in God or faith in Jesus, but we have particular faith, resurrection faith, and that resurrection faith links us to him. Jesus rose. We will rise also. Even saying he rose sounds too passive for me. He rose from the grave. Sounds like, you know, a flower rises from the ground or something. But it wasn't passive. The third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, energized Jesus's lifeless body and reunited his body. His decaying flesh reunited it with his human soul and his human nature and energized the body, bringing the life back into it and glorifying it. And so the body of Jesus, the physical body of Jesus, walks out of the grave, completely animated by the work and power and agency of the Holy Spirit, which is another way of saying the Triune God resurrected Jesus from the grave. And that's what we believe. And through our faith in that, we are united to it. And in our union we too will resurrect as Jesus resurrected. So he was buried. His body went into the grave, and then the Holy Spirit brought him back out, joining his soul to his body. So that's what's going to happen to us. We're going to die. If the Lord doesn't return first, we're going to die. Our bodies will be buried. And then at some future point in time, our soul will be reunited with our body. It'll be reanimated, and the Lord is going to open up the graves so you don't have to dig your way out. Just like the angels rolled the stone away, the Lord is going to open up the graves, and your physical body will rise from the earth and your spirit or your soul however you want to say it, is the the Hebrew word ruach. Your, your, your soul, your your being will be reunited with your physical body and you will be raised up to heaven, and you will forever be with the Lord. And then the Lord will return to earth, bringing you with him, and he will establish his kingdom over all of the earth. We'll look at that later on this evening. So that's our resurrection that we look forward to. So when it says, I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, I don't want to overly exegete the Creed here before we get into the text, but I just want you to think of all the presuppositions that are in this. I look forward to the resurrection of the dead means a few things. It means that you're looking forward to. I mean, not wanting to state the obvious, but what has to happen for you to be resurrected? Well, you have to die. And people don't say that. They don't say, I look forward to my death. But here in the Creed, you do. And it's because death isn't the end. It isn't the end. You look forward to finishing a book that's volume one of three or four volumes of a book. You're like, oh, I can't wait to finish this one and see what happens next. You look forward to that differently than you look forward to finishing a whole series. Nothing in the line. Which in the wardrobe. You know, you you want to finish one, but because you're excited about what comes next and Lewis's imagination takes you all kinds of different worlds. But when you finish the seventh one, the last, the last battle, by the way, don't mess up the order of those. My goodness, you finish the last battle and you have a different kind of emotion. And even the last battle ends with these different stages of, you know, history that have yet to be written yet you can go off into other, other worlds. As the book ends, there's this unknown, but you put the book away and you're like, ah, when you are looking forward to the resurrection, that it's that first kind of expectation, you know, there's a sequel coming. There's an age of your life, an era of your life where your body and your soul together, your person will be in another book coming up. There's something else for you. And so you look forward to it. You have to die to get there. You got to finish this book to get there. Unless a seed dies, the tree doesn't grow. That's Paul's language in First Corinthians fifteen. A seed falls to the ground. The the seed has to die in order to produce a tree. And what he means, like that is obviously not the biological definition of death. The cells can keep dividing and all that. What he means by that is the seed is no more. The acorn ceases to exist when the tree grows. You can't dig up the tree. You can find the root ball, but you can't dig up the tree and find the acorn anymore. It is no more. And such is our life. And we know this because that's what happens to Jesus and we are adopted into his family. We are his brothers and sisters by the Holy Spirit. That's how you became a Christian. The spirit opened your eyes to believe, gave you faith, planted the truth in your heart, regenerated you, gave you spiritual life. And so you can have an anchor of faith that you will rise from the grave, because the Holy Spirit already did that to you. One time. The spirit made you a believer By giving you life. And so you know it'll happen again. You have union with the Lord through the spirit, and so the spirit will also resurrect you from the grave like he did Jesus. You and Jesus are on the same team. In other words, you have matching uniforms on, but he is, in a sense on the field before you. He's already off into the next chapter, but you will be there as well. On the wall of the National Archives in D.C., we I did like the fastest tour of the National Archives possible. I think Deirdre kept the car running outside and I ran inside, maybe with one of the kids, I don't remember. Look at the Constitution. I don't even remember what's in their constitution. Declaration of independence. Something. The big wall with all the stuff there, looked at it and then bounced back in the car before we even got a ticket. It was it was lovely on the wall. I remember being struck by this as this little phrase, the past is prologue. That's a cool that's a cool phrase for the wall, the National Archives. That makes a lot of sense. That is true for us as Christians as well. The past is prologue. What happened to Jesus will happen to us. He died, will die. He rose, will rise. And that's why Psalm one sixteen can say, precious in the sight of Yahweh is the death of his saints, because that's the reality of resurrection. You die and your soul is immediately with the Lord. It's precious in his sight. That's the nature of our Easter kind of faith. That's how the Creed ends with this. So we look forward to the resurrection of the dead. That's this resurrection of the dead will rise, and we are optimistic in looking eagerly forward to that, because we will be with Christ. If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old is passed away. The new has come. That's that resurrection dynamic. Your old self died. Your new self is here. The same thing will happen with your body. This outer man grows weary and wastes away and will be very buried, but the Lord will reunite it all together. Death can chisel you away. And death can break you down. And they will bury your body in the ground. But then the Spirit of God will raise it up again. And that's why Paul was invincible. Imagine trying to persecute Paul when he believes in the resurrection. And what are you going to do to him? You go through Second Corinthians and you just look at his list of all the times he was persecuted, persecuted in the book of acts, bitten by snakes and beaten and all this stuff. And he just keeps going on forward. This was the dilemma of the Roman emperors who kept trying to wipe out Christianity before the Nicene Creed. Justin Martyr records that one of the emperors was told the problem with Christians is they're not afraid of death because they've already died. What a cool turn of phrase. And that's only the half of it. It's not that we're not afraid of death because we've already died, although that's half true. The rest of the truth is that we're not afraid of death because we will rise again. Charles Wesley wrote in his famous Easter hymn, Christ, the Lord is risen today. So are we now, where Christ has led. Following our exalted head, we will be resurrected with Christ made like him. Speaking in this life through our faith, like him will rise speaking in the next life. Ours is the cross. Speaking of the death. Ours is the grave. Speaking of the descent and ours is the skies. Speaking of the resurrection. So that is what the Creed means by we look forward to faith. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead. We're joined to it by faith and life, to the world, in the world to come. But that phrase in the world to come is what I want to draw your attention to in Zechariah fourteen verse nine. It's a similar phrase is where it's drawn from there. Verse nine, Yahweh will be king over all the earth, and on that day Yahweh will be one, and his name will be one. Zechariah fourteen is at obviously the end of the book of Zechariah, and there's a lot of prophecies going on in Zechariah that bring you to this point. I'm not going to drag you through all fourteen chapters of Zechariah. But. But don't tempt me. But what you're seeing at the end of Zechariah is this merging of two different strands, the merging of Jesus's kingship over the world with his promises to Israel. There's a global battle that begins back in chapter twelve. The shepherd is struck in chapter thirteen, which Jesus attributes to himself on the night that he was crucified. And in chapter fourteen is this massive global war that brings the nations of the earth together. You can look at chapter fourteen, verse two. I'll gather all the nations against Jerusalem and into battle, and the city will be taken. And the houses plundered, the women raped, half the city will go into exile. The rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. So God lures all the nations together. Now this is described in Daniel chapter eleven. It's described in revelation eighteen. And those chapters around there You get this same battle from lots of different perspectives. And when Ezekiel has chapter after chapter on this, when you take it all together, there's obviously the rise of the Antichrist, who then is unmasked in the, in the temple, um, desecrates the Holy of Holies. The Antichrist had been propped up by a group of nations. When he's unmasked for who he is, the nations turn on him. Nations that were fighting each other then turn on the Antichrist. And it's a war. And there's not a good side against bad side in this war. It is a global war and everybody's bad. And Israel is the victim of this. Those that are trying to cling to God are, you know, sent out into the wilderness to hide. This is revelation twelve describes that. It's also described in Zechariah eleven twelve and and even in thirteen they're hiding in the wilderness, and the nations come together to chase the Antichrist back into Africa and then back up to Jerusalem. And this is where all of the battle goes down and the battle of Armageddon. And it's at that point when the Lord returns. And there's much more the Bible says about the that final battle between the nations that would just take too long to go through tonight. But notice at that point the Lord returns, and when he returns, he defeats everybody. It's not like he takes sides in the battle. He doesn't fight with the nations against the anti-Christ, and he doesn't fight with the anti-Christ against the nations. He fights against everybody and he defends Israel. His spirit goes into Israel and people come to faith in Christ. And in that day all of Israel will be saved. That's the book of Romans. Chapter eleven describes it that way. So that's the era at verse nine gives you a little I mean, some of this that I'm skipping here describes. I won't skip it. I'll go back to it. Uh, look at verse four. On that day, his feet will stand in the Mount of Olives. He's going to return, not to Bethlehem like we saw this morning, but to the Mount of Olives that's in front of Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that half of the mount will move northward, the other half southward. If you've been to Mount Zion, you recognize it is below the Mount of Olives. It's the craziest topography there. You come up if you come. Most tourists come in from the Jericho side, and you come through the tunnel and you see the the dome of the rock there, the Muslim dome of the rock. And it's just jarring to see it. But there wasn't a tunnel in Jesus's lifetime. So in Jesus's lifetime, the way you came from Jericho into Jerusalem, which was the main, even in Jesus's lifetime, the main way people traveled there is over the top of the Mount of Olives, and you crest the Mount of Olives, and you look down into this basin, and there is Mount Zion down there. It's elevated, of course, but it's down the hill and then up. So water doesn't flow from Mount Zion through the Mount of Olives anywhere. Water doesn't flow from Mount Zion, in that sense, to the to the Dead Sea or even to the Mediterranean over the Mount of Olives. No way. I mean, the creeks wind their way around to the north out of Jerusalem, but they don't go over the Mount of Olives. But Jesus is going to come split the Mount of Olives, and the water will flow from Jerusalem all the way to the sea. The people will flee from there, and on that day there will be no light, no cold, no frost. It will be a unique day which is known to Yahweh. Neither day nor night, but evening. There will be light on that day. Living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them to the sea on both sides. The eastern sea and the western sea, the the dead sea and the the med and the dead. You can remember it that way, and it will continue in summer, as in winter. In other words, the streams won't run out anymore, and Yahweh will reign over all of the earth. In order to get the most out of this passage, you need a few facts about the way progress of the Bible unrolls. First of all, history is linear, and that phrase age captures that. All of human history is made up of a series of ages. It is one age after another, and we believe in the fallacy of uniformity. And when I say we believe, I mean human beings generally believe in the fallacy of uniformity that everything will continue as it always is. You know, what's the best prediction of the weather tomorrow? What it is like today. That may be statistically true, but you recognize it actually isn't really true. Like it didn't. Whatever was a sleet thing this morning. It didn't do that yesterday. So it's not really true. We're so prone to that because of the the priority of what our own experience is. We extrapolate our experience out to everyone. And so we think the world is is like this. We only know the church age. And so we think the church age was always the world, always had the church in it, and always will have the church in it. Well, that's that's a pretty big logical fallacy. There's no it's the that's the myth of uniformity. Well, we recognize when you study the Bible, things go age to age. There was the age in the garden where Adam and Eve were walking around in the garden, having fellowship with God. And when sin entered the world, that age ceases. Then it became an age of violence and lawlessness. Where there was no law in the world, there was no government in the world. There was no nations checking nations. There were no prisons or jails for murderers and the the violent people. And you read Genesis three through six and violence overwhelms the earth. God had banned capital punishment, if you recall, by sparing Cain. And so murder and lawlessness ran rampant. And after the flood, there's the age of nations where nations separate and go their own way. And now there's law and order. Now there's nations punish evil. And then you get Abraham called and his name changed. And God creates one nation, but he plants them in Egypt, and then he gives the law to Moses. And that's a big change of of age or era, isn't it? Suddenly God's Word is revealed This word is received. All the events of Genesis are given to Moses, and so the world knows now what happened. Through God's revelation, he gives them their law to regulate Israel. And Israel lives like that for hundreds of years, four hundred years. And then God gives them a king, and their king reigns over them, and they have a king for four hundred years. That's a that's a pretty neat age. The spirit dwelling in the temple and the king on the throne. And God's people gravitated towards Israel. And then that ends, and Israel goes into exile and the temple is torn down and there is no more king. That's the dispersion, the hope of a messiah. As we read this morning in Psalm one thirty two, but not the reality of one, there is not one there. There is no Davidic offspring. There is no throne for David's offspring to be on. And if he did find an offspring of David, and he did find a throne for him to reign on, there's no country over which he can reign. And then Jesus comes And starts his church. And that's where we find ourselves now. But the point of the phrase and the creed is that it is not the last age. There is another age, at least one to come. Future. But history is linear. It is progressive. It is directed. It is moving stage to stage. It is charted out by God with a direction and a purpose. There's an end to it. This is a very. People call this a Western view of history, but I'm going to call it a Christian view of history. The history has an author to it. God has written the script, and there's progress with the direction and an end. A telos is the Greek word, and telos is our ABF with that, that name. And it means mature or the perfect image or the mature man. That's what the word means. History has its own telos. It has its own goal or objective, and it is working towards maturity. It is growing. It's not random. World history is not random. It is progressive. Secondly, history is redemptive. It's progressive, but it is also redemptive. The star of every era of human history, so to speak, is Christ. And so you see patterns that are unfolded over all the stages of history. And every stage is a louder and louder presentation of Christ. It's not just that history has a telos or has an end, it's that the telos is Christ. The end is Christ. And sometimes people will pit these view of history, these two views of history against each other, as if to say seeing patterns and typology in the Bible argues against a linear format of history or something like that, or that if you see history as linear, that means you don't see patterns or types in the in the Bible. But it's a false dichotomy. They're both true. And you see, you can see how themes about Christ are unveiled in every era of history, and yet they have their completion or their consummation at the end of history. They come together, these two streams, and you could even say it like this God's Word given to Israel and God's Word given to the Gentiles. They merged together at the end here, him moving all of history through stages towards Christ and his constant repetition and revelation of Jesus throughout the ages through His Word, come together here in Zechariah fourteen nine. That's the day where Yahweh will be the King over the world. He will rule over all nations. There is a future stage where God rules over the earth. All the nations are drawn together there, and he will be king over all of them. This is not unique to Zechariah fourteen. This is, of course, one of the most common descriptions of the Messiah in the Old Testament, as he will reign over the nations. You know, his crucifixion is described maybe in three or four places. The selling of his clothes in one place. The I mean, all the different prophecies of his life, the virgin birth in a couple places, his birth in Bethlehem, and a handful of places. It will be a Nazarene in a couple places. But the fact that he will reign over the nations is repeated so often he will be the king of the world. Isaiah two verse two says, he'll reign over all nations. Daniel seven verse fourteen says that he will be a king, and his kingdom will include all nations and all languages, and all people everywhere. Psalm two ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance. Yahweh says, Psalm seventy two he will have dominion from sea to sea. And we're not talking the med and the dead there. We say he'll have dominion from sea to sea. We're talking about over the globe. In fact, the next phrase in Psalm seventy two is that the whole earth will be filled with his glory. Psalm one ten says, his enemies will be a footstool for his feet as he reigns over them. And of course, it's obviously the devil. He crushes someone's head, uses language from Genesis three that his heel will be bitten by the serpent. He'll make the enemies his footstool. The devil is one of them, but the nations certainly are as well. Through the Book of Psalms, revelation describes it this way. Revelation five thirteen he will reign with a rod over the nations of the earth and all those who are in Christ. Revelation two and three say, will reign with him over the nations. He will be the only one reigning anywhere in the world during the Millennial Kingdom, a thousand year kingdom. Revelation twenty says his kingdom will last for a thousand years, and during that time there will be no other kings reigning independent of him. That's what it says in verse nine of Zechariah fourteen. On that day, Yahweh will be king over the earth, and on that day Yahweh will be one. He is the only king reigning, He alone will have authority. There are those that argue that this that's describing now, this is describing the era of now as kind of a common way of understanding this passage. But, I mean, I just look at that and I look at the world and I say it does not match the era of now. It wouldn't be even reasonable to say Yahweh is the only king reigning in the world right now. There's so many other kings, and I know all those other kings are under the authority of God and His providence, and in his secret will. But that's not what Zechariah fourteen is talking about. It's talking about the nations gathering together, fighting Israel. And Jesus comes back and stomps on him and subjugates them and makes them his footstool. That's not talking about providentially ordaining the nations that are fighting in the world. That's talking about global, massive, epic defeat of those nations. And he will be the only king reigning. That's the age we're talking about. That's where his teleos comes into experience. All the prophecies of the Bible have their fulfillment, then he will reign sea to sea, shore to shore, nation to nation, tribe to tribe, language to language. He will reign over the whole earth. That phrase on that day, Yahweh will be one. Does that sound familiar to you? It's from an earlier. It's from the very beginning of the Nicene Creed that there's one God we believe in, one God that's drawn from the Shema, the Deuteronomy six Shema, Israel, Adonai, Adonai, Ehud the hero, Israel the Lord your God, Yahweh. Ehud is one that phrase teach your children. Deuteronomy six says, as you rise up, as you lay down, as you go on your way, teach them the Lord your God. The Lord is one. That's the I mean, that's the beginning of that era of Israelite history. The book of Deuteronomy launches them in to the Promised Land. That's the banner they have over them that their God is one. But do you see that in the world? You do not see that in the world? We've read Psalm one thirty four earlier or one one thirty five earlier tonight. All the idols are in the world right now. They're in the world. You wouldn't say Yahweh is the only God in the world right now, and you can play games with the capitalization, but it wouldn't be a reasonable argument. But in that day, in the future day, you will truly be able to say the Shema has its fulfillment. There is only one God reigning on the earth and it's a future tense. Notice in verse nine, on that day is when it will happen. Not now. Zechariah says, it's not now, but in a future day that will all happen. Are we long for that day, don't we? We long for the day when the Lord is exalted, when you say he will be the only God? Zechariah drills down one more level and says his name will be one. Not just will he be the only king reigning over all the nations, but his name will be one. That phrase, his name. Name is not. When it comes to Yahweh, his name is not a mere label you affix on him. His name is his revealed identity. Moses says, who am I going to say? Said, send me. And God says, Say Yahweh sent you, I am that I am. It reveals his identity. It reveals his manifest glory. It reveals, reveals his exclusive claim to worship. It's his covenantally known being. He says that he enters covenant with whomever he pleases and they will know him by his name. As I mentioned Exodus three verse thirteen, Yahweh says, my name is, I am that I am Yahweh. He's eternally self-existent. Deuteronomy twelve verse five is where God says, I place my name on the place where I will dwell. We saw that in Psalm one thirty two this morning, that he wants his name to dwell in Zion. Psalm eight, verse one Yahweh, how majestic is your name in all the earth. That's longing for that future day when Yahweh's name. All those verses will be come to fruition. Exodus three. Deuteronomy twelve. Psalm eight. They all come to completion in Zechariah fourteen, verse nine. God will be recognized publicly, universally, as the absolute unique authority and sovereign over the whole world. Now, there might be an echo in this verse when you read it. Maybe a Philippians two, one day every tongue will confess and every knee will bow at the name of Jesus. And so you see this merging here, this idea that Jesus brings human history to consummation and everyone will bow before him. That's the New Testament version of this. The Old Testament version of it is Yahweh is going to come back and split the mountain and reign over the nations. And so you say, well, what is it? Is it Yahweh, or is it Jesus? And I say, come on, are you new here? It's the same thing. It's not that the name of Yahweh is replaced, but Yahweh is personally revealed in the person of Christ, and he is revealed as one person, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is by his nature the Triune God. And we've experienced this before all throughout the Creed. But through your Christian life the father adopts you and then indwells you. John fourteen verse twenty three, my father will love him, and he will come to him, and he will make a home with him. Speaking of those who place their faith in Christ, the son saves you and then lives in you. Galatians two twenty Christ lives in me, The spirit indwells you and creates this bond of union in you. Romans eight verse nine. The Spirit of God dwells in you. And so in you there is one spirit that represents all three triune persons. There's a oneness in you that unites you to Christ. And that oneness will be on display. Because when Jesus comes back, you're coming with him. Jesus says, I see in the the vision of the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great glory. And his holy ones will be with him, and those who fallen asleep will rise and join with Christ. And you who are alive and remain shall be caught together with him in the air. That's the oneness of God. His people will be one. His name is one, and he will be the only sovereign reigning in the world. In that sense, every believer becomes this microcosmic temple. That's my word. Microcosmic. You're a little temple with a cosmic reality. I don't know if that's a real word or not, but I'm leaning into it. Microcosmic. You are a little temple with the persons of God dwelling in you, with union with every other believer, and a cosmic reality that will be unveiled in Zechariah fourteen verse nine. The father dwells in you by adopting you and love. The son dwells in you by union with Christ. The spirit dwells in you by inhabiting you and transforming your soul, anchoring you to him. And Jesus will bring you back as he reigns over the nations. There's one divine life, one divine authority, one divine name, and one lordship in your heart. And that's why Paul can truly say, Christ lives in me. The spirit dwells in me. God is at work in me without contradiction. The name is one, the essence is one, the power is one. And all of this will be unveiled not in this age, but in the age to come. The whole land will be transformed and we will reign with Christ over the nations of the world. That's how the Creed ends. And I said at the beginning, it ends at the end of knowable human history. That doesn't mean it ends at the end of human history, but the end of knowable human history. What's next for us? I don't know, but we look forward to the age to come. God, we're grateful that your creed takes us from your oneness all the way to the return to the world, your return to claim your creation. We're thankful, Lord Jesus, that you have chosen us and bought us. Own us, redeemed us, and that you were crucified in our place. You died for us and you raised for us. And we will be raised with you. We know we're justified by faith in the resurrection. We believe in your resurrection. And we believe that because you rose, we too will rise And we will experience that reality in the world to come. We long for that day. We give you thanks for these precious promises in Jesus name. Amen. And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMZ.com. Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C. area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now, may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly. Serve the Lord faithfully and share the gospel boldly.