May 17th, 2026

Pastor Michael Crocker

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Go ahead and have a seat, everybody. We'll take a second to look into the lens and welcome everybody watching online, wherever you're dialed in from. Thanks for joining with us. My name is Pastor Michael. We're excited to have you on this wonderful Sunday. For those of you in church, hello, church! Woo! It is good to see you. Hey, there's some seats over here if y'all want to walk. We're all gonna stare at you while you do that. Um so it's gonna be awkward, but there are some seats over here if you do want to sit down. And some up front. Uh plenty of front row seats. Uh, today is uh it's a wonderful day, celebration day, all that stuff. Great and glorious. This Wednesday, we are having it's Wednesday, right? Uh worship service. I'm sorry, are we are we interrupting y'all? Would you do you want to share with the rest of the congregation what y'all are talking about? What he brought you flowers. Oh, that's so sweet. Hey, what time is the worship service on Wednesday? Thank you. 6-7. We're having a worship service on Wednesday evening. We're going to start doing this once a month. Um, on Wednesdays, bringing back the worship service. It's going to be wonderful and great and glorious. We invite you to come with us. Um today, right? I actually was watching it in between services. There's a big gathering on the mall in Washington, D.C. called Rededicate 250. Um, it's a group of people who've gathered together to try to remind our country that we were founded on principles that are bigger than anything. Um, and to remember that and to repent and to return to those ways. And so I just wanted to say, because I I think we take it for granted sometimes that we get to come every Sunday and worship Jesus. Like that we get to come, we get to we get to proclaim the name of God without fear. 2020 was a little different. And they I think we took for granted some things that in 2020 came to realization that whoa whoa whoa, somebody is telling me I can't have a service. Not in this country. And so I think we take that for granted sometimes. If you've come here, you know that I'm not a political person at all. I am a biblical person. I believe that the only king that exists is Jesus, the king of kings. And he is the one that we should worship. He's the one that we should bow down to. But I don't take it lightly that we live in a country where I get to say that. And I'm not going to be thrown in prison. And so I just want to take a moment and pray. And if you would join me, Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you so much that we get to live in a place where we can worship you without fear. Help us to never take that for granted. Give us the courage to live our lives in such a way that your name is glorified, that others may know that you came, you lived, and you died for them too. We ask that you would forgive us for the moments where we've taken our eyes off of you, chosen ourselves or the way of the world over you. We thank you that you give us this country we begin to celebrate you. Let us not take that for granted ever. Let us not just show up for the big moments, but show up for every moment because you deserve it. We thank you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. So last week we started, it was Mother's Day, and we started a new series called The Creed. Um, and if you were here, I talked about conspiracy theories because that's what moms love to talk about the most, right? And that was perfect for Mother's Day, is conspiracy theories. And the reason I did is because we're talking about the Nicene Creed. And around the Nicene Creed, there is a big conspiracy theory. Because it was a council, right? So in three in the year 325, um, long time ago, Emperor Constantine, who was the emperor of Rome, and so he was the most powerful man in the world, the leader of the world, essentially, came to know Jesus. He became a believer in Christianity. And because of that, he made Christianity the official religion of Rome. And he allowed other things to happen, but that was the thing, that Christianity was the official religion. But there was a problem because there was a little bit of a schism going on. There was some teaching that wasn't true, that was actually getting real a lot, a whole lot of followers to it. People were believing it. And the reason is because it had a really cool jingle. You know, you know jingles like little things like if I went, give me a break. There you go. Thank you, this side of the room, for playing along. I'm just gonna talk to y'all now. Um, yeah, a Kit Kat bar, right? And there's different jingles that if you throw them out there, you just like, you just know, and it sticks. It's that catchy thing. That's why advertisements work. So there was a guy, and his name was Arius, and Arius was a presbyter, which means he was one level below a bishop. He was a big leader of the church, especially on the eastern side of the eastern church. And he created this jingle, and it's really catchy. There was a time when he was not. Doesn't that just sing? That just, I mean, and I guess you have to know the tune that goes behind it. There was a time when he was not. Oh no, that's actually not the tune. Um that it was. I don't, I just I don't know what the tune was, but whatever the tune was, it was so catchy that people were saying it all the time. And what that meant was there was a time when Jesus wasn't. That's what he meant. That's the he he's talking about. There was a time when Jesus did not exist. Now, if you're a believer in Christianity, that is a foundational truth upon which we build everything. That Jesus was and always has been and always will be. Jesus was not created, he's creator.

unknown 5:47

Right?

SPEAKER_00 5:47

And then there's this big understanding because that's what he was essentially saying. Arius, his belief was that Jesus was a wise prophet, a great teacher, but he was just a man. And so his death and resurrection weren't necessarily even real. Because if you're just a man, when you die, you die. That's kind of an important sticking point for Christianity, isn't it? And yet it was so prevalent because this jingle. People were believing it. And so they call a meeting of the church, the leaders of the church, the council of Nicaea. In 325, they gather together in the town Nicaea, which is Itsbek, Turkey, today, and they met. And they literally fought about this. In fact, one of the greatest stories, a lot of things came from this council. So all the bishops will gather together, presbyters, the leaders of the church were getting together to really hash a bunch of stuff out. There were 20 different rules that came out of this council of Nicaea. Some of them were about how you get ordained, clerical orders. There was a rule about self-castration, about how you should do it and how you should not do it. Aren't we glad they cleared that up back then at 325? Right? There's all these other things that came out. Why we celebrate Easter when we do is because of the Council of Nicaea. But the primary thing that they gathered together to talk about was this Arius' mission to say that Jesus was just a man. And it got violent at one point. In fact, one of the stories that comes from this, the history tells us, is there was a bishop by the name of Nicholas. He later became a saint. Saint Nicholas. He punched Arius in the face. Santa Claus punched a guy in the face. I love this. I love it. He was so upset with this teaching and what it was doing to people and destroying the church that he just walked up to Arius. Some historical records say he was it was an open-hand slap, which I think is maybe even a little better. Or it was just like Santa Claus just ducking him one. You know, it just awesome. They took this seriously because it mattered. And the thing about it is, if they just read the Bible, this wouldn't have been an issue. Right? I mean, the church was debating who is Jesus? Who is Jesus in relation to God the Father? Well, Scripture tells us that. In fact, I don't know the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Like John opens his telling of who Jesus is by saying, Jesus is God. End of story. And yet, 300 years later, is it? And yet, 2,000 years later, is it the end of the story? I mean, I said this last week that the reason, one of the primary reasons why this church is no longer a united Methodist congregation, is because there are leaders, bishops in that denomination that say Jesus was just a man. And that his death and resurrection aren't real. Is the debate over? There was a time when he knew it was not. Apparently not. But why does it matter? Because everything rests on the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Without that, there is no salvation. Without that, there's nothing. It matters. It mattered in 325 when they gathered together and they literally fought over this. And they came up with the 20 decisions in the Nicene Creed. It's the same creed that you may have remembered if you grew up in a high church or a Methodist or Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Catholic in a very creedal and liturgical church. I grew up in a high church, very liturgical. Smells and wells, smells and bells type stuff. Like they were throwing the incense around and the ringing and on high holy days, man, they would get you'd get the water splashing, right? Remember those? Anybody go to like a high church episcopal church, one of those things? And it was just, and so the creeds for me are comfortable because I grew up with them. And I know that I'm not the most formal of pastors these days, and the only time you'll see me in a robe is if you're getting married or I'm burying you. But the liturgy matters. And these statements of faith matter because it's upon these statements of faith, the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, that the church was built. And it was these things that brought us unification. And said, look, we we baptize differently than you do. We think of communion a little differently than you do. But Jesus is what brings us together. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's what brings us together. And so the Nicene Creed. It's gonna be on the screen. Let's read it together. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became truly human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. That's a foundational statement. And you can see why they were what they were arguing over because they give the most time to Jesus. They talk about God the Father, Creator, they go to him through the Holy Spirit, but it's like this is what we got to settle. The Jesus is not separate from God. He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made. End of story. If we proclaim it, if we continue to remind people and to stand on those truths. Because debating the validity of Jesus is nothing new. It was true in the year 325, it's true today, and it was true in the very earliest of churches. Even for the people who saw Jesus after he was resurrected. When the church was just coming into being, people wondered. People who who maybe weren't there but heard from someone who was. Is it real? Paul addresses this multiple times in his letters. But one of the times he's writing a letter to the church of Colossa. It's Colossians. And this is one of the churches that he didn't plant. So if you know it, like most of the New Testament is attributed to Paul, right? It's either letters that he wrote or one of his people who wrote a letter in his name. And he was writing these letters to people, to churches that he planted, but also to churches that he'd never visited. And this is the case with Colossians. Paul never went there. And he was in prison, actually. This is one of his prison letters. When he's in prison, he's writing a letter to this church to encourage them and to help them deal with some of the pressures and stress they were going through. Because the guy who started the church was a friend of Paul and a papyrus. And he goes to visit Paul in prison. And he's like, hey man, the church at Colossians, the church at Colossians, they're killing it, man. They're great. Everything's going away. There's a lot of pressure. There's like a lot of cultural pressure that's being put on them. And can you just write them a letter and encourage them, remind them about what they believe and just encourage them through these difficult times. So Paul writes this letter. And the first chapter is this beautiful poem that Paul writes about who Jesus is. And it's just this magnificent piece of work. And then he goes into dealing with some of the cultural pressures and stresses that they were dealing with. Chapter 2. Verse 8, he says this. Don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies, high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world rather than from Christ. Stop right there. First verse right there. Verse 8. Don't let anyone confuse you with ways or thoughts of the world. We live in so much information overload. Don't let anyone confuse you. And also, watch what he did there. And spiritual powers of this world. Paul's trying to tell us there's evil. There's evil spiritual forces that exist in this world. We don't like to talk about them because they're weird and just kind of will freak out a little bit, and I don't understand them all. But they exist. The greatest thing that the devil could do is make you believe that he's not real. We don't need to be afraid of them because we win. Jesus wins, but you can't deny it. And Paul's trying to point out to the people hey, this is real. Don't listen to mindless Instagram theology. The spiritual evil of this world. You listen to Jesus. And then verse nine is Paul's theology in one verse. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. That should be the end of the argument. In Christ lives the fullness of God. At the council, they said it like this: God from God, light from light, true God from true God. And the fullness of Jesus is the fullness of God in human form. How does that work? No idea. But he's both fully man, 100% man, and 100% God. Yes. Like I'm not good at math, but that seems difficult. How does that work? I don't know. And I have a degree in this. So good luck figuring it out for yourselves. Paul's not worried about that. He's not concerned about explaining the spiritual reality of who God is. He's just trying to point it out. Stand on this. Verse 10. So, because of the fullness of God in Jesus, you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority. When you came to Christ, you were circumcised, but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision, the cutting away of your sinful nature, for you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God who raised Christ from the dead. You were dead because of your sins, because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all your sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. The very instruments that they were trying to use to shame and publicly humiliate Jesus, he uses to humiliate and shame them. The very tool by which they thought they were ending everything started everything. God from God. Light from light, true God. From true God. See, the people of Colossa were dealing with all these different philosophies, a money polytheistic polytheism place where there's gods here and Jesus is just another God. And he's like, Nuh-uh. No, he's not. They were dealing with the Jewish faith that was saying you have to be circumcised and follow the dietary restrictions. And Paul's like, no, you don't. All that stuff was put to bed. Because Jesus lived, he died, and he conquered death. He is both fully man and fully God. I don't know how it works. I don't know what the I don't know how God, the Father, the Creator, does something, and he's like, okay, it's your turn, you take over, and then the Holy Spirit is like, ooh, pick me, let me do something too. I don't know. But I believe. And that's what all this is about. It's about proclaiming the name of the one who was, who is, and who will forever be. Controversies are going to continue. Mindless theologies and philosophies are going to continue to be bombarded by the ways of the world and the spiritual forces of darkness. We must stand strong as a church by these creedal foundational elements that proclaim who we are, because who we are is because of who He is. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Let us pray. Most gracious and heavenly God, we thank you and praise you for the ways that you move in our life. We thank you that you're Father, Son, and Spirit. We don't understand it. But God, I thank you that we don't have to. Your grace and your forgiveness and your mercy don't come with knowledge, they come with faith. So we proclaim that faith today, Lord, saying, We believe you, we trust in you. Father, if there's anyone in this room watching online that doesn't know that peace that comes with knowing you, may today be the day that they put their faith in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. They say yes to you in the mighty ways that you work. They step away from the noise of this world and step towards your kingdom. Today be that day, Father. God help us to be a church who proclaims your glory, who never takes it for granted that we get to worship you, that we continue to live our lives for you so that others might see you. We thank you and praise you in Jesus' holy name. Amen.