May 31st, 2026

Pastor Michael Crocker

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Good morning, good morning. I'm gonna take a second to look into the lemon. Say good morning to everybody watching online. Thanks for joining in with us. My name's Pastor Michael. Excited to have you there, but wish come here next week. Uh it's not always a jungle. Um, but it is awesome. Those of you in church, hello church! Good morning, man. I wanted Ozzy to play Welcome to the Jungle is my walk-up song. Uh, is everybody else in the do no? Right? Um sorry, it's been I can't stop thinking about that. Uh that was pretty good. I got it up there. Uh you're the jungle band. I can't figure it out finish it. Um, stop it. Yeah, thank you, Debbie. Um, there are a couple of things I want to draw your attention to. On the back of every chair, there's a QR code, and you can scan that QR code to find all the information about things that are happening in the life of the church and what's going on. If you have a prayer request, that's a way you can digitally do a prayer request card that will go to our prayer team. If you need help with anything, we have a care team that's walking alongside folks. Um, that information is there as well. And um, as well as kind of a connection card. If you just want to kind of get connected with us because this is your first time here, we would love to serve you in any way, um any way, shape, or form, however, we can. Uh, this coming Saturday, you'll find the information on the QR code. Uh, we have our first serve Saturday over at Westlawn United Methodist Church. We've been teaming up with them when we go and we do the food handout. Um, the San Antonio Food Bank delivers a whole bunch of food there, and it's kind of a food pantry, and it's a wonderful opportunity for old and young alike uh to go and serve and opportunities to pray with those folks. Um, and and this this month, we're starting, we'll do it every month, but the holy smokers are gonna be there, holy smokers, Batman, um, and hand it out. They're cooking, they've done, I think, eight pork butts. Um, so they're doing a bunch of pork sliders uh to hand out to those folks. And so we would love Winchester, uh Wink uh Kelsa would have all the information you need about that should you have any question uh about that. We would love to have you there. Um and then the VBS thing, I know that you know uh Miss Natalie already talked about it, and it's wonderful uh and great, and I I man, I'm pumped. If you I know not everybody stood up in this room as someone who is coming. Can I just encourage you to stop by one day and to see? And Miss Natalie doesn't want any more people here on campus, but I'm gonna tell I overrule her to come and to see what's happening, what happens here, because it is just she and Jessica and Hannah and their team of volunteers worked and Victoria worked so hard to put all of this together and do such an amazing job. It is one of the most crazy and fun weeks of the year of ministry. I am on a team, I'm on the BS team with that person back there. Debbie Chesney and I are the two people of the BS team, which we think is just entirely appropriate. Um, but it is the Bible study team, thank you very much, and we are leading the teachings this week, but we're excited and would love those of you who are volunteering, thank you for the ways that you volunteer, especially those of you who feed us in the snack room. Best room ever. Um But today we're at the end of our series called The Creed. And we saw this uh a few weeks ago when we were looking at one of the foundational writings of the formational foundational writings of the church. It came in the year 325 because people were just having some differences over some things. And I know that that doesn't happen today in 2026, that people just have differences over things, right? Well, maybe maybe it still does. Like if I were just shout it out, what's the best university that's around? Wow, people aren't really that excited about it. Um I I thought I got a Texas Tech, was the one I heard, and no one agrees with that. Ums? Yeah, there you go, hornfrogs. Um any any the school in Austin? Anybody? There you go. A football player is in the room. That's good. Um any any Aggies? I know. Oh Lord, is what we just got. Yeah. Um, but how many people just just love the state of Texas? Okay, we can agree on that. Um, there's different things, like if we we start stacking things up, there's things that we just disagree on because all of you that didn't say TCU are wrong, and there's just these other foundational elements. There's because we're people, right? We're humans, and as humans, we all have ideas and opinions and thoughts and concerns, and sometimes we see things a little differently than one another. Like the first service, they're not big fans of Lisa. I know, I don't understand it. She's you can put her in your pocket and carry her around and she sings to you all day long. She's wonderful like that. But it's really not Lisa, it's more Gabe that they don't like in his drums. Sometimes they have a little issues with this. Because if Jesus didn't use drums in his worship service, why should we, right? Or organs, for that matter, because those weren't around when Jesus was there. But there's these things that we disagree on in churches. You know, sometimes the biggest arguments happen. Do you know how many of you did I ask your opinion on the color of the carpet for the new sanctuary? None of you! You know why? Because you're all gonna have an opinion and you're gonna fight over it, and that is one of the things, the color of carpet in sanctuaries that is fought over, tooth and nailed to the death. The color of, okay, here you go. How many of you want pews in the new sanctuary? Not but just show of hands, you don't have to clap for them. How many of you want chairs in the new sanctuary? Wow, see? I got a boo. Well, it's not chairs like these, okay? Um, guess what? You both win. There will be there will be pews, there will be chairs, but do you know how many? I had a lady bring me articles about why chairs and worship facilities are wrong and contrary to scripture. True story. Three articles. Like, I don't know where she found these things, but I would just find them in my box. And I know exactly who it was who placed them there, even though she didn't tell me it was her. I know who she was, and I know her feelings about chairs and how they lead you to the devil. Essentially. But there are these things, and quite honestly, it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't, is is is a chair, will a chair bring you closer to Jesus than a pew? Or other way around? No. It's just, those are non-essential elements. Then you start bleeding into other things. About, I don't know, baptism. How many of you in this room, because what here's let's just set the stage here. How many of you grew up Catholic? Recovering Catholics in the room. Great. How many of you grew up some mainline Protestant denomination like Methodism or Lutheran or Presbyterian or Episcopalians? How many of you grew up in the Baptist faith? How many of you grew up Pentecostal? Any non-denominational churches which are actually really Baptist churches, they just don't want to tell you that they're Baptist churches. Okay, so we all, there's a smattering of us in here that come from different things. Now, if I ask you this question, what's the correct form of baptism? Dunking full immersion is what I got. Yeah, usually the only people who shout it out are the dunkers. Like those of us who believe that sprinkling's okay, we're gonna be a little bit more polite about it. You know, we're just gonna be like, you know, it's all forms sprinkling, pouring, or dunking. All three forms are recognized by this church, by the way. And we're okay with it. Except for some of you who are like, nope, if you don't get the whole body down, it doesn't count. That God wasn't paying attention at that moment. But those are those things that sometimes there's our big arguments over, and yet they're not anything that really truly is foundational and formational for our faith. But those are the things that we fight most often over. And those things that we fight over really, there's nothing new to this, right? There's been fights in Christendom since the church began. We started this three weeks ago with the very first fight in the church when they called the council of Jerusalem. Should people who come to know Jesus and come into the faith operate as if they were Jewish? Should they follow the Jewish dietary guidelines? Do they need to have the physical requirements of Judaism, being males, all those different things? And they came to the church and they had a council and they said, okay, what is it? And they said, No, it's about Jesus. End of story. If you want to continue to follow the Jewish ways of dietary restrictions, great. It doesn't change Jesus. It doesn't change who he is, who he was, and who he continues to be. There are other church councils, there were other schisms, if you will. Here's a fun uh search on your duck duck go. Top ten schisms in Christianity. I'm just kidding, it's not really that fun. It's very boring. Um but there's a bunch. There were a lot of times, and I have it was a 16-page list, by the way, because we can't get along with one another. Um but I I'm just gonna highlight a few. And my wife just said, Thank goodness. Jerusalem Council being the first one. Then you have um the rise of Gnosticism from AD 50 to the 170s that peaked with this guy, Valentinian. And Valentinian believed, and he he preached, that the material world was created by a fallen deity, and that you had to have some sort of knowledge to navigate. Gnosticism is the knowledge is to navigate your way through this, um, and that Jesus and God weren't actually part of the equation. Um, there was in 190, Theodotus, everybody remember Theodotus of Byzantinium? Everybody remember him? Yeah, he's great. Um he he was a guy who said that uh that that Christ was only a man, and it was at his baptism that actually God uh came into Christ's being. Then AD 325, what happened then? We've been talking about for three weeks. This is really upsetting to a teacher. I said this would be on the test. Uh this is the Aryan controversy that brought the Nicene Creed, right? That uh they were debating the divinity of Jesus. Was he fully God, fully man, or was he just fully man? Again, you can see that in 190, it was the same conversation going on. Uh then you have the great schism. It's the great one, not the good schism. It was the great schism of 1054. We all remember that schism. Um that was when the Eastern Church broke away from the Roman church because they didn't believe that uh in the Nicene Creed, the word phililoquy, which comes in in Latin, who says that the Holy Spirit came from the Son, the Eastern Church said, no, he didn't. Holy Spirit only comes from God, and they separated over that. In uh let's say October 31st, 1517. Anyone know that date? I know this is boring a lot of you, but some of you are really into this, like me, so get over it. Anyone Mr. Ballantine knows it. It was when Martin Luther nailed his 95 treaties on the chapel in Germany and thus began the Protestant Reformation. And his whole deal, his whole deal was he didn't want to leave the Catholic Church, he wanted to reform the Catholic Church. Um he saw a lot of the things, the system was totally broken. They were selling indulgences, which by the way, I think we need to go back to. Just kidding. Um if you don't know what those are, look it up. It was a what talk about a monetary scam by preachers. You committed adultery, that will cost you $100,000. Murdered somebody, a million, no problem, you're fine. Um, 80, 15, 34, the Church of England breaks from Rome. Um, and if you remember why they broke from Rome, it was so that the king could get married again. Um and so it was political reasons, and King Henry VIII, I believe it was, wanted to get married, and the Pope wouldn't let him, so he's like, you know what? I'm the new Pope. Um and he started the Church of England and they separated. And these things keep happening. You have the Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, there's splits, because if you look at the landscape of Christendom, of the church, there's a whole bunch of different jerseys that are being worn for the same team. Right? It's like an all-star game. We're all fighting, we're all doing the same game. We all claim Jesus, but we do it in vastly different ways. Our church looks very much different than the Anglican church across the park. Very different. Like that guy wears a collar. I don't understand those guys. But throughout Christendom, you have these things that separate us. St. Augustine would call them the non-essentials. The things that separate us most often are the things that really aren't consequential to the faith. They're the things that we debate about, sprinkling, pouring, dunking, oh my. It's not the things that we need to hold tightly to. The things that we need to hold tightly to really are much smaller than the things that we fight about. And the way we hold tightly to them and come around them has been through these creedal statements throughout history. Through these councils, the Jerusalem Council, the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Constantinople, that come down and they say, no, no, no. These are the guardrails by which we operate. These are the Orthodox guardrails that say, this is what we believe. We may operate differently in them, but this is foundational. And when we go outside of those, then we have an issue. That's what the council of Nicaea was addressing in 325. It was a group of believers that came up and said, Jesus wasn't fully man. He wasn't fully God. He was fully man, not fully God. They questioned the divinity of Jesus. And so the council got together. The Emperor Constantine called the bishops, the leaders of the church together in Turkey, and they set forth guidelines for ordination, guidelines for clerical orders, guidelines for self-castration. That one always makes me laugh. And they wrote this document. And this document was foundational and formational for who we are as a church. But there's not all original thought that came out of this. If you were here last week, I said that if Arius, who was the person driving this controversy, if he had just read Scripture, he wouldn't have ever believed that Jesus wasn't fully God. Because it's in Scripture. It's right here in black and white. It's in the words, the foundational, formational document upon which everything is built. You can see in their Old Testament and New Testament that Jesus is fully God and fully man. And yet, time and time again, if you look through this list of schisms, that's a big question. And I think it's because they just don't get it. Two weeks ago I talked about the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that exist together in one. They are separate, but yet they are one. How? I don't know. I don't know. I can't wrap my hand or head around that because my head isn't big enough to understand that. But this tells me they are. And so these creeds come down to us as these guardrails that help us stay in line with who God is calling us to be. And creeds are nothing new. It wasn't the Nicene Council that created the first creed. In fact, creeds existed as soon as the church existed. The church leaders would set forth these foundational statements. In fact, Paul uses them in multiple of his letters. You see these parts of creeds that are clearly creeds because he alludes to them that was handed to me. And one of those places is in his first letter to the church at Corinth. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul is writing, this whole letter is addressing a lot of the concerns, a lot of the troubles and splits that are going on in the church at Corinth. And he writes this in chapter 15. I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the scriptures said. He was buried and was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Did you hear in there the creed? Right? Did you hear those words that, I don't know, maybe they sound familiar to you. In fact, let's let's read the Nicene Creed 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 from the Holy Spirit, and the Virgin Mary, was made man. 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. Did you hear Paul's creed in there? His words from verse 4 or verse 3. Christ died for our sins just as the scriptures said. He was buried and was raised on the third day, just as the scriptures said. Right? These things, these statements of truth and faith, there's something that you can build your foundation of faith upon. It's these truths, these creeds are helpful when we get in the midst of confusion and identity and idology, ideology, and those different things. No, no, no. Let me bring it back to this. Christ lived, Christ died, Christ rose again. So that I might have life. I may worship differently than you or the church next door. I may think baptism should be done one way or another way. I may be right in the fact that TCU is the best university, but we are all comforted by the fact that Jesus lived, died, and conquered death. End of story. Amen. That's what these creeds do. And what Paul was addressing here was a really big foundational disagreement. It was about the resurrection. See, there was a belief because just like us, we all come from different walks of life. We were all born in different places. We went to different schools. We had different ethnicities, different, all different things in here. But we come together under one unifying thing. The early church was the same. It was comprised mainly of two groups of people: Jews and not a Jew. It was Jews and Gentiles, right? That was the early church. It was made up of these two groups, and you can see the tension already that exists because of the Jerusalem Council. But here again, you have this idea of resurrection. Right? And this is what Paul says. He was raised on the third day. Because that's what the scriptures tell us. And by the way, Peter saw him. The disciples saw him. And then 500 people saw him. You want to talk to somebody? I can introduce you to somebody that saw him, the resurrected Jesus. He goes on to say, and oh, by the way, so did I. Because I don't even know why he showed up to me, because I am the worst of the worst. I am the lowest of apostles. But Jesus, resurrected Jesus appeared to me too. So you want to talk about resurrection? Let's talk about it. See, the problem was they they were coming into an understanding, they were coming into this understanding that resurrection was different than what they had always been taught. Because the Jews believed that there was no resurrection. For the majority of the time of the people of Israel, they didn't believe in a resurrection. They believed in a place called Sheol. And Sheol was a place that existed underneath the earth. It was this gray place of shadows. There was no strength, there was no light, there was no God, there was nothing. It was Oklahoma. Come on. There you go. That's right. Go, Jesus, go. It's this place where you like you were just sent there. In fact, the psalmist in in Isaiah talks about it. For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol, who can give you praise? That's Psalm 6. Psalm 30. What prophet is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Psalm 115, the dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into silence. Isaiah 38, for Sheol cannot thank you, death cannot praise you. Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. For the majority of the time of Israel, they believed that after death there was no hope. And so to talk about resurrection was like, I don't understand this. Now, in later Israel, coming into this period, there was a movement of resurrection. It was led by the Pharisees. Right? Because you have this Pharisetical belief, like there were the two main groups of Judaism were the Sadducees who said no resurrection at all, and the Pharisees who said there was a resurrection. However, it's most likely just some etheral resurrection. There is no body attached to it. There was this belief in some of the writings talk about this. Psalm 16, my body also rests secure, for you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the pit. You show me the path of life, and your presence there is fullness of joy, and your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 73, you hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will receive me to glory. There was this understanding that because the people of Israel were the chosen people, and God was a God of love, that surely he wouldn't just subject them to Oklahoma, that he had something better for them. But they didn't understand or couldn't put their minds around what that truly was. Then you have the people who came from the Greek world. And the Greek world believed that there was that the body was a tomb and it was a punishment. If you read Epicurides, Seneca, Plato, especially, he said the body is the antithesis of the soul. And once you die, your soul is released into freedom. But Paul's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This resurrection is bodily. Like we don't just disappear into the sky, into nothing. There's a resurrection of the body. You know how I know this? Because Jesus was the first. He walked around. In fact, Thomas stuck his hand in his side and in his hands. Like he was physically present. Paul's going to go on to talk about this from verse 12 through 22, and he's he goes, look, if the if the resurrection of Jesus didn't happen, then what we are talking about doesn't matter. If Jesus' bodily resurrection wasn't true, then everything I've told you is false. He goes, but I can point you to people that met him after he died. I can point you to Peter. I can point you to James. He talks about James right after this. I can point you to the 500 people that saw Jesus walking around after we all saw him in the tomb. The bodily resurrection was true. And so he says, on the third day, he rose again in accordance with the scriptures. These creeds give us this foundation, they give us the guide rails that keep us in line. Because what the resurrection looks like, I don't know. Like I hope my knees don't hurt in my resurrected body. Come on, somebody. Right? You know, like what does the resurrected body look like? Am I still going to be six foot two and overweight? I hope not. You know, but it makes me loving, I guess. People like to hug the squishy guy. I don't know. Maybe there's some of that in heaven. You know, and then like what is that, what does it look like? I don't know. But I do know that I will have a body. Because Jesus did. And I believe in the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. And what you think resurrected life looks like may be different than what I think resurrected life looks like. But these creedal statements give us the guide rails and the guardrails to say, but this is the truth. This is the way, the truth, and the life. So we can disagree about things. Those non-essentials. Those of you who think that baptism has to be done that way, that's great. That's fun. We'll bring the horse trough in here and baptize you the way you want to be baptized. Or we'll bring the pillar out here and I'll just pour a little water on your head either way. Or maybe we have to go down to living water and we'll do it in a river somewhere, you know, because you're really Jewish stuff. Whatever it is, we can disagree about those things. We can disagree about how we serve communion. We can disagree about how we worship Jesus. But we can't disagree about him. Because he is the thing that holds us together. It is through his life, his death, and his resurrection that we are offered the gift of life. If you don't know that today, make today be the day that you do. Today be the day that you say, you know, I'm tired of living the way of the world and choosing my own way. Today I choose the way of Jesus. And when you do, guess what comes next? Resurrection. There will be a time when you no longer exist here, but you do a new creation. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what it's going to feel like. But I know through Scripture and through the early church you set forth these foundational creedal statements that there will be a time when we arise together. Let us pray. Gracious and heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you. That you are a God who loves us so much you weren't willing just to set us off and just to leave us. You chose a place and a time to bring heaven in. We thank you that you gave us your Son. We thank you, Jesus, that you were willing to give yourself. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you continue to sustain us as we wait on the second coming. Father, I pray for all who don't know your peace, don't know your love, don't know your saving grace, today would be the day that they say yes to you. For those of us who do, remind us of your love. And Father, as we exist as your church, let us do so, not backing away from your truths, but stand together. That you lived, that you died, that you conquered death, and that one day you will come again to bring your kingdom. We thank you and praise you in Jesus' holy name.