Exactly. We're going to get started. Uh I would like to begin. Let's begin with a couple Bible verses, a couple of scriptures, and let's begin with Genesis one twenty-six. Genesis chapter one verse there are those who would say Trinitarianism is that I mean you don't find the word Trinity in the Bible so can we have Trinitarianism biblically is there a three-in-one or a unity and plurality found in Scripture And so we want to see, um, 1 26, Genesis 1 26. And who's got that wants to read it? All right. Just the one verse, then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness. Let them have communion over the fish, birds, and over See, we didn't even need that whole verse to make our, to make our Trinitarian, to make our plural argument. We know verses like Deuteronomy 6, 4, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. But we have here in Genesis 1, 26, God said, let us, there's a plurality, let us make man in our image. This will be a familiar verse to you from Psalm 110. Some of you remember when we covered this in Luke, when Jesus asked about this verse. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord said to my Lord. And remember what Jesus asked? What does that mean? What is this? Who is the Lord said to my Lord? Who is this? And who's speaking to whom here? And this is, The father speaking to, well, David is the author, but when David says, the Lord said to my Lord, there's two Lords, and we gotta figure out who's who. Well, that's the father speaking to the son, and we have plurality here in the Old Testament in this place as well. That was Psalm 110, verse one. 110, verse one. Oh. And one more verse, and we'll understand this one a little better. And I didn't need to write this reference down, because if I can remember Genesis 126, and if I can remember Psalm 110, I can remember that other reference, whatever it is. God is love. I don't know any closer. Oh, God is love. Hey, I'm gonna mute this. I'm gonna mute this so that we don't have noises. We get complaints when there's noises from the live stream. Sorry. Oh, my phone vibrates or dings. People are like, what is that noise? And there you go. Oh, God is love. Does anybody know how that could be Trinitarian? Don't answer. Let's just think about it for a little bit. Let's pray, and then we're going to do some review, and here's gonna be my review. What have we said about the Trinity? That's gonna be the review question right after we pray. Let's bow. Heavenly Father, we love you. We thank you for the opportunity we have to come to gather in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit to speak once again about the mystery of the Trinity, the triune God, Lord, we pray that you would help us tonight, that you would help us as we seek to speak about you, that we would speak accurately, that as much as human language can, that we would be precise, that we would certainly not speak incorrectly, even though sometimes it will be technically improper as we speak about you. Lord guide us. And we pray that you would be honored. And we pray that our understanding of you and our love for you would grow. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior for his kingdom sake. Amen. Amen. So Trinity, What have we talked about? What have we said about the Trinity? You may want to turn in your copy of the Confession to page five as a reminder. That could be a reminder. We said a lot. We talked for like an hour last time and maybe a little longer. We said a lot of stuff. Absolutely. We did. We said all of that. And those are important points. Remember, co-equal, co-eternal of the same essence is important because we had those three legs of a tripod, if you would. There is one God. Father is God, Son is God, and Holy Spirit is God. And these three are the same in essence. And we talked about how errors, like modalism or Arianism, remove one of those legs of the tripod and everything falls over. So it does not allow us to stay orthodox. So that's a pretty good summary. Anybody remember anything else? Yes, sir? Where does the ghost come in? The Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit? Yes. And you will hear me say usually the Holy Spirit. And I will tell you why in just a minute. But the word Holy Spirit and Holy Ghost, I will use interchangeably. I believe that they are interchangeable. I favor Holy Spirit. It is a personal thing with me and not something that I'm imposing on anybody else. It's a personal thing with me because of the abuses that I've seen in Charismaticism and Pentecostalism. And those who seem to have an obsession into the realm of error in those things are the ones that I have heard more often use the term Holy Ghost. So that's probably why I am reacting from that. But let me say this, I know that it's a perfectly valid title, name for the Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost. We also learned that... Right. None of it is diminished or added to. Absolutely. That it's not that the father is 33 and third percent. The son is 33 thirds. It's hard to say. I mean, it's hard to put that into. Yeah, it's not that we have three thirds going together, shake well, and you come out with God. That's not the case. And that when we speak of father, we speak of a person of the Godhead who is fully God and nothing is diminished, nothing is taken away. It's not like, well, Father is God minus, no, Father is God minus nothing. And we'd say the same thing, Jesus Christ the Son is God minus nothing. Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost is God minus nothing. So these are good things that we've talked about last week in our review. One thing that stuck with me was the three subsistences. I always thought about that word and I know what that meant. yeah does anybody remember was it last week that we talked about no it's been several weeks ago when we were on live stream only that we talked about why we don't we will still use the word exist but why we don't use the word exist does anybody remember one They haven't not just the etymology of the word to exist means that your your existence comes out of something comes out of something. So all of us exist. We have come out of something come from something and we can say technically God does not exist. God subsists because God didn't come out of anything. There is no pre-God. There is nothing that makes up God. So now we're back to the doctrine of simplicity. And I gotta tell y'all, I find myself, and I don't know if it's just Maybe it's an imbalance in me. I find myself circling back around to aseity and simplicity all the time. And if you don't know what aseity is or simplicity, we'll get there. We will get there. Yes. It was 1 John 4a. 1 John 4a. God is love. OK, we're going to get there. Excuse me. Yes, sir. Is there a verse that says that the ghost and the spirit are the same? A verse that says the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost are the same. I know that we see verses that refer to Holy Spirit and verses that refer to Holy Ghost. But what we got to be careful about here is, I don't know, I know the King James has the word Holy Ghost. I think it's the same in Greek. Yeah, you're going to find the Greek word is pneumatos. It's a spirit or a breath in that related to the word. So we see that and when it's translated into English, Holy Ghost was the older word that was used. I know that's found in King James. Does anybody know, is Holy Ghost in, I don't think it's in New American Standard, and I don't think it's gonna be in ESV. Yeah, I think we've updated the word, but we need to understand that the word means the same thing. There's not a, When we say a spirit, the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, we're not talking about two different things. We're talking about the same thing. But I don't have a verse that equates those, that says that, but we just know that it's the word numos, numitas. Does that start with a P? Panuma? Which is where you get the idea of breath. So, existence means to come out of something. Subsist means always has existed, or? And it also indicates a, I don't want to say dependence, coexistence. It indicates, yeah, I don't know how to say that. I'm going to say coexistence. It also indicates a coexistence with Father, Son, and Spirit. That one doesn't come out of the other, but then we're getting into, which is aseity, that God exists in and of himself. That's what the word aseity is. You remember the word aseity means in God exists in and of himself. I'm still saying exists. I don't care. But just so we understand that God doesn't, when we say he is ase, that is to mean that he does not come from anything, he does not come out of anything, he does not come after anything, that his existence is self-contained, if you will, in and of himself. Ah, I'll say, I'll say. So, that's the word, I'll say. Okay, so, we talked last time about that last phrase, and I wanna go to our confession, page six. This last phrase, we wanted to spend a little more time on. Ooh, these words get long. and now it's on page seven, so it moved on. But we're gonna start on six. I'm trying to find the beginning of a sentence. When you turn in our confession, often you will see paragraph three is also sentence three. I think that's exactly what we have here. We're just gonna read paragraph three, because I can't find a period and a capital letter in there to start with. In this divine and infinite being, There are three subsistences, the father, the son, the father, the word or son and Holy Spirit of one substance. Power and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence is undivided. The father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. Let's pause right there. We could spend quite some time. There are volumes written on the eternal begottenness of the Son. If you're interested in that, Stephan Lindblad has a good, and I don't know what to do other than look up Stephan Lindblad, S-T-E-F-A-N, and Eternal Begottenness. Stephan Lindblad has written lots on that, it's very good. Other people have written so much on the eternal begottenness of the Son. And then when we talk about the Spirit proceeding from, let me just say here, if you read a good theologian this week, in Theology Thursday, this week or last week? Birkhoff mentioned the Son as second. Am I right? Am I remembering the right place? And the Spirit as third. But we're saying, wait, they're the same in essence, equal in power. How can we say the Son, do y'all understand that it's really improper to say the Son is second? even though you will hear me say the second person of the Trinity. It's really improper, and when I say improper, I don't mean that we should not say it, I just mean that we should recognize we're bumping at the limits of human language and human thought. It's improper to say Jesus is the second person of the Trinity or that he's second, but we know in essence he's equal and there is no submission, but in function, Jesus Christ is eternally begotten of the Father. Everything you just thought about begottenness, like, oh, so there was a time that he didn't exist. No, not that. that's not but but there's a lot that could be said and we're not going to say it because I don't want to spend the weeks and weeks that it would take to get through that my feeble mind and we also say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son but they are in essence equal yes sir So how would you say, I will come to the Father through Jesus? Right, yes. And maybe somebody will say, in the Spirit. In the Spirit, right, yes. But it's mostly through Jesus Christ. Even in our prayer, thank you Lord for this. in Jesus' name. Yes, absolutely. So here's what we say when we're speaking of salvation. We come to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. So our salvation is triune. We have a Trinitarian salvation. But we understand the different functions of the persons And we speak of it in that way. Jesus died on the cross. The Father did not die on the cross. The Spirit draws men to Christ. So we speak of it in that way. I totally forgot where I was. I hope y'all recognize that this is a place where you have to stand so precisely on what the scripture tells us that if you take a half a step or lean one way or the other, you're leaning in a direction of error somewhere. This is so difficult, but it's also important because what God has revealed, we should strive to understand to the best of our ability. Okay, so we will speak of a functional difference. particularly of the Son. And by the way, you just heard me saying, Father, Son, and Spirit, there is no submission. But don't we all know that Jesus submitted himself to the Father? We're gonna get to that. But what we, let me say it this way. Jesus Christ, according to his deity, does not, did not, will not submit to the Father. They are equal. Jesus Christ, according to his humanity, submitted to the Father. By the way, maybe he understands it better this way. Who died on the cross? I've heard poorly written songs used in worship to say God died on Calvary. God did not die. Jesus Christ, according to the flesh, according to his humanity, died. He truly died in his humanity in every way that humans die. According to his deity, Jesus Christ did not die. God did not die. That's also when we get to the hypostatic union, what are we going to say when we get there? That's easier to say than it is to explain. That's what we're going to get when we get there. That's in Jesus being fully God and fully man. Okay. I gotta get through this though. Oh, Okay, Holy Spirit proceeding from the Son. All infinite, all three persons infinite, without beginning, therefore but one God. Hey, wait a minute. If there was a beginning for Father or Son or Spirit, there could not be one God. As a matter of fact, if there was a beginning for Father or Son or Spirit, whichever one had a beginning could not be God because something came before. The godness of God is that he does not have a beginning. And so in, yeah, I'm just gonna keep reading. Who is not to be divided in nature or being. So there again, we speak improperly about the individual persons. And when I say improper, the Bible speaks in that way. And is improper the right word there? That it's technically not proper, but it's how we have to speak. And it's how God has revealed himself to us, so it's how we have to. But technically, to speak about Jesus Christ, by the way, oh. Yeah, you saw it happen, didn't you? To speak about Jesus Christ and omit Father and Spirit. What is that? We've just done harm to the Godhead. We've just done harm to the Trinity, because we talk about Jesus. Now, here's the deal. We know that we're gonna talk about what we have to say. Anytime I speak about Jesus, I'm speaking of triune God. By the way, there are those who disagree with me, R.C. Sproul being one, people you know being others, maybe people in this room who disagree with what I'm about to say, but I'm gonna say it anyway. This is why I believe, in addition to the second commandment that says don't have any graven images, this is also another reasoning behind this, why I believe we shouldn't have pictures of Jesus. Somebody draw me a picture right quick of Father, Son, and Spirit. That's second commandment. Nobody grabbed a pen. But here's the deal. It's impossible. You can draw a picture of a man and put a little halo. Is that drawing a picture of a triune father-son? It's not. So it's a misrepresentation, and we've got to be very careful. And that's why I think I don't want to have any of that. OK, I've got to keep going, or we're never, ever going to get to the pages of notes. This is all just intro. Okay, not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties, which we speak of individually, and personal relations, which, okay, this is where we're focusing tonight, which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and comfortable dependence on him. The doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of our communion with God and our comfortable dependence on him. So we wanna talk for a little bit about how is it that we can say this doctrine of the Trinity is so important? Why is it that when we see a modalist, we say, that's heretical? By the way, when I said that, I'm using that as a technical term. I'm not just saying it's error. Modalism is heretical. A damnable heresy. That's what we're saying. Arianism is a damnable heresy. This Trinity thing is so important. Why is that? And we're going to dig into that just a little bit. From B.B. Warfield, difficult as the idea of the Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence. It brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God as infinite moral being. and illuminates, enriches, and elevates all our thoughts of God. That's why, by the way, we stretch our minds to try to understand and grasp and do this, because he's exactly right. It has accordingly become commonplace to say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as much as to say that theism requires the enriching component of the Trinity to give it permanent hold upon the human mind. The mind finds it difficult to rest in the idea of an abstract unity for its God and that the human heart cries out for the living God in whose being there is that fullness of life for which the conception of the Trinity alone provides. Christian theism is the only stable theism. Earlier you heard me say that the doctrine of the Trinity is a tripod with three legs. And if you knock one of those legs out, it falls over. That's the idea here. So we understand that there are other ideas of theism, other thoughts of higher power. One of those would be polytheism. There are many gods. And polytheism, it has all the errors that we talk about, they have an element of truth. Errors that have no truth, nobody believes. So it's an element of truth, then a problem that comes. Polytheism has this element of truth. Does God exist in plurality? Every Trinitarian says yes. And every polytheist says yes. God exists in plurality. So the answer for polytheism is God exists in plurality, but every God, because you wind up with multiple gods, every God has its own mind, will, and emotion. Every God has its own essence. Every God has its own idea and plan. And polytheism then results in disagreement. Polytheism usually goes to the place where one God is warring against another God, right? And polytheism, we're going to see, leads to a place where the individual gods are really looking out for number one. They're really looking out for themselves. Whereas in Trinity, what do we see? We see this perfect unity plurality and plurality in unity we see that so so polytheism comes and says let's recognize the plurality of God but it fails and it falls apart pantheism pantheism what does anybody know what pantheism is God is in everything and it becomes God is everything, and everything is God. Because you can't start with God is in everything without getting to that point of God is everything and everything is God. That recognizes a unity, right? Is there unity in God? Every Trinitarian says absolutely there is. This is an answer. But poly, no, we're on pantheism. Pantheism abandons the threeness of God. So if God is in everything and God is everything, wait a minute, you're a thing, and you're a thing, and you're God. You're God. Pantheism ultimately will lead to self-worship. This is about me. Ultimately, pantheism leads to self-worship. Deism has an element of truth. The truth of deism is that God is a creator who is transcendent. Is God transcendent? Absolutely, God is transcendent. But deism leaves out the relationship of God to his creation. God is the source of all things. He is the source of all power. And God does use, as deism would say, God uses second causes. Do we need to talk about what second causes are? Somebody be brave enough to say I have no idea what that is? Just a little bit, okay. I always go to the pool table for second causes because when I want to put the eight ball in the corner, I don't hit the 8 ball. That would be first cause. Hit the 8 ball, it goes in. I hit the white ball, the cue ball. That's the first cause. The cue ball hits the 9 ball. I'm going to be a really good pool player in this one. The 9 ball hits the 8 ball, and that's second causes. Does that make sense? God provides for me and my family what we need, food and clothing and shelter. But He doesn't do that by every day we wake up and there's just magically money in the account and stuff happens. He uses second causes. He uses things and He uses means and that kind of thing. So deism says God is not involved. He's so transcendent that He doesn't touch the world. He uses causes to do stuff. and that has a sliver of truth. It has just this little bit of an element of truth. But the error of deism is the failure to see that God is not absentee, that God is not hands off. When we say God is transcendent, we want to be very close to say, And Jesus Christ became a man and dwelt among us. He's our brother in humanity. So we want to see that. So we see these other theisms that speak of higher power, that speak of God, pantheism, polytheism, deism, they all fail at some point where Trinitarianism If spoken of biblically and rightly, Trinitarianism is, as B.B. Warfield said, the only theism that will stand, the only stable theism, he said. So we see that. We also would see that polytheism is ultimately self-centered. and really man-centered. Pantheism is the most blatant self-centered, man-centered. It's going to result in self-worship. And even deism, what do you do if God is so, so transcendent? and he has no personal connect, no imminent connection, what do we do? Whatever we wanna do, right? We just go about our business, do whatever, and it becomes a man-centered, it becomes a self-centered, man-centered thing. So that's the deal. Only biblical Trinitarianism can bring together, can harmonize the half-truths, the sliver of truth from Pantheism, the sliver of truth, that's the only place. And really, The way I just stated that is really working backwards. What I just was saying is we can take the slivers of truth and only Trinitarianism brings them together. No, that's backward. Trinitarianism is the truth. It's what's revealed in scripture. It's absolute and pantheism, polytheism and deism are the What's the word I'm looking for? Are the errors that have been created by man, but they drag along with them a sliver of truth. And even forever is not a long enough word. Yeah, Trinitarianism is, well, we just saw it, even in God's revelation to us about, let me tell you how it made the world. 26 I mean 26 verses, you know, you don't even get the 26 chapter 26 verses. Let us yeah, you don't even get past Right, you see God created in the spirit above yeah, and yeah, you see all of that right there Okay, Oh John chapter 1 verse 1 and verse 18 John chapter one, verse one and verse 18. John one is an excellent, excellent Trinitarian passage. So Pastor Todd, in like John 17, when Jesus is praying, would he be praying to himself? Jesus okay, here's what we have in John 17 and there's two things to talk about number one. We have Jesus in his humanity in his in his pre-crucifixion State so he's in his humanity. So that's one thing to keep in mind we have humanity and deity and one there and Somebody want to help me out. Who's Jesus talking to you? How do we know that? I'm gonna go back to my Bible study methods class. Prove to me that he's talking to the father. Okay, there you go. Father, he addresses father. So we have Jesus Christ according to his humanity and improperly spoken, the second person of the deity, praying to the Father, and do you see where he says, send the Spirit? I don't remember what verse that is. We've spent a little time on John 17, haven't we, Pastor Brent? Jesus in John 17 is praying to the Father. He prays there and elsewhere that the Spirit would be sent. So we see Trinitarianism there. This three and one and one and three, I don't know a page in the Bible you could, well, maybe the book of Esther. I'd have to search, I don't know. But I don't know where you'd go to find, to not see Trinitarianism. But good looking out, that's exactly the son speaking to the father. Somebody got John 1.1 and John 1.18. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. No one has ever seen God, the one and only son, the one who is at the father's side. He has revealed him. He has revealed him in the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And that that terminology on the word was with God is a face to face. It is a face to face with God there. eternally. And the word was with God and the word was God. And in case you don't know what we mean by the word, later we find the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory. So we know the word spoken of here is Jesus. And by the way, what were the first couple of words of that verse? In the beginning, first three words. Do you think the apostle John was like, oh, I didn't realize somebody already used that line. This is plagiarism of the best kind, because what John is doing here is he's saying, I wanna talk about Jesus, but I want you to think about something else right quick. When I start talking about Jesus as the word, I'm gonna say, in the beginning. So that you, we're not talking about a created being. We're talking about in the beginning. That takes us right back to Genesis. That takes us back to before anything was, the word, the son was. And he not only was, he was with, face to face with God. And this speaks of an eternal relationship, a loving relationship between the father and the son. And verse 18, would you read that one more time, brother? If no one has ever seen God, the one and only Son, the one who is at the Father's side, He has revealed Him. What does that sound like? Isn't that an eternal love relationship? The one and only Son. The one and only Son who is at the Father's side. Who we know from verse 1 is face to face with Him. All of a sudden this eternal relationship is underscored there in verse 18. And this is important. as it relates to us, as it relates to our humanity. Oh, I'm gonna get off my notes here for a minute, which may be dangerous, but may mean we end early, who knows? The God, I'm gonna use a little g, the God of Islam is a transcendent God who does not have a son, who does not interact relationally with humanity. How is it that a God, we know of communicable attributes that God gives to men and we are this thing because he is and we have a communicable attribute related to how he is. But we can't be what we're not created to be. How can a God who does not love in love relationship create humanity and say, you will love, you will love one another. Only a triune God can create human beings to be individual, and to be in relationship. And how are we to be? If we took a poll, who in here would rather be individual? Who in here would say, over the last year of all the isolation of COVID, I have been right at home. Some of us would raise our hand and say, yep, that's me. Who in here would say, I have been crazy with myself. I need other people. There would be others who would raise their hand and say, I need that. Which are we created to be? Both. We're really created to be both, but we can't, and we can't give up on either one. When we look at When we look at really problematic societies, they focus on one and not the other. Let's go to, and I'm probably using the wrong word here, the hyper-individualism that would say there's gonna be no society, that's gonna fail, that's not gonna work, or the hyper-collectivism that would say we're gonna all, hyper-collectivism, we see that, isn't that, Communism, Marxism, yeah, that's where we all look uniform, not unity, but uniform, where we all, everybody look the same and do the same, no individuality, no individual thoughts, no individual, so we really have to see, and the other way, hyperdiversity takes us to where there's no collective, there's no unity, and we are created to be both. God has created us in this way because God is in the Trinity, one and three. Plurality and unity, unity and plurality. Probably saying that. Hold on, say that again. Well, you gotta read them now. Cause I got off my notes. I need to find my place. You read that. I'm going to start in John 14 verse 16. I will ask the father and he will give you another helper. the truth of the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as I will come to you. After a little while, the world will no longer see me but you you will live also. In that day, you will know that I am in my father and you and me and I am you. He who has commandments and keeps him is the one who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and will disclose myself to him. Judas Judas, not as scary as said to him, lord, what then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words and the word which you hear is not mine but the fathers who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you but the helper, the Holy Spirit and the father will send in my name. He will teach you all things and Yes, yeah, we have a lot of Trinitarian stuff in there and we have a lot of stuff that focuses on the hypostatic union when it speaks of, think about when Jesus said, not my will but thine, praying to the Father, not my will but thine. Does God have two wills? No. God has one will. Three persons, one will. But in his humanity, Jesus had a human will that was perfectly submitted to the will of the Father. One more question. So when Jesus is praying to God and he's saying, I'm not praying for the world, I'm praying for the ones that you sent me, so in essence, giving it to himself or how I'm understanding that we go back to the specific remember Jesus died on the cross. The father didn't right. What did the father do? The father did give as a gift to the son, a people. So that's when Jesus says, I'm not praying for the world. I'm praying for the ones you've given me. The father has given as a gift to the son, through the spirit, this, this, uh, This people, so that's what he's speaking of. And by the way, he not only says that, but he also says, and I'm gonna paraphrase, not only the ones that are standing right here, but the ones who will believe based on their testimony. And who was there? Matthew, John, I mean, you know, the people who wrote Peter. Paul wasn't standing there, but yeah, the ones who will believe, so that is, there are a lot of places that we can't go to in scripture and say, that was written to me. This is one place that we can go to in John 17 that we see, that's written to us, who would believe. Yes, sir? forgive them for they know not what they do. How would you? Yeah, there Jesus is praying for, praying to the Father. He is praying to the Father. And we're gonna see some of that. How many people in that crowd, shouting crucify him, crucify him, became on the day of Pentecost believers in Jesus Christ? How many of them were saved, filled with the Spirit? We don't know. There were 3,000 souls out in there. There were those who believed and Jesus' prayer was, at least in part, answered there. And by the way, just a foreshadowing, when Stephen prayed, As Stephen was stoned, do not hold this sin to their account. It's almost the same words that Jesus used. A little different, don't hold this sin to their account. Who was standing there holding everybody's stuff? Saul of Tarsus. And Stephen's prayer, God, Father, don't hold this sin to their account, is answered, at least in part, maybe more, but at least in part, with the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. What a great thing. Okay, listen to this from C.S. Lewis and the point that I was trying to make here is that God is love, love within God, the fact that he is love, implies relationship and it is intrinsic to God's nature and being. This is from C.S. Lewis. All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that God is love, but they seem not to notice that the words God is love have no real meaning unless God contains at least two persons. Pause to meditate on that for a moment. A God who is only one, how do you, there can be no love. Love, he continues, love is something that one person has for another. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love. We can't, and by the way, does God change? God does not, the Lord does not change. So when we say God is love, what that has to mean is eternally God has always been love. By the way, the father is father, the son is son, eternally. Was there a time, we talked about that last week. Remember there was a time that Matt was not a father, and then he became a father, but God has always been father. Son has always been son, and God has always been love. And that implies relationship. There must be, as C.S. Lewis says, at least a two, at least a two-ness. But when we go to scripture, we say, oh, it's not two, it's three. So we see Trinity there. If we take away the concept of plurality within the Godhead, then we are left with a God who knows nothing of love, knows nothing of love relationships, and is incapable of creating beings who can love. Remember, this is all under the heading of why is this important? Why is this the foundation of all our communion with God? If he is not love, if he cannot love, Everything we have in relation to him is not. It also makes me think that far too often people talk about how God needed to make man because he needed to express his love, but the fact is he already had that, and he already was in a relationship. Absolutely, yeah. God had no hole in his heart that he needed to make a man. That's not the case. So why did God make man? To manifest His glory, to show. Because by the way, we don't give God more glory. We don't bring glory to God. It just puts on display. And by the way, why did God send a Savior? To save. Sinners and bring them to heaven and forgive them to manifest his glory in his forgiveness Because when a sinner is saved and goes to heaven for eternity God's forgiveness is is manifest is shown forth Why do men die and go to hell? because when a man dies and goes to hell, God's justice, His wrath, His righteousness is shown. It still glorifies. You can't take glory away from God. His glory will be magnified. I started to say He will be glorified, and that's what we say, right? But His glory will be shown in those who believe, in those who don't believe, in those who obey quickly, in those who come to Him late. God's going to be glorious. God will be shown to be the glorious God that He is. Oh, what a wonderful thing that is. We started with Genesis 126. God said, let us make man in our image. And what we've been talking about is the fact that the plurality and unity in God is reflected in how God has made each individual person to be unique. Every person has uniqueness. And we are also created to be in a collective or in, I don't like that word, In fellowship, that's a better word. In church, exactly. Yeah, that's good. This is from Arden Hodges. Sin has had a devastating effect on man. The image of God in fallen man has been marred. Instead of that balance, that divine tension of diversity and unity, there is imbalance. We see either diversity or individuality being emphasized to the exclusion of unity, or we see unity emphasized to the exclusion of diversity. That is, either the interests of the individual are asserted over and against the interests of the community, or the interests of the community are asserted over and against the interests of the individual. Only in God is there perfect harmony of these two aspects. Only in God is there a perfect integration of the one and the many. By the way, when I read that, I immediately had news flashbacks from what's going on right now, what's been going on for a year and what's going on now. There's all this, speaking of the unity and speaking of the collective and speaking of what, And then there's on the other side, speaking of individualism, and we get anarchy there. Only in God is there this perfect integration of the one and the many. And that is, in the Godhead, perfect. It should be reflected, though imperfectly, it should be reflected in his people, in his church. It really should be. And let me, We're bad out of time, but let me just say this. We we see in churches this error of focusing on the individual or focusing on the collective. We see this in how churches are organized. Have you been to those places where we're so individual? We're so hyper individualistic that there is no. There is no fellowship. It's just a bunch of people gathered. No body. And then there's other places, some of them who have names a lot like the name of our church, who might have the word family in the name, and who are so focused. the collective are so focused on smaller units of collectiveness that there is no what happens when you come together with many churches that have the word family in their name they become so focused on the collective that it becomes a monolith it becomes a Oh, everybody looks the same. We use the term bund and skirted in our house. Maybe you know what that means. Everybody looks the same. Everybody dresses the same. Is that family the same as that family? Oh no, they're different, but everybody drives the same minivan. Everybody wears the same clothes. Everybody homeschools with the same curriculum. And if you don't homeschool, goodness gracious, There's no room for any of that, right? All of this becomes a uniformity and there's no individualism. And usually in those churches that have that name family in them, I've been told this, the problem with those kind of churches, they were talking about us, is that people who are single, who are not married with children, don't have a place to fit in. And you know what I was able to say? That's not true. Is that right? I mean, that's not true. I hope that we can overcome the errors of hyper-individualism, the errors of hyper-collectiveness. I hope we can overcome that. I already mentioned the problems, the errors of Islam in their God not being triune. Okay, so God is a personal, relational being within the Godhead. He has created us to be individuals in relationship. And He has condescended and Christ Jesus has taken on humanity, a true body and a reasonable soul. to become in relation to us. Oh, by the way, for eternity, for eternity future. There was a time that Jesus had not taken on human flesh, but now that he has taken on human flesh and lived and died and been raised and ascended, he will never again not be fully God and fully man, that is a forever relationship that we have. We can say as Christians, Christ is our brother in humanity and he is our savior because he is God and man. So we have that. God is both one and three. We have unity and diversity and the three persons of the Godhead willingly and lovingly operate according to Structure Same in essence equal in power and glory But the Father didn't die on the cross the Son didn't give the gift of the it's so we have to keep that and there is a there's a structure there that exists Oh So this last clause that we're kind of talking about here, it's all, I don't know how I'm kind of thinking about it now, is we've talked a lot about the Like, this is, the Trinity is one of those blocks that we really can't go any further without, right? Is that? Oh, and by the way, this is chapter two. Right. Yeah. Just for everybody else, because I know you know this, the other day I said, if you see a difference of wording in our confession, it's there on purpose. If you see something in chapter two, instead of chapter 22, That's for a reason chapter one is chapter one for a reason chapter, and that's that's what you're saying We need to establish god and the holy trinity before we work forward And that's what kind of it says the trinity is the foundation of all our communion with god, which we're about to get into. Yeah Yeah, exactly. I was just curious about what that statement was. I just hadn't thought about that statement before last week and I think It's just grounding us in the fact that the Trinity, yes, it's tough, and yes, it's hard, and yes, it's, you know, it's even hard to talk about. I can't say existence anymore. You know, it's hard to talk about it. Yet, it's just, it's so important in where we're going. Like, it's... Right. When we get there, and we are speaking about the Father has sent the Son, and the Father has decreed, and the Son died on the cross, and we're gonna, so when we start talking about those things, We have to keep in the back of our mind Trinity, three-ness, oneness, don't separate. We have to come back to this when we do that. So that's important. Yeah, yeah, absolutely Either the Trinity or the hypostatic unit that covers just about everything Yeah, it's very much foundational it absolutely is hey, let me give us a warning right quick and There is oneness and threeness in God that is reflected. We've seen in the individuality of the people that he makes and the fact that we live in relationship. What's the best relationship, the closest relationship, the most important relationship among humans? Marriage. What is, is God's plurality and unity reflected in family? Yes, as long as we don't go too far. So there is certainly with man and wife in marriage, is there individuality? I know I tell my wife, if I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. Y'all know that stuff, right? Here's my point. What happens if we have exactly the same opinion? And you go to Oscars every night. Yes. Well, we are pretty close on that one. Yeah, we have the same dinner every night. If we're the same, one of us is not necessary. In a marriage, both are necessary because there's individuality. So husbands, we have to figure out how am I supposed to lead and listen? I'm not gonna tell you how. I haven't got this figured out. Somebody write it down. Maybe some of these single people can tell us. How are you going to be a part and submit? So there's, There's individuality, but we come together for the same purpose. In my marriage and in your marriage, if I'm looking out for my best interest, something's wrong, isn't it? Really, something's wrong. And the same goes for my wife. If she's just looking out for her, we should be looking out for our best interest. And Philippians is even going to tell me that if I really want to be like Christ, I'm going to look out more for the interest of others. I'm going to be looking out more for the interest of my wife. I'm not telling you I perfected this. When I say stuff like this as a preacher, I feel like a hypocrite because I haven't got it all down. But I need to be looking out more for the interest of my wife than for me. And we learned that because that's who God is. He didn't send Jesus Christ. The Father didn't send Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ didn't come because he said, this is in my best interest. He comes and it's in our best interest. It's a benefit to us. And what a great thing that is. But we dare not go to the place that every single marriage book that I've ever picked up goes to. The wife is to submit to the husband just like Jesus is eternally submitted to the father. No, Jesus Christ submitted to the father in his humanity, according to his humanity for a period of time in his earthly life, in his crucifixion and death. And that was his submission to the father time. And now he is exalted. He has been given a name above every name. Jesus Christ is not submitted in the way that a wife submits to a husband. So we don't have it there. If that makes sense. I just want to bring up that we have that in, um, in family. Anywhere else, any other kind of human relationships that we see this caring for one another, though there's individuality? Church, is there anybody? The church, yeah, where we see that, yeah, where it What happens if we come together? Maybe you've been a member of that church where everybody's looking out for number one. Everybody's looking out for my best interest, my team. I was a music minister for a pastor one time that used to talk about, was it the red team or the blue team? Because there were factions in the church. And that's messed up, isn't it? That's not what the church is supposed to be like. There's individuality. but then we should look out for the best interest of others and we should look, so we see this attribute from the character of God that should be reflected in our families, it should be reflected in our churches. Okay, yep, that was where I was gonna quit. And it certainly is, yes sir? I guess it comes down into God's plan for salvation He must all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, just like John 3.16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, Absolutely. And that's salvation. What do we call salvation that is non-Trinitarian? Heresy. Lostness. Heresy, lostness, nothing. Salvation. Yeah, I'm glad that there's confusion because that's the point I was trying to make. The salvation that we have in Christ is because God the Father decreed. He sent the Son. The Son came and lived the life and died the death vicariously on our behalf. And the spirit now is at work. And we're so grateful that the spirit is still at work, uh, bringing this salvation, uh, to effect in centers. What a great thing. Thank y'all for being here. I hope that it's helpful, and I hope it's challenging, and I hope that you don't forget these things that we talk about in dealing with the Trinity. Lord, we love you. We thank you that you are beyond finding out, that you're beyond our comprehension, that we will never master you. We thank you that you are God. that you do exist in and of yourself and require no input or help or power or energy from any other. We thank you that you are existing, subsisting in perfect unity and triunity. and though we stumble about to speak accurately, precisely about you, God, we pray that our worship, that our praise, that our prayer would be received by you through the Holy Spirit, through the blood of Jesus Christ, to fill up the things that we lack. Forgive us where we have erred, where we have held to wrong views, of who you are. Help us, Lord, remove those errors from us that we might worship you more rightly. And we look forward to the day, Lord, where we will be in your presence, where sin will be cast into the lake of fire. Though we will even then not fully comprehend you, that we will be able more purely, more rightly, to worship you. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. It's in his strong name that we pray these things. Amen.