Most of us know that we started this study last week. And trying to have this be a pretty thorough study of the Trinity and different aspects of things. I want it to be thorough. I want it to be helpful. At the end of the day, the reason to study something like this is not just so that we know stuff, but part of this is the more that we understand God in His, I guess His being, right? His essence, the Trinity, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, the various different ways the Bible talks about this. What it should do is encourage in us a desire to continue to grow and to continue to know more about the Lord, to be reminded about stuff maybe that we've already learned. You know, the more we know the Lord, the better we can worship Him. The more, you know, our hearts are extended towards Him and we can love Him better the more we know. And so that's kind of the purpose of this. It really should be the purpose of all theological study is, first of all, to lead us to know the truth better in order to be better worshipers and servants of God. We do learn theology for other reasons, but if it doesn't bring that to us, we're approaching the theological study kind of incorrectly. if it doesn't help us to know God and to worship and serve Him better. So, the Trinity is sort of a foundational truth. We talked about this last week, the first page of the handout, really, we ran through all of that. But Trinity itself, the word, breaks down into two parts, meaning tri-unity. which we'll often say is three Persons with one essence. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. There's a distinction in the Persons, and we'll see some of that today, particularly in the New Testament verses that demonstrate most of this to us. But they're one in essence. And so we started with that last week about the monotheistic nature of Christianity. that's like Judaism, there is only one God. There's not three gods. And this is one of the heresies that can come from overemphasizing the distinction in the three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being distinct, but yet all God, all deity, all eternal and infinite and, you know, all of the characteristics that define God. If they're distinct persons without the one essence, you end up really with what would be three gods, a polytheistic religion, which is the accusation of some who deny the reality of the Trinity, you know, as they come at it and say, well, there's too much distinction here. These cannot be one God. You either have three gods or you have one God and a created Jesus and something else with the Spirit. We'll eventually get to talk in the weeks ahead about the heresies and sort of how that works. We are wanting to make sure that we don't leave behind the truth that is dominant in the Old Testament. So we talked about last week, right? The dominant revelation of God in the Old Testament is one God. Even we looked at Deuteronomy 4 or 6 last week about the Shema, this statement that's made in Deuteronomy 6 that becomes in history a daily prayer of the Jewish worshiper is that there's only one God, right? And that's the thing that sets them apart largely from most of the Canaanite religions and the other pagan religions in the world at that time. They're all polytheistic. Even in Jesus' day, right, the Romans and the Greeks are infamously polytheistic. They have lots of gods. And so Christianity, with its historical basis in Judaism, is different than that. And so we see that, but yet we see, especially in the New Testament, the revelation of three. involved in God. Last week we covered a bunch of different Old Testament verses. They're on the first page of the handout and the second page, at least the first section, about different places where we read in the Old Testament, like in creation, right? That there's a plurality when God says, let us make man in our image. There's something where there's more than one something. It's not explained. It's not defined. They're not given names. They're not identified as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's kind of vague. But when we look back from what we learn in the New Testament about the Trinity, we see it present in certain places in the Old Testament. And so that's kind of what we went through last week in this stuff that comes through the creation accounts. And I think we ended last week on page 2 with a handout there at the top. The angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. There's places where, and there's some of the verses there for reference, so we're not going to go back over, but there's places in the Old Testament where there's an interaction between a man, say Moses, at the burning bush. And there's an identification that God is present, but yet, The description is the angel of the Lord speaks to him. And speaks to him about God in the third person. What do we have here? What do we have in these angel of the Lord instances? Trinitarian theologians look at that and understand, looking backwards through what's revealed in the New Testament, that what we have here is most likely the angel of the Lord being pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. Pre-incarnate Christ. Before He becomes incarnate. Before He's born. as a man. The revelation of the Son and the Father at least. The Holy Spirit's usually there somewhere, but not super-identified. Like I said, they're vague. Without the New Testament, we might not think this way. When we look backwards through the New Testament, we can see some of these things. How do we know that the angel of the Lord is maybe Jesus, pre-incarnate Christ? Well, He speaks about God in the third person the way Jesus does. Speak about the Father. in the third person throughout most of the gospel accounts, right? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus is constantly talking about His Father, our Father, the Father as a third person. At the same time, there's places we'll see where He talks about how He and the Father are one. That's a different kind of a teaching that he brings to us. But Jesus is separate in the New Testament. So you see this in the angel of the Lord stuff. You also see men like Moses or some of them who worship the one who's identified as the angel of the Lord. Remember any times in Old or New Testament when an angel appears and men, women fall down, bow down to worship the angel? What's the angel always say when you're talking about a created angel? What do they always say? Get up. Right? Stop it. You may not worship me. Wrong. Time out. Right? Same thing that Paul does a couple of times when the snake bites him on the island after the shipwreck, and they think he's a god because he doesn't die from the viper bite. They worship him. He's like, I'm a man, just like you are. Well, the angels do something similar because they're created beings. But the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament accepts worship. Now, if he's a holy angel, that's sin, and he's not a holy angel anymore. That's probably the worst kind of sin. It's relative to how does Satan himself, Lucifer the angel, get kicked out of the heavenly service? Pride. He wants to be worshipped, right? And so this is how we kind of work through all of those things. Last week we sort of ended with that, trying to just pick up these hints out of the Old Testament. Oh, there's two sections. Sorry, I missed it. We did talk about the Messianic Psalms, right, on page 2? So we got to that point. These Psalms where even the Jewish theologians look at them and consider, you know, like Psalm 2, God speaks and says, you need to kiss the Son, lest He become angry with you. There's these revelations of the coming Messiah. Like I said, the Jewish theologians and scholars understood those to be Psalms that predict the Messiah. And they present Him as God, who is in some ways distinct from the Father. We talked about some of the words Elohim, Jehovah, Adonai. And even this quotation from the last one quoted there in Psalm 110 where it says that the Lord said to my Lord, sit down and put your feet up until I make Your enemies a footstool. Who's writing that psalm? David's writing about my Lord said to the Lord. There's some ways that you would kind of wish that they would just go ahead and put the Hebrew words in the Old Testament and we could learn what they mean. Like, we shouldn't be this dumb where there's 17 words for God and we don't know any of them. It doesn't have to be like that, but that's the way our English Bibles are translated. But that verse is, My Adonai said to Jehovah. Jehovah said to My Adonai. The Lord said to My Lord. Sit down. Jehovah said to My Adonai. Well, those are both names for God, but there's a distinction where they're speaking to each other. And we see that in the revelation of the Messiah. Now, this explodes for us when the Messiah actually is incarnate, right? We see it from the very beginning of John's Gospel. So, the next section on your handout, from midway down through page 2, begins some of the New Testament evidence of the three persons. And so, John 1, right from the beginning, we should at least know some of this, right? Let's start splitting up the verses so that people can read. And I don't have to keep talking, okay? And since I did the summary, now we have the discussion part. So, somebody in John 1, I want to read verses 1-3 and then verse 14. Paul, do you want to get ready with Matthew 3 there, those verses? Somebody want to be ready to read John 10, 30? Josh, thanks. Matthew 28, 19. Ivan, thanks. 1 Corinthians 8, 4-6. Micah, I'm going to forget who I said, so just remember your spot, okay? Colossians 3, Samantha, thanks. And Jovita, do you want to do 2 Thessalonians 2? And 1 Peter 1 to Alita, thanks. So these are not all the verses, but these are some of the clear verses. There's a distinction. There's three persons being revealed. So John 1, some of us, hopefully we'd have some of this memorized at some point. But let's just start there. Who is first? OK, darling, you're first. So this is a big opening to the gospel. And John makes reference here. Unquestionably, John makes reference to creation, doesn't he? In the beginning? What beginning is he talking about? It's the same phrase that's at the beginning of Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. John begins with, in the beginning. It's undeniably a reference to that. And what does he say about that? Back there where we read in Genesis, let us make man in our image, what does John explain to us? When the beginning was God and who? The Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. See the distinction? I never say that Dorian was with Dorian, right? Dorian was with Ivan. Dorian was with Mandy. It indicates that there's two of us. At least, right? The Word was with God and the Word was God. Hold on, wait. But I never say, I am Ivan or I am Mandy, right? I mean, one verse right there. You've got to explain this. What do we have in view here? We should be able to at least identify that this is a place where we see the Trinity being more identified more clearly with the first verse of John than everything in the Old Testament put together. The clarity becomes very plain. And this isn't the only place where it's explained. It's not hardly explained, but it's identified, right? What does God do in the beginning? What does God do in the beginning? Genesis 1-1. What's the whole story of Genesis 1 and 2 about? Creation, right? John hits it, right? He was with God in the beginning and all things were made through Him. Through whom? The Word, whoever that is. We don't know yet in John's Gospel. We're in v. 3. We know that the Word is separate from God. There's a distinction. And the Word is present at creation and everything's created through Him. In fact, nothing that's ever been created has ever been created other than by Him. The Word, whoever He is. Ivan? I was just going to say too that when it says the Word was with God, I've always thought of Jesus was already there. It wasn't like He was created. That's right. It doesn't say the Word was created by God to accomplish creation. The Word was with God, was from before the beginning. From before creation. These are things that define God, right? Present before creation, eternal, and then everything's created by Him. Those are super basic understandings, even in the pagan religions, about who God is. Well, this is the Word. I add v. 14 for an obvious reason, right? Who's the Word? Well, the One who was made flesh. Who dwelt among us. Us who, John? John the Apostle. Us who? He's an eyewitness, right? John's an eyewitness. That's the whole point of the Gospel of John. He was there. We've seen His glory. The glory of what relationship? What's the identification at the end of verse 14? The only Son from the Father. The only Son from the Father. The only one. The one unique Son of God. Isn't that how Jesus identifies Himself? This is how they knew Him. John starts right from the beginning. Jesus is God. He's with God. He's one with God. He's distinct from God as a Father and Son. That's the beginning of the revelation in John's Gospel. John's Gospel is extraordinarily Trinitarian. As we'll see here in a little bit, after we kind of cover the verses we've handed out, the next section is these I Am statements of Christ in John's Gospel. So John's very interested in explaining this, at least demonstrating this truth to us. Okay? Is that clear? We good? Questions so far? Other comments? Matthew 3. Who is that? Paul, are you Matthew 3? Will you read verses 16 and 17, please? Okay, so it's not just John, is it? Matthew makes this very clear. When do we see the identification of three distinct persons in the life of Christ according to Matthew 3? That is baptism, right? It precedes everything about His ministry. If you go back to John 1 and look, before the end of chapter 1, Jesus is baptized. What happened there? The Father speaks from heaven to the Son who's present in human incarnation, and the Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove. They're all identified. Three distinct persons, right? Are we clear? Some of this isn't such a big surprise, but when we all stack them up together like this, we see in the Gospel accounts that the way that the Holy Spirit inspired these things to be communicated to us is, the first thing that we've got to get right is that Jesus isn't just a man. He's part of the Godhead. He's the Son in the Trinity. And it becomes identified very early See what I mean by this being a foundational truth? You see it in the demonstration of how the Gospel is presented? Okay. That's all I wanted to see. John 10. Back to John. John 10.30. Josh, thanks. You've got to love the simplicity of some verses, right? John takes a little bit as Jesus is working through His earthly ministry. The early thing is that we've got to get that Jesus is God. There's a distinction here, but then Jesus starts teaching this way. I and the Father are one. And what we see all of a sudden in this statement is the clearest possible identification of the Trinity in the way that we've already defined it, right? Three persons, one essence. One God. One. We're one. When Jesus says we're one, what does he mean? We're one in how we look? What are the characteristics that he's one with the Father? What's that? Yeah, one being, one essence. I understood in what characteristics, right? Yeah, it's not that they're similar. Right? It's not that Jesus is just a poor Xerox copy of. Right? He is, in fact, everything that the Father is. The exact imprint of His nature. Is that Hebrews or Colossians? I can't remember. That's one of the descriptions. He is the exact imprint of God's nature. If He is everything that God is, what is He? God. Right? It's not like looking in the mirror. It's not a reflection. We can reflect God's glory like a mirror. Like the way the moon reflects the sunlight. The moon appears to be a source of light in the night sky to us. But we know that it's not the source of the light. It's just a reflection of light. Jesus is not just a reflection of the Father. We kind of have that. We're made in the image of God. Right? An image. Tainted by sin, becomes a really poor image. But Jesus isn't just an image of God without sin. Who is he? What is he? He's the source of the light. That gets demonstrated in a physical way. I don't remember if I put the transfiguration here, but somewhere in here. The transfiguration, Jesus reveals his glory. And what is it? Blinding light emanating from inside, not reflecting off of anything. the demonstration of this. Jesus is one with the Father. In everything that makes the Father God, Jesus is that. All-knowing, all-powerful, eternal, infinite, ever-present, and yet, not contained in a man, but incarnate. We have no other way to describe the Word other than He became a man. He adds a second nature. And I said we're not going to discuss in this study necessarily focus on the dual nature of Christ as a man and God. That's probably a follow-on study when we'll do that, where we talk about Christ in particular. But as a member of the Trinity, this is how He's revealed to us. A member, a person, one, one in essence. Now if that makes total sense to you, let's trade places. Okay? Because we said this when we were talking about how we're defining things is we really fail to be able to comprehend God in every aspect of his nature. What we are charged with in the scripture is understanding it and accepting it, believing it, trusting in it, right? It's not so much that we have the faculty, the ability to understand it. This is where most of the heresies come from, is forcing the thought that in order for this to be true, I have to be able to comprehend it. Not true. Right. I mean, if you really think about it, I know this is very simple. If you take a ball and you put water on it and you spin it, the water flies off the ball. But you got this earth spinning and everything sucked to the earth. So there's something about it that we can't, I mean, we can have all the scientific facts about it, but we still can't understand it. I mean, I don't. I can't, somebody might, but not me. But if somebody can understand that, there's some other aspect they can't understand of something that's going on in the universe. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Well, and just because of the fact that I don't understand it doesn't mean it's not true, right? Nobody in their right mind is climbing to the roof of the building and saying, I don't believe in gravity and jumping off, you know? That's detrimental to your health. Same thing's true about, I don't believe in the Trinity because I don't get it. That can be detrimental to your spiritual health, your eternal life. No question. And so, yeah, there's all kinds of things like that. We operate by faith in almost a whole ton of everything that we do all the time. Right? In a way that we don't even think about. So, this shouldn't be all that terribly surprising. Frank? Let's do it. I love rabbit holes. I do! Yeah. Interesting thought, huh? Yeah, in John 17 when he's praying, what verse is that? Yeah. So on the one hand, Jesus acknowledges this in the prayer. It's part of the prayer that he and the father are one, right? They have this one unity in essence. And then in verse the beginning of that verse, he says this, that, you know, praying that I want these who believe in me to have the glory that you've given to me, that, you know, they can be one in unity with us. And it's a verse that could be misunderstood and misapplied to thinking that, well, when we're born again, we're not just born again with a spiritual life, a new birth, a new heart. or something like that, and being united with Christ. It's a theme in the New Testament, that we have a unity, right? We're united with Him in His death in Romans 6. We're united with Him in life. The description of a Christian is often in Christ, as opposed to in our sins. It's all kinds of stuff like that. But none of that actually means that we are deified. We become like Him and the Father in every aspect of their natures. And so we do gain eternal life. We will one day be glorified in a way that sin is stripped out of us, which in the context of the prayer really seems to be what Jesus is talking about. The glory that I have, the glory that Jesus has, is that he is without sin. One day we will have that same sinless constitution, same sinless nature. And we really will be with the Lord forever. We really will be united with him in his kingdom. But we're not assumed into the Godhead. It's overstating it. I'm not going to be made somehow to be the creator, all-knowing, all-powerful God. It seems like getting rid of sin and the new body and the new heavens and the new earth has a lot of changes to it, but not running us back into eternity past and turning us into gods that participate in creation, and all that stuff's just overstating it. And so, I think that that's what Jesus is going at. And in many ways, we become more like God in His holiness and His righteousness. But there's those, theologians would say, incommunicable attributes of God, the things that He doesn't share with us, things that He doesn't give to us, like infinity, no beginning and no end. We'll have no end, but not the no beginning part. The all-knowing, all-powerful, all of those omni words that are associated with theology. Those are things that he doesn't really share with us. But we will become like him in loving one another in the way we're supposed to. right, what we'll share in that glory. We'll become like Him in a perfect sinlessness, a holiness, infinite patience, perfect peace, right, complete eternal joy. Here's run the fruits of the Spirit. Those are all characteristics of God, and we will have those, you know, in full. they won't be tainted by sin anymore. So there's a lot of sharing in the glory of God in that way. So hopefully that distinction helps a little. Makes sense? It's a good question. These big statements of Jesus are ones that we want to get them right as best as we can. So that's kind of that. So, other questions? Good? Matthew? So in the study of the person of Christ Jesus after the Incarnation, we'll kind of delve into that real deeply, but the answer really is that Jesus has two natures. They're distinct. They're not mixed up. It's not that he's part God, part man. He's holy God and holy man in nature, truly God, truly man. And there are times when he's operating on the earth during those years of his ministry especially, where he doesn't exercise all of the attributes of one of the natures. Sometimes he does things that are beyond what any other human being could do. He knows the thoughts of the guy who's thinking, you know, something. He knows the thoughts of the Pharisees and speaks to them. He raises people from the dead. He controls the weather. He performs miraculous healings, right? He knows the guy at the beginning who was sitting under the tree and, you know, they were talking about him when Andrew came and said, you got to come see this guy. Philip, was it Philip that was under the tree? And he knows their conversation, but he wasn't present. Like that's Jesus operating in his God nature. And the miracles and stuff are that way too. Other times he operates fully in his man nature, his human nature, it seems, where he says, I don't know this aspect of the future. Does he really not know? Well, in his human nature, yes, he really doesn't know because he's truly a man just like we are. No different than he has to sleep and eat and rest. and use the bathroom, like, not attributes of God, right? But he starts as a little baby and he grows in stature, height, physically, and in knowledge, in his human nature. Yet he's never separated from being the all-knowing God. Just somehow it seems that, and this goes beyond the understanding, somehow he's able to toggle between the natures without affecting either of them. They stay distinct. How do we know that? Because that's just what we observe. That's our best guess. You know, how does he do that? I don't know. He doesn't set his deity aside, but he sets the prerogatives of deity aside at times in order to demonstrate his full humanity and actually to be human. He says he's doing most of these things by the power of the Holy Spirit, including most of the miracles. The same way that the apostles evidently did the miracles. They're not using their God nature to perform miracles, right? They're filled with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit's enabling them. Jesus says he operated in the miracles just like any other man. which seems kind of incredible, but it demonstrates that, you know, how do they interpret that? Well, God is with him. That's how they interpreted it because he never really did much to correct that. Oh, no, it's not that God is with me. I am God. It's interesting. He, he maintains that. And so back and forth, we go in the scripture with this and Jesus is not schizophrenic, but you know, there's a clear distinction at times. And he operates in that. How that works is beyond comprehension, I think. It's one of those aspects. Caleb? but there are certain miracles we understand that are not according to the human nature because other humans can't do those things according to God's nature. And then it's not that he's turning off his man nature or his God nature, he's simultaneously doing both at 100% constantly. For instance, like upholding the universe by the word of his mouth, he's doing that constantly while still being a man and not a human. He never stops, even when, and this is where we really see the distinction come apart, not come apart, but be on display, is at the crucifixion. He dies, but yet he never stops being the one who upholds the universe by his power, according to Hebrews chapter 1. He's always, always, always doing that. When he dies, God didn't die. That's where we really see this so clearly in the distinction between his natures. And he maintains that evidently through all history going forward, into all eternity. So, very interesting. It's good questions. So there's probably more to say that I didn't put into this particular study. But Jesus himself is, I think, the incarnation and the dual nature of Christ is the second of the two great mysteries revealed in Scripture. The Trinity is the first, and the incarnation of Christ, I think, is the second. Because we're delving into things that there is no possibility of us fully comprehending. Great mysteries. Revealed to a large extent, but I don't even know when we step off into eternity and see God face-to-face that we're gonna get these things I'm not sure that that's ever anything that we get to comprehend You know not fully not in not in every aspect and certainly not anything we'd experience in our own lives. So Yeah, good questions so Matthew 28, let's grab the one more quotation out of the out of the Gospels. Thanks. I'm I Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Does it mean to baptize somebody in the name of somebody else? Symbolic of uniting them together, right? It speaks to the authority by which I'm doing the ceremonial act of dunking somebody under the water, right? You know this. We're Baptists. We don't actually think there's anything that happens in the water. It symbolizes things that have theoretically already happened. Hopefully, not theoretically. They've actually already happened, and we just hope that the evidence that we're basing the baptism on is true. Sometimes that's not true. Sometimes it's false. But that's not the topic, right? Baptizing somebody in the name of God is to bring them into unity with God. It's to say, I'm doing this under the authority of God. Why? Because God saved them. God brought them in. Well, it doesn't say baptize them in the name of God, does it? The name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, if the Son is not God, to baptize somebody in the name of Dorian would be utter idiocy. Pagan religion at best. If you're baptizing somebody in the name of somebody who's not God, if you're doing that, this is the command of Jesus Himself, right? He's resurrected. It gives Him the authority to tell them this, right? He adds, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to Me. He had it before He was incarnate, and now it's been double added because of Him earning. And His command to the church in perpetuity is, go out there, preach the gospel, make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The identification of the Trinity could hardly be clearer. I mean, naming them, that's pretty clear. This is what we see there. Well, we already assigned stuff. You guys want to, in five minutes, we can... Should we move on? We'll test it and see if I can do it in five minutes. 1 Corinthians 8. Who was going to read that? Mikey, thanks. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol is no real existence, and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, for whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things. The first verse, there's no God but One. Remember where Paul's quoting from? He's quoting from Deuteronomy 6. That Shema statement. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One. That's the monotheistic statement of Judaism. And Paul here repeats it. This is also the monotheistic statement of Christianity. One God. One God. There's not many gods and not many lords. And then in v. 6, he says there's one God, the Father. And one Lord, Jesus Christ. Hold on. Did you just say one is two? Yes. Yes, I did, says Paul. Yes, one is two. And I didn't mention the Holy Spirit, but He's three. One is three. You couldn't come up with a more convoluted statement about the monotheistic nature of the religion than to say there's one God, the Father and the Son. Especially if you know that the Son has now come, lived as a man, was crucified on a cross, died, was resurrected. All this is in the rear view mirror from where Paul sits. And Paul is undeniably one of the top Jewish scholars and teachers of his day. taught by the best teacher at the time. In all the ways of Judaism, Paul is militantly monotheistic. To the point where when he was a Pharisee, he thought it was his duty to that one God to round up all these guys who say that Jesus might be God and execute them all. Right? He has no question. his mind and he reaffirms his commitment to monotheism God is one and then he makes the most bizarre statement that he's two well this is this is the Trinity Paul Paul doesn't even really attempt to explain it he just states that it is what we do with him statement that it is you know kind of helps to identify what we think about the Trinity make sense Yes and no. Yeah, right. But do we see it? Do we see what he's pointing to? Colossians 3.16. Samantha, thanks. Let the Word of God dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing songs of hymns and virtual songs, and giving fullness in your hearts to God. In whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, Thanks. If Jesus is a mere man, even a super blessed man, is there any way that anybody should ever say, let the word of Dorian dwell in you richly? You should throw rocks at my head until I'm dead for that kind of statement, right? But this is the statement about Christ. It is His Word. God's Word is Christ's Word. They are one and the same because Christ and God are one and the same. And he ties it up in v. 17, right? Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father. Again, that ties them together. Whatever you do, in word or deed, The name of the Lord Jesus Christ giving thanks to God the Father. It's the identification again of the Son and the Father. It's just the bold statement of that's how it is. 2 Thessalonians 2. Jovita, was that you? This one puts all three persons of the Trinity in view, right? I mean, we give thanks to you, to God, because of you. It even starts to identify something we'll spend more time on later about the distinctions in what the three persons are doing. Do you see it? God chose you. God had a plan. God the Father is the one who's choosing you to be saved. How? The sanctification of the Spirit. The Spirit operating in your heart to give you a new heart and then to bring you to be more like who? Like God the Son, Christ, that's who, right? You've been called by the gospel. The gospel of who? The gospel of Jesus Christ, right? It's through Him and His work that you're being saved. And so all three persons are again in view here in last 1 Peter 1-2. I didn't make it to five minutes, but Alita, thanks. into the foreknowledge of God the Father, and the sanctity of the Spirit, for the peace to Jesus Christ, the firstborn Son of the Holy Spirit. May the grace and peace of God be with you. I mean, this is Peter's opening that's kind of a benediction. It's a prayer of recognition, a statement of blessing, right? May grace and peace be multiplied to you. Well, how? According to the foreknowledge of God the Father. He's very specific, right? We're not guessing that God means the Father here. It's God the Father according to Peter. It's not just that John is nuts about this and Paul's nuts about this. Peter's nuts about this too. If you think this is nuts. They're not nuts. They all got taught the same thing. Right? They got taught that the foreknowledge of God the Father, that the sanctification comes by the Holy Spirit, and that we're supposed to obey Jesus Christ. We don't obey people who aren't God, right? Wasn't that the testimony of the apostles in front of the Sanhedrin after Jesus was resurrected from the dead in Jerusalem? We've got to obey God, not men. Well, Jesus is just a man. It doesn't make any sense. Right? Jesus is, and we're studying this in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is providing to us the law of the kingdom. The new law. He's teaching us. And who are we supposed to obey? We're supposed to obey God. Unquestionably. Who's God? In this case, Jesus Christ. One and the same. You can use them interchangeably. You see the Trinity? Okay, so the New Testament blows us wide open. about at least the revelation of the reality of the Trinity. Next week we'll pick up here we got through. Look, we got through this much. That was really good. So I'm almost always never going to be upset about rabbit trails and other things, questions, because this is what I really want to do is I want us to chew on these things. I want us to become not just surface level familiar, but deeply embedded in these things as truth. And so I'll just keep encouraging that. And it takes as long as the Lord wants us to take to get through this sort of thing. Lord, I thank you for the morning here today. I thank you for gathering us together, giving us a place to meet where there's a little warmth and some chairs to sit in. But Lord, more importantly than all of that, I thank you for giving us the desire to know you. I pray that we would want to invest ourselves as a first priority in knowing you better. I pray you'd use this study for us here. We probably won't be able to comprehend you, but the more we know about you, the more that we can love you, the more we can appreciate the God who has revealed himself to us, the God with whom we have to deal. And pray, Lord, that you would give us this very thing today, as we just read from Peter's first letter, or that you would give us grace and peace according to the foreknowledge of the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit and with obedience to Christ Jesus. Lord God, I just pray that you would help us to do these things and that we would be greatly blessed and encouraged this morning through our time in your word. Pray for your help as we continue in the morning here to worship you and pray that you would help us to set our hearts and minds on things above. and not just on the things of the earth, not just the things of our lives, but that you would give us another glimpse of eternity and help us Lord to, to worship you today, this morning in spirit and in truth, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.