THE APOSTLE’S CREED – THE DECLARATION OF FAITH

Text: Romans 10:9-10  That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
INTRODUCTION:  My dear friends in Christ, Kurios Christos (Christ is Lord) was the creed of a group of people in the Roman. Empire in the late first century A.D. This Christian group was far more politically concerned than its simple faith formula might suggest. They lived in a time and place in which all loyal, patriotic citizens were required to assert once every year, "Kurios Caesar," which means “Caesar - the State - is Lord." So when these Christians pronounced their creed, “Kurios Christos" they were not only saying "Christ: is Lord,”- but they were also saying-," the State – “Caesar” not Lord." They were affirming what the Lord had told their Israelite forebears on Mount Sinai: “You shall have no other gods before me."   As we can see the declaration of faith and creeds are as old as the Christian Church.
I. The declaration of faith and creeds have their beginning in the hearts of men where faith is placed by God.
	A.  God creates faith through His Word and Sacraments and from that flows our declaration of that faith with our mouths.
		1.  Our Lord enters our hearts using His Word and Sacraments.
				a. There He creates faith. b. There He creates life where there was only death
		2.  The faith He gives is not some nebulous thing, not some shapeless mass - there is content to our faith.  He gives faith in something real. He gives faith in His Son. We then believe certain things about God's Son Jesus.  Things God has revealed.  Like:
				a. Jesus became a man.  He lived a perfect life.  He never sinned. b. He was the perfect sacrifice for our sin.  He  suffered and died for us on the cross.  As HE died God punished Him for our sin. c. He rose again from the dead on the third day never to die again. d. These and other things - many of which we cannot understand - are the content of our faith. They are what God says about Himself and Jesus and we believe them because they are what God says about Himself.
	B. When we are given faith then we acknowledge Jesus as Lord as those early Christians did.  We acknowledge Jesus as Lord in our hearts.
		1.  We are turned away from "self" and turn to Jesus. We need Him because of what God tells us about ourselves.  He says we are sinners and we acknowledge what He says about us.
				a. We say, "I am a sinner" as God tells, us we are.  We don't say you are a sinner.  We don't say I am less a sinner than someone else.  We just say, “I am a sinner." b. Then we are brought to say, "I am forgiven for Jesus sake." Now we depend on Him totally for forgiveness.  Our standing before God depends entirely of Jesus.  In our hearts we trust in Him for forgiveness and eternal life.
			2.  We also trust in Him for our lives here and now, in other words, instead of trusting ourselves we place our fate in Jesus' hands.  Now we are brought to say that:
				a. We cannot control our own fates. b. Put our loving God is in control.
II.  But in our text. Paul writes that faith in the heart needs to be confessed with the mouth.  You might say that faith in the heart overflows to the mouth.  With the mouths of men - faith must be declared.  Then we show that our faith is genuine. Like in this story: In a Sunday School meeting a little towheaded Norwegian boy stood up. He could hardly speak a word of English, but he got up and came to the front. He trembled and the tears trickled down his cheeks as He said, "If I tell the world about Jesus, He will tell the Father about me.-  That was all he said, but in those few words he said more than all the rest of them. The words went straight to the hearts of all who were present.  "If I tell the world- - yes, that what it means to declare faith in Christ. Faith in the heart always speaks out. Matthew quotes Jesus saying the same thing when he record's: -Whoever acknowledges me before man I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.      But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven."
	A.   Faith is declared with words from our mouths - we do this in two ways:
			1.  We do this in formal statements of faith.
				a. The creed “Kurios Christos” (Christ is Lord) of the early Christians is on such example of a formal statement of faith. b. the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed are examples of creeds that we use today in declaring our faith. c. We as a church speak these words before men. d. We stand together and declare what we believe. And in effect we say what God has said in His word.
			2.  Standing beside formal creeds are the informal and personal declarations.
				a. Here we acknowledge Him before men on days other than Sunday, and in ways other than formal creeds. b. These are words born from belief in the heart and spoken in our everyday life.  They may be as simple as a "God bless you” when someone sneezes or as complicated as witnessing to someone who doesn't know Jesus c. This is where we often fail in our statements of faith - it is easy to speak together the words of a formal creed.  It is a different matter to make it personal and say it to someone face to face or on Monday at work.  It is difficult because we often want to separate our -church life from our day to day life. But when we do this aren't we really saying we are ashamed of Jesus. Or we really don't believe what we declare on a Sunday.  God forgives our reluctance end moves us to declare what we truly believe even gives us the strength to make our statement of faith. d. We can see an example of personal - informal statements of faith in these two different Martins: At the beginning of the Reformation, Martin of Basel came to a knowledge of the truth, but, afraid to Make a public confession, he wrote on a leaf of parchment: "O most merciful Christ, I know that I can be saved only by the merit of your Blood. Holy Jesus, I acknowledge your sufferings for me. I love you! I love you!" Then he removed a stone from the wail of his chamber and hid the note there. It was not discovered for more than a hundred years.  About the same time the other Martin(Luther) found the truth as it is in Christ.  He said: "My Lord has confessed me before men; I will not shrink from confessing Him before kings”. The world knows what followed. (See Luther movie) e. Sometimes the cost of declaring our faith can be great but these costs are only in things of this world. Our victory is assured through Christ. Eternal life is ours.  And that supersedes any worldly cost.
	B. Outward confession not only involves words spoken but it  involves deeds also. When God gives faith it changes our hearts, it changes our words, it changes our deeds.
			1.  Faith gives rise to love - the kind of love that Jesus showed.  He spoke saying greatest declaration of faith is seen in love.
				a. First in Love for God. b. Then in Love for man.
			2.  Faith gives rise to witnessing.  The joy of the gifts God gives cannot remain ours alone there is a need to share. To give God's gifts away to others,
				a. We witness when we proclaim Jesus is Lord. Our witness comes through our word or the words of others whom we support. b. We witness in how we live.  People see a change.  People see that Jesus means everything to us.
CONCLUSION:  I would like to conclude with an example of a statement of faith:  There once was a family who lost three of its four children within just two weeks from a deadly disease.  One child was left, a four year old boy. The family had buried the third child just two weeks before Easter. On Easter morning' the parents and the remaining child went to church. The mother told her Sunday school class about the resurrection of Christ. The father read the Easter story in Sunday school as he led the devotions.      People who knew of their great loss wondered how they could do it.  On the way home, a 16-year-old youth asked his father. "Dad, that couple must really believe everything about the Easter story, don 't they?” The father replied -"Of course. they believe it. All Christians do.”-But then the son said: “But not as they do," Creeds involve more than just words on a Sunday. It involves our hearts, our mouths, our whole lives. God creates faith and that faith effects everything about us, especially what we say about Him.