He descended to hell

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. So today we are going to be covering a lot of different Bible verses, actually, because this is one of the more puzzling aspects of the Apostles' Creed, the phrase that we're getting into today. We're going to start out with a basic passage. I think I preached on this on Easter. A while back, and I've used this passage a number of times. It's 1 Corinthians chapter 15, just verse 1 through 4. You can follow along with the sermon on the You version of, and I see Otto's doing that right now on his phone. The notes with all the quotes and everything are in there, in that version. We'd love for you to follow along there and take notes along with it. Or later on this week, you can download our app, listen to us online, and I know we're live streaming right now. Right, Wyatt? We are not live streaming right now. We are recording for Tuesday and not live streaming. Okay. The network is a little wonky. Is that what we're saying? Okay. Well, okay. So we're not live streaming. I think I know some people who are not happy right now because of that, but that's okay. They can't be here. We've got a lot of people traveling, and so when they are traveling, they're able to watch it online instead. That's kind of nice. Okay. So we're going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and which you stand in, by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. So last week we went into great length with the phrase in the Apostles' Creed, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. Okay. And we said that we didn't want to just state the facts that Jesus lived, he died, and he rose again, but we wanted to get to the implications of those facts, the theological truth behind it. And we went to Romans chapter 5, where Paul explains in a way what all was happening at the cross, because at first they thought it was the worst day ever that the Messiah was crucified and rejected by the very people he was coming to reign over, to serve, to love, to give. But after the resurrection, the penny dropped, they were starting to get it. And Paul says in Romans 5, these two words became very important. This is what God did through the cross of Jesus. God reconciles and justifies us. He justifies us and he reconciles us to God and to each other, creating one universal community that is both global and local, a community of grace. That's what we were talking about last week. And we also explained the fact that everybody wants to be justified. We want to be right. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want to be accepted. We want to be respected. We want to somehow, and we have to in some way or another, justify our actions and our reason for being. Why am I here? What am I about? Etc. But the problem with us is we try to justify ourselves by looking at ourselves. We look in the wrong direction. When God is the one who justifies us in Jesus Christ, while we were sinners, while we are guilty, while we were wrong, through the wrong that was done to Jesus on the cross, we are made right. Isn't that amazing? Great reversal. And we celebrated that last week. OK, great news for us. Now we're getting to one of the most puzzling parts of the Apostles' Creed. And I'm going to focus on the first section of this because I've preached on the resurrection before, and it's not an old thing by any means, but I think they fit together. The resurrection and this phrase that we're going to look at, he descended into hell on the third day he rose again from the dead. Now, before I'm talking about that puzzling feature of the Creed, I want to kind of share a little more and make this clear point. This is the whole point. If you, I know you could walk out after this. So, but this is the point of this whole phrase, what I believe about it. And that is this. It's simple. Are you ready for simple? Jesus is Lord over all. OK, over all. There is no space or place or circumstance or situation that Jesus is not Lord. There is no one to defy his realm or his reign. There is no other place to be where Jesus is. There is not one square inch, one square centimeter, one atom, one micron of this whole creation in which Jesus is not Lord. And I think that's what this phrase in the Creed is getting at. OK, and we're going to look at that implications today. And I think it is good news for us that death, the devil and hell itself has no, no standing. And Jesus is Lord over all of these things. Now, when we're confessing the words of the Apostles Creed, it's not like we'r...