This afternoon, I'd invite you to turn with me to two portions, Psalm 27 to start. Psalm 27, I'm not gonna read the whole Psalm through, just gonna read the first four verses, and then I will also be reading a verse from the book of Daniel, Daniel chapter 11, if you would want to find that and mark it. Psalm 27, Daniel 11, And with God's word open, let's seek the Lord in prayer and ask the Lord to speak to us now through his word. Let's pray. O Lord, as we bow in thy presence now with thy word open before us, we pray that thou wilt lead and guide. We pray, O Lord, that thou wilt indeed increase our knowledge of God. Our desire is to grow in grace in and the knowledge of him. And we have to admit, O Lord, that we know so little of God, especially in comparison to what can be known of Him. We know that we'll never exhaust the subject, not even in eternity, that God is beyond what can be comprehended. But we also know, Lord, that Thou hast revealed Thyself through nature and through Thy Word. And so help us to know in fuller measure all that we can know. about the greatness of the God we worship and serve. I pray, dear Lord, that it may please Thee to take me up and make me a vessel fit for Thy use. I plead the blood of Christ over my life. May it please Thee to touch my lips with that coal from the altar and to guide me by Thy Spirit now during this present time. And may Christ indeed be magnified and may every heart be drawn to Him. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Psalm 27, we begin with verse one. You'll note this is a Psalm of David, and it is the word of God. Let us hear it. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war should rise against me, and this will I be confident. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. Then if you would turn over to Daniel chapter 11, just gonna read one verse here, focusing really on the second part of the verse. It's in verse 32. We read, and such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries, then underscore this next part, but the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. The people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. Cross-reference that to Psalm 27 in verse 4. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. I'm going to attempt something this afternoon. And in the weeks ahead, Lord willing, that admittedly might prove to be dangerous for me. Dangerous in the sense that I have my phone up here with me. Usually I have such a dread and a fear of that kind of thing that I won't even let my phone in the same room, much less have it up here with me in the podium. But I have it up here with me now because I am going to be borrowing extensively from a book that I have that I can access through my Kindle reader. Before this is done, I may go ahead and purchase a Kindle reader, something that'll be dedicated to my library and yet kept free from any other thing that can distract me from my library. So, we'll see how it goes. But I am very much interested in a book that has captured my attention in recent days, entitled Delighting in the Trinity. Delighting in the Trinity. I was so taken up by this book, and it's a very brief book. You might want to make note of it. It might be one that you would want to include in your library. It's a short book. It's less than 150 pages. 132, I believe it is. And I was so struck by the book upon my reading of it that when I was assigned to teach the theology course during this time, which I'm engaged in now and appreciate your continued prayers for, this book has become assigned reading for the students that are under my tutelage this time around. Delighting in the Trinity. And the thing that attracts me to the doctrine more than the book, okay, because that's what we're interested in. We're interested in the doctrine, the doctrine of the Trinity. Now, when you think of the doctrine of the Trinity, what comes to your mind? just off the top of your head, and I have to say here, I thought about even changing the format of our afternoon service to get feedback from folks on this, and to engage them, make this kind of a Sunday school type of thing. I won't do that, this is a worship service, I'll continue to preach, which means that you'll have to give me your feedback afterwards, or we can have it with each other afterwards, but what do you think of when you think of the Trinity? I dare say that probably the thing that you don't think of is that, what a warm devotional thought, the Trinity. Listen to how this author starts out. This is Michael Reeves, by the way. He's the author of this. And this is his introduction to the book, and this is why my phone is here. I'll be reading a number of excerpts from the book. I'll be interacting with the book, by and large, okay? In his introduction, he begins with the statement, God is love. That's one we know, isn't it? That's one we're familiar with. That's right out of 1 John chapter 4. Statement occurs twice in that chapter. God is love. We think of that sometimes as being the closest thing to a definition of God that you can find. Some would say Christ's words in John 4 give a close definition where He said, God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And the thing that lends itself to the notion of being a definition is that simple verb, is. God is love. Listen to what Michael Reeves says. Those three words could hardly be more bouncy. They seem lively, lovely, and as warming as a crackling fire. Devotionally heartwarming is what he's getting at. But, God is a trinity? Not hardly the same effect. That just sounds cold and academic. rather stodgy, to use his word, all quite understandable, but the aim of this book is to stop the madness. Yes, the Trinity can be presented as a fusty and irrelevant dogma, but the truth is, and take note of this, because I don't know how often we've thought along these lines, the truth is God is love because God is a Trinity. I wonder how often we thought along those lines. That puts it in a different light, doesn't it? God is love because God is a Trinity. And what the author is going to labor to prove over the course of this book is you really can't understand God's love without understanding the interrelationship between the persons of the Trinity. This book, then, will simply be about growing in our enjoyment of God and seeing how God's triune being makes all his ways beautiful. All of a sudden, this book is taking on some practical value. This is not going to simply be an academic theological brief volume, you know, that is going to serve a rhetorical purpose for helping you to defend or to expound the doctrine of the Trinity to those who deny it, which includes everybody outside of Christendom. But this book that this author's presenting to us is going to have a much more personal and devotional, spiritual benefit to it, to the people of God, which means, simply speaking, that there is value, practical, spiritual value in knowing the truth of our triune God. He continues, it is a chance to taste and see that the Lord is good. To have your heart won and yourself refreshed. And here again, I have to pause and reflect. How many have even thought in terms that way? Oh, man, a great sermon or a book on the Trinity just refreshed my soul. We think probably in terms of, no, it equipped me because I know that Muslims are against this doctrine, and I know that everybody outside of Christendom accuses us of being polytheists. You don't worship one God, you worship three gods. And now a book on the Trinity is going to arm you to defend yourself against that notion. Well, that's not this author's intention. His intention in presenting this book is that you might have the benefit of your own soul being refreshed. What does our shorter catechism question say? Question number one, what is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. The knowledge of the Trinity is going to contribute mightily to that notion, glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. It is a chance to taste and see that the Lord is good, to have your heart won and yourself refreshed. For it is only when you grasp what it means for God to be a Trinity that you will really sense the beauty and overflowing kindness, the heart-grabbing loveliness of God. If the Trinity were something we could shave off God, we would not be relieving him of some irksome weight, we would be sharing him precisely what is so delightful about him. For God is triune, and it is as triune that he is so good and desirable. And then he adds here, he's got a great sense of humor, this author does, but I must congratulate you for having read so far as this. Then he says something that we can readily relate to. I can relate to this. He says, the Christian books that really fly off the shelves are the how-to books, the ones that give you something immediate to do. And to the how-to junkies, the thought of reading a book on the Trinity must feel like having to say, I'll try to get this right, Theodore Oswald Twistle, the thistle sifter, sifted a sack of thistles. Rather hard going, but pointless. And that's some people's view of the Trinity. Hard, and is there really a point to it? How essential is it? Yet, and this is important, Christianity is not primarily about lifestyle change. It is about knowing God. I love that. Knowing God. That ought to be the benefit that you draw from church. That ought to be the benefit that you draw from your time in the Word. That ought to be the benefit that comes to you through family devotions, an increase in the knowledge of God. That's theology, but it's practical, it's devotional, it's valuable, it's spiritual. I'll go a step further, it's essential. Because if the flame is going to be lit in your heart in such a way that you have a blazing love for God, if you're going to be motivated in your service to God, then the understanding of the God you worship and serve is so very, very important. To know and grow to enjoy Him is what we are saved for. And that is what we're going to press into here. Nonetheless, getting to know God better does actually make for far more profound and practical change as well. Knowing the love of God is the very thing that makes us loving. Sensing the desirability of God alters our preferences and inclinations, the things that drive our behavior. We begin to want God more than anything. Thus, to read this book is not to play an intellectual game. In fact, we will see that the triune nature of this God affects everything from how we listen to music to how we pray. It makes for happier marriages, warmer dealings with others, better church life. It gives Christian assurance, shapes holiness, and transforms the very way we look at the world around us. No exaggeration, the knowledge of this God turns lives around. Theology is essential to all of these things. Understanding of the Trinity ought to impact all these areas that this author has just delineated. He goes on, there is, of course, that major obstacle in our way. that the Trinity is seen not as a solution and a delight, but as an oddity and a problem. In fact, some of the ways people talk about the Trinity only seem to reinforce that idea. Think, for example, of all those desperate-sounding illustrations. The Trinity, some helpful soul explains, is a bit like an egg, where there is the shell, the yolk, and the white, and yet it is all one egg. No, says another, the Trinity is more like a shamrock leaf. That's one leaf, but it's got three bits sticking out, just like the Father, Son, and Spirit. And one wonders why the world laughs. For whether the Trinity is compared to shrubbery, streaky bacon, the three states of HTO, or a three-headed giant, it begins to sound, well, bizarre, like some pointless and unsightly growth in our understanding of God, one that could surely be lopped off with no consequence other than a universal sigh of relief. Now, of course, if the Trinity is seen as a weird and fantastic monstrosity, then small wonder it is seen as irrelevant. How could the eggishness of God ever be more than a weird curiosity? I am never going to fall down in awe or find my heart drawn to a God so ridiculous. And yet, in many ways, that is just where we are today. For all that we may give an orthodox nod of the head to belief in the Trinity, it simply seems too arcane to make any practical difference to our lives. In other words, the egg illustration and its kind may not be the way to go. Another way to go that can reinforce the idea that the Trinity is essentially a problem is to stick solely to saying what the Trinity is not. We explain that the Father is not the Son, the Spirit is not the Father, there are not three gods, and so on, all of which is true, but it can leave one with the hollow sense that one has successfully avoided all sorts of nasty-sounding heresies. But at the cost of wondering who or what one is actually to worship, enter the word mystery. The author continues, A word so soothing it lets us feel that our absolute cluelessness about God can be both one and three. How we can be one and three is actually how things are supposed to be. God is a mystery. We can whisper in our most piously hushed tones. We are simply not meant to know such things. But while such sentiments score high for their ring of reverence, they score pretty low for accuracy. When in Ephesians 3, for example, Paul writes of the mystery that the Gentiles are now included in salvation, the word mystery simply means secret. Paul is sharing a secret with us. Now we know. We are not left wondering what he could possibly mean. The Gentiles are now included. Could I stop here for a side note that this is one of the key chapters in the New Testament that pulled me out of dispensationalism? The fact that the Gentiles are included in the plan of redemption. It's not separate plans for separate peoples. It is one plan, which includes Jew and Gentile. There is nothing we would call mysterious about this mystery. So it is with God. God is a mystery, but not in the alien abductions, things that go bump in the night sense. Certainly not in the who can know why bother sense. God is a mystery in that who he is and what he is like are secrets, things we would never have worked out by ourselves. But this triune God has revealed himself to us. Thus, the Trinity is not some piece of inexplicable apparent nonsense like a square circle or an interesting theologian. Well, what a jab at theologians, huh? An interesting theologian is like a square circle. That's what he's suggesting, and it's undeniable. That's the way some people think, and that's the way I suppose that some theologians make them think. Rather, because the triune God has revealed Himself, we can understand the Trinity. That is not to say we can exhaust our knowledge of God, comprehend and wrap our brains around Him, simply cramming in a few bits of information before moving on to some other doctrine. To know the Trinity is to know God, an eternal and personal God of infinite beauty, interest, and fascination. The Trinity is a God we can know and forever grow to know better. And my, how that should be our aim. All of which is to say the Trinity is not a problem. And looking at the Trinity, we are not walking off the map into dangerous and unchartable areas of pointless speculation. Far, far from it. Pressing into the Trinity, we are doing what in Psalm 27 David said he could do all the days of his life. And that's why we read from that Psalm to start. We are gazing upon the beauty of the Lord. And as we do so, I hope you will begin to feel as David did, and that you could do the same. And I'll end it there to start, okay? The doctrine of the Trinity, think of it in terms of knowing God, not merely in a theological, academic sense, but in a spiritual and real and personal sense. The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war should rise against me, and this will I be confident. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after. that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple." That really is the essence of sanctification, you know. Paul speaks of us gazing into a mirror, beholding Christ, gazing in a mirror, becoming conformed to Christ as we behold him through the mirror of his words. Oh, I hope then that God will steer your hearts and let's get into this doctrine. I have to admit that the impact that I felt on my own soul in this has been quite profound. We can think of God in terms of his transcendence, and that probably is how I have been thinking of him, you know, over the last number of years, the out-there-ness of God. He is beyond the universe. The universe is his creation. We think of the transcendence of God, we contrast it to the imminence of God, which is his nearness to us. But I dare say that when you think of God in Trinitarian terms, it'll even kind of shatter that paradigm and show you that there's an even better way. to comprehend God, to think of him in terms of the person of the Trinity. And we will come to see, Lord willing, over the course of the studies, just how ridiculous the notion becomes that a one singular person God could be a loving God. It really becomes kind of a difficult, nearly impossible notion to adhere to without a proper understanding of the Trinity. So, we'll look to the Lord to bless us then in this study. Maybe I'll do to you what I'll do to my students. I don't have them writing a paper for me defending the Trinity, but, and they may not know this yet, so make sure you don't tell them, it will be an essay question on their final exam. Explain the Trinity to me. Defend the doctrine of the Trinity. Can you do it homeschool students? Can you do it? Can you expound the doctrine of the Trinity? There is no word Trinity in the Bible, you know, and that's one of the arguments thrown against it Where do you find that word in the Bible? It's not there. We admit that but You can have concepts that are clearly revealed in scripture without having a singular word attached to them. And we are expected to know not only what the scriptures say, but what conclusions we draw from what they say. Matthew chapter 22 comes to mind. In fact, why don't we look at that here? This is one of the things you'll have to put up with. I'm doing this without any notes. I'm totally extemporaneous here. And what that can lead to, if I'm not careful, is aimless rambling. So pray for me that I won't make you endure aimless rambling, but that this will be practical and valuable. And if I got this right, in Matthew chapter 22, we have that account, if I got the reference right, and I believe I do, yes, you have in verse 23, the same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection. and asked him, saying, Master, Moses said, if a man die having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren, and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue, left his wife unto his brother. Likewise, the second also, and the third unto the seventh. And last of all, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the seven? For they all had her. Could you see Christ almost answering that sarcastically and say, well, I guess you proved that there can't be a resurrection. You've just posed an insurmountable difficulty. I guess the resurrection must not be true. But we read in verse 29, Jesus answered and said unto them, ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? That is a statement, Paul's right there in verse 32, that is a statement out of the scriptures. What Christ goes on to say, however, is not found written in that same passage where he concludes, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. That is a conclusion that they were expected to come to based on the fact that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You should have known not only that truth, but you should have known what you can conclude based on that truth, which is God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. That stands out as a primary defense of systematic theology, okay? where you draw from scriptures the conclusions that you're supposed to draw from scriptures. The Lord expects you to read his word, to know his word, and he expects you to be able to reason from his word. And that's how we arrive at the truth of the Trinity, by reasoning from God's word. So we'll get into it here in the days ahead, Lord willing. For now, let's go ahead and close in prayer. Let's all pray. O Lord, as we bow in thy presence, we thank thee that thou hast revealed thyself in thy word. We pray, dear Lord, that thou wilt help us, therefore, to apply ourselves to thy word, to draw from it all that we can draw from it, knowing as we do, even from thy word, that we will never fully comprehend God But there is much of him that we can know, that is revealed that we might know it. O Lord, help us to know the truth of God, not merely in an academic sense, but in a spiritual and devotional sense. For as we read from Daniel, the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. And Lord, that is our desire, to be strong and to do exploits for thee. So may we grow in our knowledge of Thee, so that we are the better equipped to do just that. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.