1. "I'm convinced that there's a lot of things about us that make more sense when people understand how we were brought up, what context we come out of."

2. "Friend, if the story ended there, there would never have been a Council of Nicaea. If the story ends there, Jesus is an interesting footnote in history, he's not the question mark that interrupts all of history."

3. "Friend, when God wants to bring creatures made in His image to know Him, He doesn't drop a book from the heavens. He comes Himself. Jesus is the Word made flesh."

4. "I would warn them of the danger of assuming that reality must be both simple and self-evident to them. The world just doesn't bend to your particular way to see things or what you like or don't like."

5. "Because they feared no reckoning, there was not a God thought the Marxists that would ultimately call them to account. There was not a God thought the Nazis that would ultimately call them to account. Praise God for people who fear reckoning."

6. "You think you can make me a sufficiently good Muslim by putting a sword to my throat. But as a Christian, I think I can put a sword to your throat, but that won't do anything to make you a Christian. I think you in your heart have to understand your own guilt before God."

7. "Maybe you've been frustrated reading your Bible lately. It's not giving you the kind of guidance you want. Well friend, maybe that's because you've been picking up the Bible thinking it was a book about you. When all the time it's been a book about Jesus Christ."

8. "Friend, do you realize that nothing in your life escapes the control of the very one who died for you?"

9. "Truth precedes error, but responding to errors helps us clarify the truth."

10. "Beginning to understand who Jesus is is like getting the key piece of a puzzle so that life makes sense."

Observation Questions

1. In Mark 8:27-29, what question does Jesus ask His disciples, and how does Peter respond to Jesus' direct question about His identity?

2. According to Mark 8:31-33, what does Jesus teach His disciples about what the Son of Man must experience, and how does Peter react to this teaching?

3. In Mark 9:2-8, what happens to Jesus on the mountain, and what does the voice from the cloud declare about Jesus?

4. In John 1:1-3, how does John describe the Word's relationship to God and to creation?

5. According to John 1:14, what did the Word become, and what did those who witnessed Him see?

6. In Colossians 1:15-17, what does Paul say about Christ's relationship to creation and His position in relation to all things?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Jesus accepted worship from people (such as the wise men, the disciples in the boat, and the man born blind) without rebuking them, especially when compared to how Peter and the angels responded to worship directed at them in Acts 10 and Revelation 19 and 22?

2. How does the sermon explain the apparent tension between passages that show Jesus as distinct from the Father (such as not knowing the time of His return or praying "not my will but yours") and passages that affirm His full divinity (such as "I and the Father are one")?

3. According to the sermon, why was it essential for the Council of Nicaea to affirm that the Son is "of the same essence" as the Father rather than merely "similar" to the Father? What theological problem would arise if Jesus were only similar to God?

4. How does the sermon use Romans 3:21-26 to explain the "riddle" of Exodus 34:6, where God describes Himself as both merciful and one who "will by no means clear the guilty"?

5. What does Jesus' use of Psalm 110:1 in Mark 12:36-37 reveal about His identity, and why was this question about David's son being David's Lord so significant for understanding who Jesus is?

Application Questions

1. The sermon emphasizes that the Bible is primarily about Jesus, not about us. How might this perspective change the way you approach your personal Bible reading this week, especially when you encounter passages that seem dry or disconnected from your life?

2. Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ but then rebuked Him for teaching about His suffering. In what areas of your life are you tempted to accept Jesus as Lord while resisting what He actually calls you to do or believe?

3. The sermon challenges the assumption that spiritual truth must be simple and self-evident to be real. What complex or difficult Christian doctrines have you been tempted to dismiss or ignore, and how might you pursue understanding them more deeply?

4. Knowing that "nothing in your life escapes the control of the very one who died for you," how should this truth affect the way you respond to a current difficulty or uncertainty you are facing?

5. The sermon encourages parents to discuss the Nicene Creed with their children. What specific step can you take this week to help someone in your life (a child, friend, or family member) better understand who Jesus is?

Additional Bible Reading

1. John 8:48-59 — This passage records Jesus' claim "Before Abraham was, I am," demonstrating His assertion of eternal divine identity that led His opponents to attempt to stone Him for blasphemy.

2. Philippians 2:5-11 — Paul describes Christ's pre-existence, incarnation, humiliation, and exaltation, showing how the one who was "in the form of God" took on human nature for our salvation.

3. Hebrews 1:1-14 — The author presents Christ as superior to angels and as the exact representation of God's nature, reinforcing that the Son is not a created being but the Creator Himself.

4. Isaiah 52:13–53:12 — This Servant Song prophesies the suffering and atoning work of the Messiah, which Jesus fulfilled and which the sermon identifies as the clearest Old Testament foreshadowing of how God could be both just and merciful.

5. 2 Corinthians 4:1-6 — Paul explains that the glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ, connecting to the sermon's emphasis that we cannot understand God accurately apart from Christ.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Understanding Jesus Through His Family Context and the Council of Nicaea

II. What Was the Council of Nicaea?

III. What the Council of Nicaea Said

IV. Why the Council of Nicaea Matters

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Some of you in this room will know that when I'm first trying to get to know somebody and I'm meeting with them just one-on-one, I will very often ask a lot of questions in a row. And I will especially be trying to get to know about the family they grew up in and about their parents and maybe even their grandparents. And if they know about them, their great-grandparents. Because I'm convinced that there's a lot of things about us that make make more sense when people understand how we were brought up, what context we come out of. Well, on this Father's Day in God's providence, as he would have it, what should also this be but the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.

And for those of you who know me as a historian, I find anniversaries with a zero or a five almost irresistible. And if you put two zeros, I don't know what to do. I'm not sure I've ever had one of those before. You know, 1700 years. And that's not three zeros, but it's like, you know what I mean?

Anyway, 1700 years ago, literally this week, the Council of Nicaea met, and they were talking about a question of a father and a son. It was the relation of Jesus to his heavenly father. And friends, I don't know how we would come to understand Jesus better than by considering that question: who is Jesus and how do we understand who he is? This is a question even Jesus himself asked. He pressed this on his disciples after he had been with them for a couple of years.

You remember in Mark, if you turn there with me to Mark chapter 8, you'll find the passage.

Mark, chapter 8, beginning verse 27. And Jesus went on with His disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way He asked His disciples, who do people say that I am?

And they told him, John the Baptist. And others say, Elijah, and others, one of the prophets. And he asked them, But who do you say that I am?

Peter answered him, you, are the Christ. And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. So does that clarify things for you about who Jesus is?

At the time, His disciples seemed to continue to be confused. You can tell even as you keep reading this account, let's just keep going in Mark, and you'll see, beginning at the very next verse, verse 31, and He began to teach them that the Son of Man, it's referring to Himself, must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And He said this plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But turning and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, Get behind Me, Satan.

For you're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And calling the crowd to Him with His disciples, He said to them, 'If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospels will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?

For whoever is ashamed of Me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And he said to them, 'Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.' and after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. And his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.

And Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, for he did not know They didn't know what to say, for they were terrified. And the cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, 'This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him.' and suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only. And as they were coming down the mountain, He charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. So Jesus had clearly claimed to be the Christ, the Messiah, the deliverer of God's people that was promised in the Old Testament. And God's own voice here even called Jesus My beloved Son. But the story keeps going. He's rejected by the national leaders.

He is even arrested and executed, famously, on the cross. So how do we talk about this person? How are we to understand Him?

Perhaps you remember if you've read the gospel some of the ways that Jesus Himself makes a distinction between Him and the Father. So the Father knows about the time of Christ's return. The Son Himself doesn't know this.

Or in the Garden of Gethsemane when He distinguishes His will from the will of His Father's. Beyond His teaching, even His life gave testimony to His humanity. Jesus' followers didn't see Him as some ghost, some spiritual being floating around. He was a real human man with a body. Luke tells us He grew up.

He walked and ate and slept. And He wasn't a Superman from the Krypton of heaven. That couldn't be hurt. We read here that Jesus could be whipped and He could bleed. His flesh could be pierced by nails.

He could die. And friends, if the story ended there, there would never have been a Council of Nicaea. If the story ends there, Jesus is an interesting footnote in history, he's not the question mark that interrupts all of history. But the story doesn't end there.

Jesus rose from the dead.

The demands that we have to understand Jesus change entirely by that simple fact. That demands that we turn back to Jesus' life and give more careful attention to his teaching. And what we see when we do this is that this first century monotheistic Jew also claimed to be God. And he acted as if he were God. He taught his followers to baptize in his name.

He constantly healed people. Even in Mark's gospel, which secular critics would understand to be the least theologized of the gospels, even in Mark's gospel, Jesus astonishes people around him by raising up a little girl in Mark 5 who seemed to be either comatose or dead. He announced that God's kingdom was near and called people to repent and believe the good news. He exorcised demons and claimed to be able to be the Lord of the Sabbath. He didn't simply teach God's law like others, but he taught on his own authority, as if the law was his own law.

He forgave sins. He predicted small events like Peter's denial. He talked as if people's responses to him were their responses to God and were of ultimate importance. He said that he had come to call sinners, as if he were not one. And this is true from the very opening pages of the Gospels.

You remember in Matthew chapter 2 where the wise men, it says, fell down and worshiped Him. This was their stated purpose in seeking the newborn King. They must have recognized something of His divine nature. You know, in the temptations, Jesus rejected Satan's call for worship by citing Deuteronomy 6, saying that one should worship only God. And yet worship of Jesus was the disciples response to him.

When the boat is on the stormy sea and it's stilled, they worship Jesus. And when the man born blind in John 9 is healed and Jesus finds him, it says that the man worshiped Jesus. And none of these were rebuked for what they did. As if they've been praising one merely human. This is so different than the incident in Acts 10 when Peter turns up at Cornelius' house to share the gospel and Cornelius, this Gentile centurion, falls at Peter's feet to worship him.

And Peter, who in a secular sense could have just taken advantage of the situation, powerful leader of occupying forces falls down to worship me. I could do something with this. But what does Peter do? He says, Stand up.

I too am a man. It is inappropriate to worship a creature. Peter outright rejects it. Romans 1:25 recognizes worshiping a creature rather than the Creator alone as the very essence of depravity and the treachery of sin against God. Even offering the most glorious angels, messengers of God, by John in Revelation 19 worship.

Is absolutely rejected. You must not do that. I am a fellow servant. That's in the passage we come to next week as we get back into Revelation chapter 19, Lord willing. And the same happens again in Revelation 22:9 when John fell at the feet of an angel to worship him and the angel responded again, you, must not do that.

I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers. Worship God.

For in Scripture is entire in rejecting worship of any being that is created. Very different, I should note, than our Roman Catholic friends who are taught by their church that there is dulia, hyperdulia, and latria, different kinds of worship, some which can be given only to God, but others that are appropriate to give to created things. I just note the difference there in Rome's man-made teachings and the clear and uniform teaching of the Bible Old and New Testaments. Worship is what Scripture says Mary Magdalene and the other Mary did when they first saw the risen Christ on resurrection morning, and they received no rebuke. That shows the divinity of Jesus.

And it's what the remaining 11 disciples did that morning when they saw him later. And when he gave them the great commission, and as he ascended, and again, no rebukes for worshiping Jesus.

None of those who worshiped Jesus by so doing became idolaters.

And the rest of the New Testament echoes with this claim of Jesus Christ to be the worship-worthy Son of God. Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 8:6 that Jesus Christ is the one through whom all things are and through whom we exist, just as the creation came only through Christ, so too our great new creation could come only by His divine action. Called Christ in Titus 2, our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. This theme of Christ's true divinity echoes all the way down to the Bible's last chapter when we read the Lord Jesus saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Friend, if you know your Bibles, that's the way Yahweh speaks.

Isaiah 48:12, I am he, I am the first, and I am the last. Now, having considered all of this, we can understand why when John began to write his account of the life of Jesus, he began it like this, John, chapter 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light that came to bear witness about the light.

The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.

But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him and cried out, this was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because He was before me.' For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.

Friend, when God wants to bring creatures made in His image to know Him. He doesn't drop a book from the heavens. He comes Himself.

Jesus is the Word made flesh. As Jesus said, All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.

When Paul wrote to the church at Colossae, if you look over in Colossians chapter 1, Colossians chapter 1, he wrote, verse 15, Colossians 1:15, He, referring to Christ, He is the image of the invisible God.

The firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent.

For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.

How is it that our Savior was both God and man? That's what over 300 pastors, mainly from the eastern part of the Mediterranean, gathered to discuss 1700 years ago this coming week. We want to consider three matters. One, what was the Council of Nicaea? Two, what the Council of Nicaea said?

And three, why it matters. So one, what the Council of Nicaea was. Two, what it said. And three, why it matters. And I pray that after this time together, your thoughts about Jesus will be a little clearer and that you may even know God better.

First, what was the Council of Nicaea? Well, friends, Christians in the first couple of centuries after Christ sometimes struggled with how they were to speak about Jesus Christ's relationship with God the Father. After all, as I had said earlier, the Jewish nation were strict monotheists in a sea of polytheisms. Paul had called Jesus there in Colossians 1:15 the firstborn of all creation. Luke tells us that Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature.

And yet, Jesus could say to Philip in John 14, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. And to the Jews in John 8, Before Abraham was, I am. And to the Jews around Solomon's Colonnade, around the temple, He said, I and the Father are one.

How were they to understand these claims? Should they think of Jesus as a kind of emanation from God the Father? Or of the Son as a role that God assumed, like He could assume the role of a father, He could assume the role of a son, He could assume the role of a spirit for a time?

Well this problem was made pointed in the year 318 because of a very popular teacher in Alexandria, Egypt named Arius, A-R-I-U-S. So just a word for you people, when they hear the adjective Aryan these days, they'll often associate it with eugenics or Nazi teaching World War II with a why about a racial superiority teaching. That has nothing to do with this. This is A-R-I-U-S, A-R-I-A-N teaching, A-R-I-A-N, Aryan teaching is named after this man, Arius, who taught in Egypt and he was a very popular teacher. And he taught that his bishop in Alexandria, who was named Alexander, so Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, and Athanasius, his deacon, were wrong when they were talking about Jesus as God.

Arius said that they were teaching a kind of early church Unitarianism, that they were mistaking the truth. He presented the teaching about God, really about Jesus, that was really halfway between the Jews that had rejected Jesus and the teaching of Jesus and his apostles. Jesus, I mean, Arius agreed with the Christians that Jesus was unique, but knowing that the Old Testament scriptures clearly forbade worshiping anyone other than God, he concluded that Jesus was a creature, supreme among the creatures, but nevertheless a created being. Whereas Christian teachers of previous generations like Origen had taught clearly that the Son had existed eternally. He had always existed as the Son.

Arias denied this. Perhaps Arias' most famous saying was, There was a time when He was not referring to the Son. That was a little summary of Arias' error. In that sense, Arias prefigured what folks like the Jehovah's Witnesses teach in our day. They're not the run of the mill non-Christians because they do hold Christ in a unique place.

But they're not Christians because they deny Christ's status as the eternal Son of God. So Arius divided the substance of the Father and the Son saying that their substance or their essences were different from each other. And it was this teaching that Arius began to popularize among the people, not only by his own lectures, but he actually wrote songs with singable tunes that became popular around the Mediterranean world. And this began to alarm pastors, began to create more strain and friction inside the Roman Empire, so much so that the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, took notice of it and began to be concerned about it. And so he called a general council of pastors, of bishops, representing all Christendom from around the Roman Empire.

Pastors came from even outside the Roman Empire, from Scythia and Jacob of Nisibis came from the Persian Empire. This became the first council to be known as a truly ecumenical council, meaning worldwide. Constantine invited bishops to assemble in an international senate in Nicaea, a city in Bithynia, both because the bishops from Italy, I'm quoting Constantine in the letter right now, both because the bishops from Italy and the rest of the countries of Europe are coming, and Nicaea at the time was a port so they could get in easily, and because the excellent temperature of the air. And in order that I may be present, the Roman emperor had a summer palace in Nicaea. Nicaea was about 60 miles southeast of Istanbul on the mainland of Asia Minor in a town today called Iznik.

Iznik. So I know we have a number of Turkish speakers here. I don't know what's going on here in the Turkish language, but I know that you get Constantinople and from that, Istanbul, Istanbul, Istanbul. That is Istanbul. That's the old Constantinople reduced down.

So Nicaea, Nikea, Iznik. It's that is in front of it again, IS or IZ. You can tell me afterwards what's going on in the Turkish language, but it's the same town's name, Nicaea, only now it's, in modern way, it said Iznik. And it's still there. You can go visit it.

Well, at the time, Nicaea was a great port, and it was a crossroads of some important highways. It was a good location. It was a small city protected by a double ring of towers and connecting walls, and in through the gates of this small city about the time of the year we're in right now. This coming week, in fact, 1700 years ago, rode what looked like all the bishops of Christendom. Seven pastors from as far away as Spain, including Constantine's own religious advisor, Hosius of Cordova, a couple of deacons from the church at Rome, and over 300 pastors mostly from around the eastern part of the empire with those few from beyond, and hundreds of others attending those that were coming.

At the Council of Nicaea, the bishops assembled dealt with a number of other issues, which from Constantine's perspective were probably of greater importance. For example, the Council addressed the complex question of the dating of Easter, the marriage of pastors, and questions regarding church discipline. But by far the best known product of this early Council is the Nicene Creed, the profession of faith that you can find in your bulletin on page six. This Council began meeting 1700 years ago, this coming Thursday we think, and it met for several weeks. We don't know exactly the end date, but it seems sometime in July it finished.

There these gathered pastors took an already existing statement of faith, perhaps from Eusebius of Caesarea, and modified it to meet the particular concerns about Arius's teachings on Christ. So that's where the Council of Nicaea was. It was a gathering of pastors internationally. Second then, what the Council of Nicaea said, what the Council of Nicaea said. It would be strange to us, but were we to go back into the fourth century in the Greek-speaking world, we would find it was a world of philosophy and theology, where we might be talking about matters of politics or sports or finance.

Everyone was taken up with philosophical and theological questions. Gregory of Nyssa tells us a few years later about Constantinople that theology was a commonly discussed topic there. This city he wrote is full of artisans and slaves, each of whom is a profound philosopher. And they all preach in the workshops and the streets. If you ask a man to change a silver piece, he explains to you the difference between the Father and the Son.

If you ask the price of a loaf, you hear that the Son is less than the Father. If you ask whether your bath is ready, you get the reply that the Son was begotten from nothing.

The question before these pastors was simply the question we began considering this morning, who is Jesus? More specifically, was Jesus similar to God as Arius suggested, or was He equal to God as Alexander and Athanasius taught? Well, more clarification remained to come at Constantinople in 381. From Chalcedon in 451, and I don't think I'll be the pastor here in 2051 or 2081 to teach you through those, but I've got you with Nicaea. Here at Nicaea, the fundamental unity of the Son and the Father was explained clearly, as the Son came to be recognized to be not merely of a similar nature of the Father, but of the same nature.

So that is the big deal with Nicaea. So anytime you hear Nicaea mentioned, the one thing you should know, and you can work to understand more of the importance of it, but the one thing you should know is that they agreed what most of them thought coming into the council. It was not like the Da Vinci Code would suggest some new conspiracy that was come up with to do something weird and strange. No, it's what people largely thought. It's what the New Testament taught, but they were just getting agreement on particular words to be used, that the Father and the Son were of the same essence.

Of the same substance. Look at page 6 in your bulletin. You'll find this even here in the one we've used even today. Turn to page 6.

If you look there at line number 5, that is, From the essence of the Father, or two lines down, Begotten, not created, of the same essence as the Father. So earlier writers than this council had used that language, essence or substance that Nicaea had used. Writers like Tertullian, writers like Origen. But it fell to this council to get pastors to agree on the language and on what the language meant and on what the language did not mean. So understand the truth had long been taught, but Arius's question caused the gathered pastors to articulate the truth more clearly.

So if you're investigating Christianity, you'll sometimes hear in sincere statements, but they're ignorant, that, oh, it's at the Council of Nicaea that they created the canon. No. It is true that Athanasius, who's at the Council of Nicaea, in his Christmas letter, once he became the Bishop of Alexandria in 367, he did for the first time we have remaining, list of 27 books that we have in the New Testament. That's true. But he didn't thereby create the New Testament.

But for people who just glance at a topic slightly and they're told by someone, oh, the New Testament was created in this way. No, all Athanasius was doing there some years later was simply referencing the books that were universally accepted in the churches because they weren't all published together in one book as we do today. And so it was useful. To have a list like that. So friends, still more careful distinctions would be drawn, as I say, in 381 when the shared essence of the Father and the Son and the Spirit would be more clearly distinguished by their distinct persons as the Trinity came more clearly to be taught.

But it was this effort to understand how the incarnate Son of God, Jesus, is truly God that really helped us to understand God himself better. We came to understand God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit more.

Opposed to Arius were two others from Alexandria, the Bishop Alexander and his deacon Athanasius who succeeded Alexander. And it fell to Athanasius to really be the one who spent decades after this council defending this truth about Jesus, sharing the same essence as the Father, including in his classic book that you can still read called On the Incarnation. In fact, from the early church, from those centuries, the thing most often read today is probably Augustine's Confessions. And secondly, it'll be claimed to be Augustin's City of God, but it's too long, nobody really reads it. The second most read thing I'm sure is Athanasius' On the Incarnation.

It's brief and it's very good. So I would encourage you to read Athanasius' On the Incarnation, where Athanasius will make some of these arguments. The pastors at Nicaea concluded that only the Creator could save His creatures and that therefore the Savior must Himself be divine and not merely a creature. The Father and the Son were the same essence, they were co-eternal, and therefore they were entirely distinct from all that had been created. Being of the same essence, the Son cannot be the creation of the Father.

The Son must be eternal, not only because He shares the Father's essence, but because the Father is eternally the Father. So in the end, Arius lost the debate in the Council. As F.F. Bruce summarized the conclusion of the Council, To say that the deity of the Son is similar to but not identical with the deity of the Father is in effect to say that there are two gods. But the glory of God which shines in the face of Jesus Christ is the glory of the only living and true God, for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

While Arius refused to sign the resulting creed, two other bishops joined him in their honest and public dissent, and they were therefore removed from their offices. Arius and these two other bishops who refused to subscribe to the creed and its affirmation that the Father and the Son were of the same essence. And this was the doctrine enforced for the peace of the church and the empire. Constantine took that, ran with it. Again, people have wondered how determinative Constantine was in this.

What was an emperor doing calling a council in the first place? What kind of authority did he have? Well, he was the emperor, you know. He was a somewhat recent convert. And I don't think he was a lot of a theologian, though he did lecture regularly.

He was more lectures on moral duties. But I think he pretty much put his finger in the air, felt which way the wind was blowing and declared that. And that is, he was faithfully, and that says reflecting what the church has taught. That is how the Bible was almost entirely understood. But it was a helpful conversation that in God's providence was forced.

In the decades after Constantine's death, the conclusions of the Council of Nicaea continued to be debated, but they continued to commend themselves to the generations of Christians that followed them. So that's what the Council of Nicaea said. For more information on that, can I encourage you to get a copy of the book, St. of the Delightful Book by Michael Delighting in the Trinity. If you've not read Michael Delighting in the Trinity, it is a joyful book. Michael has an amazingly happy pen and he writes accurately, theologically, and yet with a warm smile.

And more recently and more briefly, Kevin DeYoung has written a little book on the Nicene Creed, Having an Eye to the 1700th Anniversary coming up. Knowing he could get this out in time, he wrote this very short introduction to the Nicene Creed. And this goes on and includes the creed that we'll use next Sunday, which is what we generally know when we say the Nicene Creed. It's the one most people use. You'll see that one next Sunday from 381.

But it does talk about this original creed of Nicaea, which is the germ of the Nicene Creed. It's expanded and amended a number of years later. And this will tell you more about the Creed and its significance. I encourage you to read it, in fact, so much so that the pastors of the Doors Out will have copies for some of you, a few select numbers of you, who will get to us first with earnest request that you want to read it and you will read it. You're not just taking it for reference, but you will sit and read the book.

It's not very long. We will happily give you those. And if we run out of those, I think there'll be some you can get at the bookstore for sale or you can order them yourself. Anyway, That's what the Council of Nicaea was. It began 1700 years ago this week, and that's what it said.

Now, finally, let me tell you why this matters, why is this important. And let me do this in two ways. Let me do this one in conversation with some non-Christian friends, and then two to us as Christians, okay? So let's just imagine some conversations. Let's say I'm talking to a friend who is a secularist that is a materialist.

There's a lot of people today. What does this truth about Jesus matter to them? Well were I talking to a skeptical friend, as I often have, I would warn them of the danger of assuming that reality must be both simple and self-evident to them. I understand this very comfortable position. I was an agnostic for some time and that was my position.

You know, if it's true, it's gotta be simple. It's got to be self-evident to me. But I think much experience in life will teach you that that's a deeply ignorant position. The world just doesn't bend to your particular way to see things or what you like or don't like. I certainly didn't find the world did that with me, and I can't imagine you're going to find the world does that with you.

You can have a broken arm whether or not you like it. You can have a very complicated disease whether or not you understand it.

There can be economic problems that escape you with your PhD in economics. There can be things that go on that are real and true and affect us, and yet they're not simple. So to skeptical friends who feel that it must be self-evident and simple, I would just challenge you, do you really act like that in other parts of your life? My guess is you don't. So if you realize in physical matters and economic matters and social matters and political matters, why not in essence in religious matters, in spiritual matters.

Why the reality may not be more complicated than it's immediately apparent to you. I think there are all kinds of ways that your materialism doesn't bear good fruit. So in your materialism, humans are just other animals. We're of no particular value or use. Only self-regard would cause you to value us just as a strategy for your own well-being as anything other than an animal or just even inert matter.

But friends, it doesn't work well when you start viewing other people like that. You will not have a fruitful society. Kipling said in his 1918 poem at the end of World War I in one stanza, A people and their king, through ancient sin grown strong, Because they feared no reckoning would set no bound to wrong. Because they feared no reckoning, there was not a God thought the Marxists that would ultimately call them to account. There was not a God thought the Nazis that would ultimately call them to account.

They feared no reckoning. Praise God for people who fear reckoning. Praise God for people who know that there is something above us.

So, as a secularist friend, I would just challenge you to specifically look into the claims of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, something that breaks the bounds of a materialist worldview, and then see from that you'll not begin to look at Jesus. To friends here today who might be more traditionally Jewish, let me just encourage you to look at the way in the Gospels Jesus' contemporaries reviewed him. Jesus himself reviewed him. Jesus himself was Jewish. And yet, many of the sincere Jews around him thought he was a blasphemer.

Why did they think that? He must have been teaching very clearly this. What the Council of Nicaea later kind of confirmed and worked out more, that he is claiming to be divine. Well, why, what should we make of Jesus' claims to be divine? Do they defeat the Scriptures' clear teaching of there being one God?

And the amazing thing is to you is that they do not. I think when you begin to understand more clearly who God is and how he's revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but one God, Scripture itself begins to become clearer. Many ways I can show that. Let me just give you one simple example. Isaiah 63.

So if we go to the prophet Isaiah chapter 63.

Here's an example of a passage that in the Old Testament is clearly said by the Lord about the Lord. Isaiah 63:7-9, I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that He has granted them according to His compassion, according to the abundance of His steadfast love. For He said, 'Surely they are my blind people, children who will not deal falsely, and he became their Savior. In all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

That's said by the prophet about Yahweh. But once we see the Son of God incarnate, we see how he lived that out. We see all the more clearly how true as the prophecy was when Isaiah gave it, the truth of it rings deeper still when we see it incarnated and personified in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. Many more passages of Scripture we could go to like that. In fact, what Jesus does with the disciples in Luke 24 after the resurrection, he sits down and reads with them through the Old Testament, showing them himself throughout Moses and Isaiah, the law and the prophets.

Let me turn for a moment to Muslim friends that may be here. By God's grace, I've had the opportunity to have a good number of friends who are Muslim, especially when I was living in England and I was studying at Cambridge. And I would just say to you that the New Testament that we show, that we have here is an accurate transmission from what was written down actually in the first century. Long before Muhammad lived, or the Quran was given, we had these documents written down. And what we find is that Jesus is insufficiently explained, even if you call him the greatest of the merely human prophets.

And this gets to the big difference between Islam and the gospel presented in the Bible. Islam sees our problem as simply needing to conform our actions to some very basic patterns or ways. The Gospel of Christianity says that our problem is much worse. It's not just about things we do, it's about who we are. And so that's a different reading.

I remember my friend, Bilal, I've told this story often, but maybe it was often like 20 years ago, so I'll try it again. I had a good friend, an earnest Muslim friend from Lebanon, Bilal. In Cambridge and we together had another friend in our college from Jordan Yasin and he got drunk a lot. And Bilal and I were both concerned about Yasin. We would both bemoan his state of indolence and, you know, missing tutorials and we loved Yasin and we just hated to see him kind of wasting this great opportunity he had.

But of course we had different desires. I decided him to become a Christian, Bilal wanted him to become a good Muslim, you know, but we would commiserate together over the problems in Yasin's life.

Well, you know, we had had Bill all over to our home. He had lunch with my wife and kids, our dinner with my wife and kids. And I remember I was talking one time about matters, and he just began to say, Look, the problem with this Christian nation, we were in England, is that, you know, there's just no order, there's no discipline, you know. And I said, well, Bill, you say that because you understand the problem is different than we as Christians would understand it. I don't think there is a Christian nation in the sense that you mean that.

Nations are earthly institutions. Individuals are Christian. There can be truly regenerate people. But you can have a nation that's Islamic if they will simply have Islamic laws and obey them. Because that's what Islam is, it's submission.

You think you can make me a sufficiently good bosom by putting a sword to my throat. He said, that's right. He was very clear about it. But he wasn't apologetic. He thought it was a good thing for society.

He thought dreamers like me actually hurt the world. You know, we're wanting too much. So it's an old and kind of respected position to view humanity's problem. It's basically just behavior. But I just said, Bill, as a Christian, I think I can put a sword to your throat, but that won't do anything to make you a Christian.

I think you in your heart have to understand your own guilt before God.

You have to pray and confess that, and then you have to trust in Jesus Christ as your substitutionary Savior, his life and death on the cross for your sins, and that God raised him from the dead, accepting that sacrifice. You have to believe that personally. Well, that's the kind of difference between a Muslim and a Christian, I think. And if you're here as a Muslim, I would just encourage you to think that maybe the problem is deeper than you've seen. Maybe Jesus is right.

Maybe the problem is with us and our natures. And we need more than a prophet. We actually need a savior to save us from the guilt of our sins. Well, there are others we could imagine talking to. Jehovah's Witnesses who basically reproduce Aries' error all over again.

Mormons who do the same when they talk about Jesus as a creature. First of the creatures, but a creature. Made by God. All of these people are dealing with the same kind of errors that you'll see dealt with by the Council of Nicaea as they think through the divinity of Jesus Christ. The last group I would just want to talk to briefly was just the kids who are here.

Kids, you are at a great time to try to sort out who you think Jesus is before you leave home. So before you leave home, when you're gonna get into a world that's not particularly good at explaining Jesus, you should talk to your parents and people at this church to try to figure out who in fact Jesus of Nazareth is. It'd be a great thing to just take this Nicene Creed that we have here, the Creed of Nicaea in our bulletin, and just put it under your mom and dad's noses at lunch today. And let's just think together. Can you explain this to me?

Ask them and see what it sounds like to you. Well, that's to people who may not yet be Christians. Final word just to us who are Christians. What difference does this make for us? And here I could have just had a whole series of sermons.

So I'll just give you a few little drops of what this means for us. Oh, what this means for us? What this means for us? To know that God himself is like this. To know the truth about what God is like.

That he is in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Friends, this is the only way we can understand Jesus' accurately. He lived and died as truly God and truly man. How else could he rightly accept worship, including our own? How else could he be called Emmanuel, God with us?

How else could we be motivated, not merely by his ethic, but indwelt by his very Spirit? Only because the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, begotten of the Father, is only begotten, that is from the essence of the Father. I love how Michael Reeves puts it at one point in this book. He says, Without Him we would be blinder than moles, never dreaming how fatherly God is. Oh!

I know when it's Father's Day, I'm going to get in conversation with people about having lousy fathers. I know a lot of people had great fathers, very thankful for them. Praise the Lord for that. One of the sweetest conversations I had was with a member here, he's no longer here, who had a very sweet relationship with his dad. And it just struck me as a father, I wanted to learn from his dad who was visiting one time about how he had been such a good dad.

And as I asked him, he told me about his own father. He had a terrible relationship with his father. So I said, you didn't learn it from your own dad? He said, no, not at all. My dad was terrible.

I said, how did you learn it? He said, Really just by becoming a Christian and understanding what my heavenly Father is like, that's how I've wanted to be with my son. And friends, I'm not saying that quick nostrum will heal all your diseases, but I'm just letting you know there is a resource that we have as Christians in coming to understand the truth about God that is sweet and powerful. And maybe you've been frustrated reading your Bible lately. It's not giving you the kind of guidance you want.

It's not exciting. You're just finding stuff about somebody's reign or some genealogy somewhere. Well friend, maybe that's because you've been picking up the Bible thinking it was a book about you. When all the time it's been a book about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is who reveals God to us.

When you understand the Bible is about Jesus, it starts making a lot more sense, even the Old Testament. And when you understand who Jesus is, then you understand who God is. You will not understand God accurately without Jesus. Friends, because of who Jesus is, we have a Savior because God the Son became incarnate as a man. Had he not assumed human nature, he would not have been united with us.

He could not have represented or substituted that for which he was not, with which he was not united. None of the legion of bulls and goats sacrificed in the Old Testament did anything to saving us. They simply pointed forward to the real sacrifice that would come. Jesus needed to be truly human to stand as a second Adam, but he needed to be truly God if his sacrifice was going to have more value than simply his own life. Even as a substitute, there is a worth to a life of the Son of God that more than satisfies the requirements of justice for the sins of Adam and all of us who would ever repent and believe.

But because of Jesus being who he is, because he was truly human, he wasn't just a spirit floating around, we have a real example. You see his great affections he has for his disciples, for his father as he rejoices. He wasn't merely a spirit. We see the Son taking pleasure in honoring His Father. And we find as we read through the Gospels, what B.B.

Warfield calls in his one essay, the Emotional Life of Our Lord, a wonderful, rich life that we can learn from and imitate. Because Jesus is fully God and fully man, we can have hope. Romans 5:2, Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Friends, how do we understand the glory of God apart from Christ? 2 Corinthians 3:18, We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

Friend, do you realize that nothing in your life escapes the control of the very one who died for you? Nothing in your life escapes the control of the very one who died for you. This very morning one of our pastors, Riley Barnes, a way like so much of our congregation is today, texted me a wonderful little bit from William Gurnall, Christian in Complete Armor, that I share with you now. Hold fast to the assurance that God is watching every move of Satan and will not let him have the final victory. He can, when God allows it, rob the Christian of much of his peace and joy, but he's always under command.

When God says, Stay, he must stand like a dog by the table while the saints feast on God's comfort. He does not dare to snatch even a tidbit, for the Master's eye is always on him. You lose much comfort when you forget that God's hand is always raised above Satan and that His loving eye is always on you. Friends, because of Christ being fully man and fully God. We know that he prayed and that his prayers were heard, even in John 17 when he prays for us.

You realize he prayed for us. John 17 verses 8 and 9, I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you've given me out of the world. For they are yours, all are mine are yours, and all yours are mine, and I glorify them.

I'm no longer in the world, but they are in the world. And I'm coming to you, Holy Father, keep them in your name. We are kept by this one. Because God the Son became human, we are called to share in Christ's glory. 2 Corinthians 4:4, In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

We were made to know God in his image. We were made to reflect his glory. We want not simply to know Christ about Christ, but we want to know him personally. Friends, we keep going of Christ's return. Titus chapter 2.

Paul speaks of the return of Christ as the blessed hope. Having the sure hope for tomorrow affects how we live today. Friends, I could go on and on. These are just some of the blessings that were given as believers in understanding the truth about God. What edifying conversation it would be if over lunch you tried to name still more.

What are more blessings that we have been given because God became man? We should conclude, you've been very patient of what must have in part seemed like a history lecture. I pray that God makes the truth of the Bible ever clearer to you. Truth precedes error, but responding to errors helps us clarify the truth. Truth precedes error, but responding to errors helps to clarify the truth.

Remember, the Bible is not so much about us as it is about Christ. Jesus said to the people of His own country, you, search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about Me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. That Jesus is the very center of the Bible becomes delightfully clear the more we understand its message.

Beginning to understand who Jesus is is like getting the key piece of a puzzle so that life makes sense. That was my own experience again, I mentioned having been an agnostic. It was when I came to understand Jesus, who he was, that all of a sudden the Bible The Bible made sense and then history began to make sense and my own life began to make sense. I pray that that's your experience. You know, in the Old Testament in Exodus 34:6, there's really a puzzling riddle about God.

It's there that we read of God's revelation of himself to Moses and he says, Exodus 34:6, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. But who will by no means clear the guilty. What could that possibly mean? How could God be so righteous and yet so merciful? Well, the Old Testament doesn't tell us explicitly.

Perhaps clearest, it's foreshadowed in the sacrificial system, clearest in Isaiah 52:53, but it doesn't really tell us.

Now, to answer that question, we need to go to the New Testament, where Paul wrote about Jesus Christ in Romans chapter 3. Look at Romans chapter 3, verses 21 to 26. While you're turning there, I'll tell you, a good friend of mine who's preached here before, H.B. Charles, told me that he was recently asked to preach at a church, and he prepared a message on this paragraph. Which as he and I talked about, we agreed to be the most important paragraph in the Bible.

And then when he got there, he was told he only had 30 minutes to preach. And he said, I cannot preach on this passage in 30 minutes. So he came up with another sermon. So I, being always on the lookout for the good of your souls, said to HB, HB, you have an invitation to come to the Capitol Hill Baptist Church and preach for as long as you want on Romans 3:21-26. And each Sunday this this fall or coming spring?

Just tell me when. So he promises he's gonna get back with one. Romans 3:21 to 26. This is how the riddle of Exodus 34:6 is answered. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who who believe. For there's no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation, that is a wrath satisfying sacrifice, by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just holy, good, and the justifier, merciful of the one who has faith in Jesus. Boom.

So if you don't do any other cross references in your Bible, the two you've got to put in, at Exodus 34:6, you've got to just scribble in the margin, Romans 3:21-26. And Romans 3:21-26, you've got to scribble, Exodus 34:6. That's the most important cross reference in the Bible. That stitches the two testaments together. That tells us that it is all, literally all, about Jesus.

And I love the way Jesus himself did this. The piece of scripture we see him quoting most often, and I have to think almost impishly, is in Mark 12. It's Psalm 110, verse 1.

He socratically deconstructed the Pharisees unbelief by just pointing to a single verse in the Old Testament. And he did it again and again. Psalm 110:1, you should learn to use it with your friends. Psalm 110:1, here's how Jesus evangelized his fellow Jews.

Mark 12:36-37, David himself in the Holy Spirit declared, the Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at My right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.' David himself calls Him Lord, so how is He His Son? And the great throng heard him gladly. Because you see, when he's quoting David saying, the Lord, well that means Yahweh, he said to my Lord, well this is David speaking, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. This was understood to be a statement about the son of David. Yet how can David call his son his Lord?

Well, there's no good answer in the Old Testament. But if you come to the new, you get the wonderful answer of who Jesus is. David's son is Jesus Christ. He is His Lord. Christ was fully human.

So we value human life. We believe very much that being a Christian calls us to recognize that there is more than this life. But that realization, knowing that there is that reckoning, helps us to value this life more because the story of our human lives, Christian or non-Christian, is part of a far greater a grander tale. So the Messiah is David's human descendant born in Bethlehem. But also note that by teaching who the Messiah is, Jesus teaches about who He is.

Psalm 110 verse 1 shows us that Jesus is greater than David. Jesus here sets out the basis for our understanding of Christ as fully God and fully man. As Paul would write in Galatians 4, When the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the to redeem those under law that we might receive the full rights of sons. And as the disciples came to understand this, they would no doubt replay what they had seen and heard from Jesus during his time with them. They would go back through their memories.

Once he was raised, and he had that seminar with them in Luke 24 about what the Old Testament really meant, and they would re-understand every day they'd spent with him. They would remember Jesus forgiving sin and calling himself the Lord of the Sabbath. They would perhaps get why he would have referred to coming to his father in his father's glory. With his holy angels, or about him giving his life as a ransom for sins. Clearly, Jesus thought of himself as more than merely human.

Thus he taught that he would be sitting at the right hand of power. He rebukes the sea and he walks on it. He heals and commands demons. The Lord is one, as Jesus had just taught, and he is the Lord. And David refers to Psalm 110, verse 1, as we sing in Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted, Jesus is David's son and David's Lord.

Friends, centuries later, as Arius challenged this understanding of Jesus, the disciples of the day recalled and considered afresh the doctrine of Jesus Christ and his apostles at the Council of Nicaea. So who is Jesus Christ? As the Bible teaches and as our older brothers at Nicaea taught us to say, He is true God from true God, begotten, not created, of the same essence as the Father, who for us and for our salvation came down. Do you believe this?

Let's pray together. Lord God, when our faith seems weak and dry, we pray that yout would pour out yout Holy Spirit on us. You'd cause youe Word to come alive to us. Lord, that yout would invade our souls with wonder, and that yout would create love where before was only indifference or even hate. Lord, draw us to Yourself.

Thank youk for all youl have done. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.