I believe in...

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning. It's good to be here today and be with you. Let's pray. Lord God, we praise and thank you this day. Your mercy and grace is amazing. And you've given us yourself, you've revealed yourself, you've shown yourself in ways that just astound us. And so we're here to learn, to grow, and to believe. We thank you, Lord, that we do belong. We belong to you and everyone belongs here because this is your church. And you are the host and you are the one who does it all. We thank you that this is not the only place in Estero or this community or area that you are present in this morning. We thank you for all the other gospel ministries around us, from Summit to Hope to Zion to Gulf Coast Presbyterian to so many more. We can't even name them all. We thank you, Lord, for them. We pray that we all are built up in the faith, but more that you create a movement through all of us for your kingdom's sake that goes well beyond our walls and well beyond ourselves so that we are that universal church that we confess in those words of the Apostles' Creed. So bless this time and the start of this new series, Lord, by your presence among us today. In Jesus' name, amen. Hey, it's great to be here and to start this pretty basic in one sense sermon series. You can find out more about this. You can go on to the YouVersion of the Bible and you can look up under events on the YouVersion. The notes for this sermon series, Thrive Community Church Foundations, and you'll get it all there. We're going to start out, though. So we're going to be reading from the book of Romans, chapter 10, verses 5 through 13 to begin with. So it'll be up on the screen as well as what you can get on your phone on that app. And this is what Romans says, For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all. Bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now some of you are really familiar with the Apostles' Creed. Because you came from potentially a church background, more traditional, more liturgical, maybe mainstream Protestant, whatever it is. And you recited this creed again and again and again. And there are probably others who are kind of questioning right now. Or there might be others who are questioning, going like, wait a minute. Because you came from a tradition that never talked about. In fact, what you heard from your churches was something like, no creed but the Bible. Have you ever heard that one before? That's the next slide, by the way. No creed but the Bible. Just kind of checking. We'll get on it. And I understand that because there is this concern. Like, what do you mean you're going to spend all this time on a human-made creed that isn't really in the Bible itself? And let me let you be reassured today. We're not going to be preaching the Apostles' Creed. We're going to be using the Apostles' Creed to shape our preaching. And all of that's going along with it. Creeds themselves do not have any authority. But they're derived authority because they're basically saying, this is what the Bible teaches. And I'm going to get a little snarky right now with you, okay? No creed but the Bible. Do you understand that most cults and most other organizations will say, we're teaching exactly what the Bible says? So the real question always comes down to, finally, anyways, what do you believe the Bible says? What does the Bible teach? And the Apostles' Creed becomes a great summary in a nutshell of what the Bible teaches and confesses. So we're going to be spending eight weeks from now through December 11th on the creed. Take a break for Christmas celebrations and then join back in on January 8th and finish it up. So 13 total weeks. And here's why we're doing this, okay? I think there are three main reasons what we can gain from something like the Apostles' Creed as we teach and what the scriptures say about who our God is and what he is about, okay? The first is that the creed will help us develop balance, okay? And by that I mean it gives us a robust understand...