Well, I'm going to just work us through the bullet points tonight. Go ahead and follow along as I read through these points. In this study, we will begin to consider the first section of the creed that treats the subject of God the Father. And yet, as we come into this first section, we're struck with the simple but profound words, I believe in God. And the first matter that we must consider when we confess that we believe in or trust in God is the question of who this God is. When as Christians we confess, should we confess, that we believe in God, we are not talking about a general concept of God, nor that we think there is a single God worshipped by different names and different religions. Rather, we are very exclusive in our confession, and when we say, I believe in God, we are saying that there is only one living and true God, and he is the one that we believe in. We are also saying that all other all the other gods or that all all other shouldn't be another, that all other gods acknowledged by other religions are invalid and actually nonexistent. In other words, we don't believe that. God is like the hub of a bicycle wheel and all religious roads like the spokes of the wheel ultimately lead to him. How many of you have ever heard of people speaking of God in that way. Have you heard that analogy before and maybe world religions classes where the idea is God is like the center of the bicycle wheel and really you can take any spoke and it will get you to the center. And they use that as an analogy to say, see, all the world religions are really ultimately worshiping the same God. And you can just take a different path. In other words, one of those religious ways to get to him. When we confess in the Apostles Creed, I believe in God. We are speaking of a specific God in contrast to all others. So we are not at all here talking about a general concept of God, supposedly that everybody is tapping into. by way of their religion. That's not at all what we're saying. So we need to have that clear in our minds. By the way, those of you who haven't been with us in an evening, this is open forum. So if you have a comment to make or have a question to ask, something to add to the discussion, please go ahead and just raise your hand. Or if I'm barreling through with my head down, go ahead and speak out. So we do want to be able to field comments and questions. Let's look at this third point. We are exclusivists when it comes to God because God has revealed himself to be the only real God. We could go many places in the in the Scriptures back in Exodus twenty three. This is actually right there in the Ten Commandments. You shall have no other gods before me right at the very beginning. God nails this issue clearly from from from the start. in the Ten Commandments, particularly in Isaiah forty five. God is speaking to Cyrus, who's a pagan king. This is just a we could quote actually more passages than what we do here from Isaiah forty five. But listen to how exclusive God makes his own existence and how he declares that there is no other beside him. I am the Lord and there is no other besides me. There is no God. He's speaking to Cyrus again this pagan king. I equip you though you do not know me that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the West that there is none besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other who told this long ago who declared it of old. Was it not I the Lord and there is no other God besides me a righteous God and Savior. There is none besides me. So Christians are. are exclusivist when it comes to God, not because we're trying to be mean or nasty or in in many ways, not because we set out to be exclusivist, but but clearly because of what God says in his word about the nature of reality. There is one living and true God. He is it. And he says there are no others. So we we make this confession because that's what he that's how he's revealed himself and what he's told us about reality and therefore Fourth point here we join with the people of God throughout the history of the world confessing our faith in the one living and true God. And again this is all of God's people whether we're talking about in the Old Testament or whether we're talking about in the New Testament. This has been a basic part of all of the confession of God's people throughout the ages in other words even before Christ came and before we got to the Christian faith proper God's people in the Old Testament had always had always confessed there is one God and we again we see that here in Deuteronomy six four in the Shema hero Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one. The great statement of monotheism and then first Corinthians eight four through six we know that. An idol has 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, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. Again, why would we claim to be exclusivists? Well, because the scriptures are absolutely put forth an exclusive view of reality. There's one God, and that's the God we worship. These other so-called gods are not really in existence. There are all these other kinds of gods and lords out there, but they're not real. There's one real living and true God. That's why we make this confession. as a Christian people. Not only, though, do we confess that there is only one living and true God, but we confess that this one living and true God is a Trinity. That is, we confess in the Apostles Creed that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity, which the whole Creed is organized around, is the unique foundation of the Christian faith and the most profound teaching of all of God's self-revelation. For those of you who haven't been with us in our study of the Apostles Creed, I've broken it up. If you look back up the page there, you can see, I'm not sure what your familiarity is with the Apostles Creed or not, but you see that there are three sections of the Creed and they are organized around the doctrine of the Trinity. We first deal with God the Father. Then the biggest section of the creed deals with God, the sun, and then the final section deals with God, the Holy Spirit. Um, we, we also, um, I always got to hear who it is. I just can't. The, uh, another way of thinking about the, uh, The organization of the Apostles Creed is we're looking at God our creator God our Redeemer and God our sanctifier. Those would be another way that you can think about the three divisions of the Apostles Creed. But this doctrine of the Trinity really is the most foundational and probably the most profound thing that God has ever revealed concerning himself that he is a Trinity. Final final point on this side of the page. The doctrine of the Trinity or or the tri unity of God is. And if you if you've heard maybe you're a younger person in our church and you've heard us talk about the Trinity and you thought what is that. Well this is what this is what it is. The doctrine of the Trinity is that there is only one God. but that this one God exists in three distinct persons. Thus, when talking about God, we say that each of the members of the Trinity is the same in substance, equal in power and glory. And then we're going to turn the page here because another Christian creed called the Athanasian Creed. You can see the dates there. It states it this way. This is directly out of the Athanasian Creed. We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one. The glory equal, the majesty co-eternal, such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. So, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet they are not three gods, but one God. So, likewise, the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord, and yet not three lords, but one Lord. This is the attempt of the church to echo back what we hear God saying about himself in the word and because of the profundity of what he says we've we've really I'm thankful we actually have a word and we call it Trinity or try unity but it's a very difficult concept to try to to express. I think the Athanasian Creed does a really good job of trying to trying to lay out these different lines and say what we're saying and what we're not saying. But it's still difficult to grasp in a in just a few words. There's really not a good analogy. People have always have tried for thousands of years to try to come up with a an analogy like it's like an egg or something like that. You know there's the three parts there's the yolk the white part in the shell but they're all the egg and yet there's the three parts. It doesn't do justice to the person of God or it's like water. It can exist in. a gas, a solid, or a liquid, but it's all water, this kind of a thing. Any one of those earthly analogies to the person of God ends up leading us into actually a heresy, something subpar, not quite what God reveals himself to be in Scripture. And so each of those analogies do fall short, although sometimes They're kind of helpful to think about, but they don't get your theology from one of those analogies. Get it, get it from the scriptures. And we're going to look at a few more of these things in a minute here. But before we do that, any, any thoughts so far on, on anything we've looked at tonight, and we're just beginning to broach the subject of the Trinity together. And we're going to look at a few passages of scripture together here of, of why we confess that God is, is a Trinity or, or, or a triunity. Any thoughts on this yet? I'm going to take a sip of coffee while I... Yes, Bob? Yes, if you look at the very last bolded letters of the outline down there, I'm going to get to that point. I really we're not going to dig too deep into this tonight, but really, if God was not Trinity, you can't be saved. That is the bottom line. You cannot be saved by any other kind of God, frankly. That's the foundational nature of the Trinity and how necessary it is for the Christian faith that God is a triunity. Yeah. Yeah, we don't make up a God that. There really is no parallel to the Trinity in any other kind of religious thought out there. And this has been, understandably to some, this is one of the areas of the greatest attack on the Christian faith is because I can't get it into my head. in a sufficient way, therefore I reject it. Jehovah's Witness is an entirely rationalistic religion and they reject the Trinity on the basis of it's not rational to them. Christianity is a revelatory religion. We believe things based upon what God has revealed about himself in his word, not what we can grasp necessarily with our minds. Even the concept of eternity is a bit difficult for me to deal with, let alone the nature of God in Trinity, Trinity in unity. But are we going to throw out eternality? Because we can't deal with that. So, yeah, I think, you know, as Keith's alluding to, If God really exists and he did make us and spoke us into existence and all those kinds of things I think it fits that he just might be a bit bigger than we can kind of cram into our thinking entirely. And yet at the same time here's the interesting thing that the unanimous confession of the Christian church for thousands of years our hearts have found rest in this doctrine. Christians have always professed The Trinity as this is my God and we for some reason amongst Christians we have found rest in that while the rest of the world looks at us and thinks we're nuts and doesn't it accuses us of you believe in three gods or you know all these different things. No no no we don't. But yet we've we've never had a problem I think within the faith itself among ourselves confessing this as as the truth of who God is because we've heard him say this about himself in his word. That's really why our hearts rest. in what he said about himself. We're going to look at this a little bit more, but this is the first bullet point on the second page here. Why do we believe this? We believe and confess this truth about God because of how God has revealed himself in the scriptures. It is absolutely clear that there is only one living and true God, but it is also absolutely clear that there are three distinct persons that are said to be this one living and true God. And because we have these two things revealed, the Christian, again, not going by, first and foremost, our rationality, but going first and foremost by God's revelation, we say, OK, there's one living and true God. There's three persons that are said to be this one living and true God. Therefore, we have to somehow say that's who God is. He's Trinity in unity and yet unity in Trinity. That's the best we can do. But this is what we hear him saying about himself. We first see the Trinity revealed in, I would argue, the first two verses of the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. Here we have the father. the Spirit and the Word of God, all active in creation. These allusions to God as a Trinity are found throughout the Old Testament, for example, in Isaiah 48, 16. If you want to go there, you can look there or I'll speak about this just a little bit. You have the verse right there in front of you. Not only is this one who identifies himself as the servant of the Lord, but this is one who just said, I am the first and the last. I created the world. This is this is the one speaking. So he says, whoever the speaker is in in Isaiah 48. Sixteen, he says, Listen to me, O Jacob, O Israel, whom I called. I am he. I'm the first. I am the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth and my right hand spread out the heavens. When I call to them, they stand forth together. OK. Who does that sound like is talking? Just just a general comment. It's actually the the family devotions classic answer that works every time. God. All the parents got that right away. Yeah, it sounds clearly like this is God speaking, this is the creator speaking here, what the creator says in verse 16, two verses later. Draw near to me, hear this. From the beginning I have not spoken in secret from the time it came to be I have been there and now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit. Interesting passage. It's clearly here are the three members of the Trinity again we have the Lord God we have the servant and we have his spirit. Or we have the Lord God, we have the one who created the world and his spirit. Along with the numerous allusions to the Trinity in the Old Testament, there are even more and more explicit ones in the New Testament. Luke 31, 21 and 22, Jesus' baptism. Now, when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And the voice came from heaven, which would be the father. You are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased. So here are the three members again, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and this voice. Obviously, when he says you are my beloved son, that's clearly the father speaking. Matthew 28, 19, go there for and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name Notice again here in the text and it's here in the English. The name is singular. It does not say in the Greek baptize them into the names of the father and the son of the Holy Spirit. It says baptize them into the name of the singular name of and then these three persons, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians twelve four through six. These are this is not necessarily a proof text for the Trinity but you see the the apostolic writers the apostles themselves just simply thought in Trinitarian terminology and in categories. So when when Paul would say something he would break it up often and attribute things to each of the members of the Trinity. Not even it seems at times absolutely self-conscious of this it just permeates everything. These are just very few illusions, but you find this all over the New Testament. There are a variety of gifts, but the same spirit and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord. And there are varieties of activities, but the same God who empowers them all in everyone. In Second Corinthians 1314, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. benediction at the end of the second Corinthians first Peter one to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. Again first Peter one to again just these are just very few illusions that we could we could go spend a whole long time this evening looking more at the doctrine of the Trinity something I would. urge you to do and if you guys are if you if you're the kind that writing your Bible here's a an interesting kind of lifelong project. Look for these Trinitarian illusions as you as you read your Bibles and as you hear sermons and as you hear the scriptures read you will you will come I think to be surprised and come to a greater conviction of the doctrine of the Trinity. They are everywhere. And oftentimes they're not so neatly packed into one single verse, but you'll see them over a section of about four verses, a complete thought that Paul will lay out, and yet he'll reference each member of the Trinity distinctly. They're all over the place, and it's really a fun project to kind of start looking for those things as you read and study the Word. There's a couple more things I'd like to make mention of, which might provoke some discussion. And these become deep waters. To some degree, it's a little unfair to kind of say, here's Splash Blast, here's the Trinity, and then we're done. This is an amazing truth of God that we're speaking about here. And as I mentioned at the beginning, it's one of the most profound things that we could ever consider about how God has revealed himself, the implications of which I think we will never fully exhaust in our lives. I remember just a few weeks back and I think a lot of us can can remember in our study of the reason for God. Tim Keller has a chapter at the end. It's kind of a fruity named chapter. I think it was called The Dance of God where he talks about this big word perichoresis and the whole issue of the way that the members of the Trinity. interact with one another, but the profundity of what was being said there. If you didn't get a chance to read The Reason for God, my suggestion is read that chapter twice. The first time you read it, you probably go, huh? And then go back through and try to really think through some of the things that are being said there. He did a really good job, I think, of introducing folks to a very difficult concept. So that's one thing, and maybe we'll do a study specifically on the Trinity in the future as a church. Well, God's triune nature is profound and mysterious, not only from his revelation of himself in the Bible, known only from his revelation of himself in the Bible. In other words, you're not going to go find this in nature. You would never figure this out about the person of God. by walking around in the woods or something like that. It just would never happen. You're never going to find any kind of parallel to this in nature. God himself has to reveal this. And so it's known only from his revelation of himself in the Bible. But it is also very practical and helpful in our daily lives, not to mention essential to our salvation. And this is again where we get into a little bit deeper stuff, but we'll just try to maybe touch this and then give a couple of things that help you kind of understand maybe what's being talked about. The Trinity means that at the ground of existence, of all existence, the very nature of reality is both one and many. This means that we do not always have to choose between, this is a practical outworking of We don't always have to choose between two alternatives or set two important things in conflict with each other. On the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity, we can hold that two things are equally ultimate. For instance, we might ask, is your individual relationship with God or your corporate relationship with the body of Christ more important? What's more important in the Christian life, your individual relationship or your relationship as a member of the body of Christ? Neither. They're both equally ultimate. How can we say that? I mean, Christians are the only ones that actually have a philosophical basis to declare. We hold certain things to be equally ultimate in life. And we can trace that back to the foundation of our entire worldview, and that is God himself. who is, in himself, both one and many. We don't have to, if you know anything, if you've even dabbled a little bit in the history of philosophy and just the whole field of philosophy, and if you haven't, and someday you get the chance to study the history of philosophy or just, again, the field of philosophy, you're going to find this problem throughout it. the problem of the one in the many what is reality is reality one or is reality many and think about it just if you if you just think through sort of the the the array of worldviews that are out there on the one hand you have Eastern mysticism you have the Eastern views that are very dominant we don't swim in those circles as much in the West but what is the basic if you had to choose between these two options is reality One or is reality many where does Eastern thought fall on that spectrum generally speaking? One yeah, I mean and we learned that from the Beatles because they went over and studied and then they came back writing songs like I am you and you are me and we are One I am the walrus. I mean you cuckoo cuckoo We You can actually learn really good philosophy through popular culture. They came back. They had imbibed Eastern philosophy and they came back and wrote it and basically spread it through the West. Eastern philosophy has chosen on the choices of is reality one or many. They've said it's one. We're all ultimately one and all reality is part of the same thing. Heaven in Eastern philosophy is what they call nirvana. And it's to get to a place where we no longer think in distinctions, that we become a drop in the abyss and it's over. So, you know, even if you haven't studied these things, you might, maybe some of this resonates with you a little bit, you understand this. What is Western thought dominated by? And really, In our materialistic age, it's come to the forefront, even more so. What is many? Probably the prevailing view, not necessarily if you were to quiz every person on this, but the way that we think as people in the West is we are what has been called, we are materialistic atomists. We think that reality is many. We're just it's just a bunch of atoms and particles. That's the basis of reality. Just just massive. That what I just said. These are the these are kind of these these philosophical problems that have polarized the world and they take these different forms. Christianity. rejects both of those extremes and says reality is both one and many there's things we can say and there's there's things that Christian can affirm that the world has no basis of that we can affirm that because of who our God is and how he's revealed himself and therefore we look at reality through the lens of who he is and he's a Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity. Again this is this is important for. Those of you who are married or who are going to get married someday are the individual identities of a married couple. In other words, the man is a man, the wife is a wife. What's more important? They have individuality and personhood in themselves, but they also become one in the bond of marriage. Well, what's more important? Both. Both are, there's an equal ultimacy to the marriage relationship. And so again, the doctrine of the Trinity actually touches down practically in our daily lives in many ways. These are just two examples. There's a lot more we can say on that. In fact, I'd like to maybe open up, does anyone else have any time to think down these lines? What I'm meaning by this is the practical day in, day out. kind of traction that the doctrine of the Trinity has and how we see it in our daily lives. Maybe in our thought patterns or or the way that we live. Don't worry, that's a huge question. So I'm not. I'm not going to diss you if you don't come up with something fast. Yeah, Aaron. I don't know if it's due to the strength of the science, but how light interferes even with that delayed particle process. In some of those frames, if you're measuring the light that's exhibiting wave properties, if you try to detect that, it actually collapses into exhibiting particle properties, and vice versa. And we don't really know why. And there's all sorts of different theories about why. I don't know if it's a particle on the wave path, or there's only multiple universes, and so on, and so forth, and there's a number of different theories. But there's an explanation called the Copenhagen Conclusion, and it basically says, look, math works. And we can actually do that productively, but we don't know why it works. And we can't know why it works, but we don't agree. So I'm trying to understand it, because it's not just what it does. And so I guess what I'm trying to do, I hand it around to the community. I go, well, I don't really understand how life works, but you can use it. And I base myself on work, and I don't quite understand the community, but I know how to reveal myself. And I can rely on the fact that you're revealing yourself this way. Even though I don't understand it, it works. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Some people talk about that. They use the terminology an antinomy to two things that are that are true, even though we can't comprehend how they can both be true at the same time. And we use this terminology called antinomy. Think about this, though. Let's go back from from science. We can go back into theology. Our view of the sovereignty of God. should not press out human responsibility and somehow cancel that out. These are two ultimately true things. I don't know how that works. How do you get that to work with God who's absolutely sovereign and he has decreed whatsoever shall come to pass and yet people are held absolutely responsible for their actions. Again the doctrine of the Trinity allows us to affirm those things together. and not to say, well, this one cancels that out because logically that would be neither could exist at the same time. There's so many things, really, that the Doctrine of the Trinity creates a foundation for us to affirm as Christians and keep us from going wacky and becoming heretical. So this comes up in many areas. Robert? Yeah, it's another one of those things. Great mystery. The incarnation of the Son of God. The last I checked and I'm not I'm not a math guy but you know 100 percent plus 100 percent is bigger than one. It's you know how can God be or Jesus be fully God and fully man. And yet you still have just one one person. These two natures in one person. Very difficult things. But again if we if we start at the basis of how God has revealed himself in his very nature. Much of our theology falls into place beautifully. And really, if you look back, many of the basic elements of Christian theology are actually grounded upon the truth of the Trinity. If that wasn't true, nothing else follows from it. But if that is true, then all of these other things that we affirm as Christians actually do follow. Again, these are deep waters. Appreciate the little bit of interaction on that. Hopefully this will wet a whistle. Maybe you go read a book on the Trinity. I think it would be... I hope Many of you might be led that way. Let's continue on here. The Trinity means that God has exercised and given his love forever. Thus, he did not need to create us to be able to express this attribute. The three persons have loved one another from all eternity. I think this is something Keller had gotten into a bit in that final chapter there, that so much of God's existence and being and his attributes were He was self-satisfied. He was able to express all of this within his own being for all eternity. And therefore, we should never get into a view to think that, well, God created us because he needed to be able to do this or something like that. No, God was able to be absolutely complete and sufficient within himself. And the doctrine of the Trinity enabled that. If God was simply one person, love is an interaction between two persons. There had to be multiple persons for love to have been able to be expressed from all eternity. It's a necessary precondition for that attribute. And finally, the Trinity means that God can pour his eternal wrath out upon a substitute and have it fully, fully should be there, fully satisfied for the eternal father can and did forsake and punish the eternal son enabling him to pardon our sin and justify us in him. Nowhere else could God look to find any other kind of a being or anything outside of himself to be able to satisfy his own justice, to then be able to grant salvation to sinners. You hear this terminology throughout the book of Isaiah, particularly God looked and he could find no one else. So he had to bring salvation with his own arm. talking about God needing to satisfy and provide salvation himself. Well, the doctrine of the Trinity enables God to pour out that eternal wrath upon a substitute that's able to bear it. It's a great mystery, but the Trinity becomes absolutely necessary for us to be saved. If there wasn't an eternal being commensurate with the wrath of God, then his wrath could not have been satisfied. We would still be in our sins. We would still be liable to the judgment. But because of the differentiated persons of the Trinity, God was able to satisfy this entirely in the punishment of his own son. And therefore, we are saying something very profound when we confess, I believe in God in the Apostles Creed. We are saying that there is only one living and true God and that he is a Trinity and in saying this we are confessing that we are really that we are. I don't know what I'm saying. It's no fun editing in front of like. That is true. I love Keith, he could turn anything positive, even my terrible grammar. That's true. He's telling the truth, even that it is true though. But we are confessing that we are relying upon him alone for our salvation, for only this God could save us. Any final comments or thoughts before we break? before prayer tonight. Let's go ahead and take our break.