The second chapter is called, Of God and the Holy Trinity. And each of the three paragraphs give us three major divisions. The first paragraph is the character of God. The second paragraph I'm calling the person of God over His creation. And then the third paragraph is the person of God in Himself, which of course as you know is on the Doctrine and of the Trinity. The major divisions I have set those forth and I think it's going to be easier for you to follow. So this is why there's a more detailed outline and there's, I've left some space there where I think you might want to jot some notes and ideas as I elaborate on some of these specific aspects. Actually this chapter is in many ways the most challenging but also the most rewarding in our confession and even in the Word of God. Dr. Waldron in his exposition of the confession says that the only safe course for us is to stay close to the Word of God when we're discussing God. The character of God, the attributes of God, the triune or triunity of God. It's very easy for some people to add some stuff or for others to maybe fail to see fully what is being presented to us in the scripture. And so he also says, we must not indulge in rational speculation or personal opinion. A sense of our insufficiency must turn our souls to the Word of God in humble reverence as the only safe guide for our understanding of these great and glorious truths that are being given to us here in this passage. in this chapter. So let me just say really with I hope clarity and with honesty that I really like the ability to communicate the meaning of many of these deeper truths about God in a concise and brief way. When you're early and you're learning, you're taught that if you can deliver complex, difficult ideas in just a very few words, you really understand them completely and fully, and you're, we might say, the best kind of teacher. Some of this, I'm not able to do that, hence the four pages of just the outline of this passage and or this chapter. So this is basically, this is requiring me to spend a little bit more time in this chapter, but I'm not really apologizing for that. I'm just acknowledging that that's what's necessary in order to bring out what I believe is important for us to see from this chapter. There's a very real sense in which as we start the Confession we look at the first chapter and we see of the Holy Scriptures, and we see the doctrine of Scripture, the particular attributes that are given to us of the Scriptures, and the place of the Scriptures, and then a number of practical things in the later paragraphs. But then we come to the second chapter we're seeing a deep dive into all of the Word of God with maybe more Scripture references in the second chapter than in a lot of the other chapters, but the number of Scripture references that we have are minuscule in comparison to the multitude of passages that address the subjects of the second chapter of God and the Holy Trinity. So I'm going to strive to speak carefully and correctly of these divine and eternal truths. If there's one thing that the pastor, you know, when it comes to a number of practical things, In terms of teaching the Word of God, lots of different language can be brought to assist us in communicating that information, but more precision is necessary in teaching and discussing the doctrine of God. And our confession is one of the great passages in all of church history, one of the great documents in church history in putting together a very dense three paragraphs on God. Everything else after this, this is a foundational chapter. I didn't bring a copy of mine. next week I'll probably say something about this chapter in light of all the other chapters. But this is certainly a foundational chapter for everything else. So we have to get ourselves moving in the right direction in regard to this. So this evening I would like for us to cover paragraph 1 if at all possible, or half of paragraph 1. I'm calling this the Character of God. Now we could call it the Attributes of God. We could call it the Characteristics of God or something about the Traits of God. We could do a number of different ways. We could describe this paragraph in a lot of ways. I'm choosing to use the Character of God rather than the Attributes of God because the way the Authors of the Confession present this material to us. At first sight, when we read through paragraph 1 of chapter 2, it seems that the listing of attributes and characteristics of God are random. In fact, in my earlier, certainly my first reading and others, there's things that I didn't understand. But there was also, it was almost like, okay, when you read almost any systematic theology, there's a categorization of attributes that theologians use. And there are several different ways that they do it. You don't see any of that here. So you kind of feel like maybe that they're random, but that's not the case. And further reflection shows us that there are clearly eight divisions in the minds of the authors that crafted this confession. And these eight divisions are divided by semicolons. Okay? And I'm not going to read this whole paragraph at once because we would just get lost in the words because it's long. If I was just going to say a few things about it, we might do that. But I do want to give credit where credit is due, and I have leaned heavily in my study on this chapter on Dr. Sam Waldron, Dr. Greg Nichols, and Dr. A. A. Hodge. And A. A. Hodge was a professor at Princeton in the 1800s. The other two are living today and are Reformed Baptist theologians. And I want us to see from this first paragraph the eight categories of the character of God. So you'll see these single words or in a couple cases, two words summarizing the category. The first category is singularity. And it's captured by this first line in the confession, which is printed on your sheet there. The Lord our God is but one only living and true God. Now this is a profound statement in itself. It's capturing a great deal of Scripture and summarizing the whole teaching of the Bible concerning God and His singularity. Basically what we're seeing here is the authors of the Confession are doing the exact same thing as the authors of Holy Scripture, or the author of Holy Scripture, and that is they are assuming God. God exists. So we could throw out our first reference at this point is Genesis 1.1, in the beginning God. In the beginning, God. God was there. God was in existence. He didn't come into existence. He didn't, you know, kind of crawl out of the primal, you know, swamp Himself first above others or collect Himself in some way and become who He was. He exists and He has always existed. Now what we need to say practically speaking concerning this is that human beings who deny the existence of God are liars. if they say, I don't believe that God exists, or I don't see any proof of His existence, they're lying. Because all men know in the depths of their being that there is a God. And we've discussed that when we were in Romans chapter 1, but I wanted to point that out. again at this point. Now what this phrase on the singularity of God does is it includes a number of concepts. Number one, it includes the fact that God is the one and only God. There is no other God. He is absolutely and utterly unique. There's no even little gods. Angels are not, you know, like really special supreme beings that are almost God or anything of the nature. Angels are just like us. They are creatures. Everything, there is God and there's everything else. And everything else is created by God. And God is unique and separate and distinct from all of the creation. There's no blurring at all of God with His creation. And so pantheism, panentheism, Hinduism, Buddhism, many of the Eastern religions they merge or they blur together God. They make Him just a force or an entity of some type. He's really not even a person. All of that is idolatrous wickedness that has been dreamed up in the minds of men. God is the one and only God. Secondly, God is the living God. He is personal. He is not impersonal. what we understand about a person is true of God. He has, we'll see the other things that are mentioned, but I don't want to elaborate on that at this point because it becomes self-evident as we proceed through other factors in this confession. And then the third concept that is included in the singularity of God is that God is the true God. meaning that all other supposed gods or individuals or ideas that are set forth as being equal or being God, idolatry in the past and philosophy in the present, not to say that there aren't idols today, but primarily philosophical ideas are the major moving force in people. Whether it's an idea or an image, It is an imposter. They are imposters. They are false because there's only one true God. So, some Scripture related to this would be, for instance, 1 Corinthians 8 and verse 4, which says, Therefore, concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. Two verses later, 1 Corinthians 8 and verse 6 says, Yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. And of course, our famous verse in this regard, Deuteronomy 6 and verse 4, where it says, it's the Shema, the Hebrew Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. So let me make a couple of warnings that are sort of applicatory to our circumstances and the world that we live in. The first one is that the oneness of God cannot be compromised in defining the Trinity. So this is just an important element for us to keep in mind. The oneness of God cannot be compromised at all when we come to define and look at and see what the Trinity is. And our confession doesn't do that. And we want to not impose anything that would do that either. And also the attributes of God and the divine essence must be affirmed for each of the divine So, even though we're emphasizing the singularity, the oneness of God, and we must always do this. So, for instance, I'll tell you how to make a simple application of this. We have more in common with Islam on the singularity of God, because of the singularity of God, than we have Mormons believe in millions of gods. Millions of them. They probably believe in far more gods than Hindus do. So the very fact that Muslims believe that there is one God, we have that little bit of common ground that we can use in talking with them. With Mormons, we have to say to them, you are the height of idolatry with your belief system. It's interesting how a lot of people think Mormons are just another Protestant denomination. That's how absurd that is. So the second category that we want to consider, that our confession gives us to consider under the character of God, is His independence or His self-existence. This comes from the second phrase which says, whose subsistence is in and of Himself, infinite in being and perfection. Now, the old theologians used the word aseity to speak of this particular phrase in our confession, and many of them, of course, they were taught Latin, and they learned Latin, and the word aseity comes from the Latin word asi, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, and it means from himself. So what a saiety is, is it's saying God is from himself. He doesn't come from anyone else. He is self-existent or he is independent of anyone and everyone and anything and everything else. So the word subsistence in this phrase refers to existence. Whose existence, subsistence or existence, is in and of Himself. God simply is, that is, He exists in His majestic splendor. He doesn't become more majestic or less majestic. He doesn't get knowledge or lose knowledge. He is and always has been what He is and He exists. Now, this concept of His independence and of His self-existence in practical terms means God has no needs. God doesn't lack anything. He doesn't need anything. There's nothing that you and I can do for Him that would benefit Him in any way. He is completely and fully sufficient in Himself. The independence of God and the self-existence of God communicates also His complete self-sufficiency and self-sustaining nature. So, one of the great verses on this, believe it or not, is found in an evangelistic sermon. delivered by the Apostle Paul in Athens of all places. It's in Acts 17 verse 25 where it says, "'Nor is he worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things.'" And all their has no qualifiers. Everything that we have has been given to us. Everything, everything, absolutely everything has been given to us. Life, breath, and all things have been given to us. God doesn't need anything and we need everything. We have nothing in ourselves. Everything that we have has been given to us. The word infinite in this phrase, whose subsistence is in and of himself infinite in being and perfection. We're going to talk about infinite several times in this chapter. But this word infinite, as you know, means without limits. Infinite has no limits. It's endless, inexhaustible. It extends indefinitely. And so God, whose existence is in and of himself, is infinite, unending, which is absolutely amazing. We can't fully grasp that because we ourselves are so limited. So some of the Scripture that we need to think of with regard to this. One Scripture is Exodus 3.14 which says, And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent you. Now the Tetragrammaton which is the name that has been given to I am in the Hebrew, ego, I, me in Greek, expresses this very concept of the self-existence and the infiniteness of God. He is a self-existent, self-sufficient, self-sustaining, infinite Lord God. And that is His name, okay? So the Tetragrammaton, in the past we called it, we pronounced it as Jehovah, and it's become more popular to say Yahweh. But that's the name of the Lord our God, and it expresses this category of the character of God. Jesus said in John 5 and verse 26, And some other passages, Isaiah 48, verse 12, along with...that is Isaiah 48, 12 and Jeremiah 10 and verse 10. A few other passages which express to us very clearly the self-existence of God. God needs nothing, and we are seriously amiss if we imply that He does need something. So there's a lot of Christians, professed Christians, who go out to do evangelism. And they tell people something like this. I don't want to be guilty of straw man arguments, but they say something like this. God is lonely. And He wants you. He loves you. He wants you to be His friend. I want you to accept Him and be friends with Him and so forth. And this, of course, is used to, especially with people that are lonely or struggling in various ways, but it's dishonoring to God and it's very contrary to the clear and unmistakable teaching of Holy Scripture concerning the independence and self-sufficiency of God. The third category, that we learn about and see concerning the character of God in our confession, I'm calling the, and everybody else calls, the incomprehensibility, the incomprehensibility of God. It's captured in this phrase, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself. And I don't know if you've read that and thought about what is being said there. Some explanation is needed there, because we do know something about God, don't we? But sometimes this particular category is called the mystery of God. And that's not necessarily a bad way of describing it, but it's a better way to say incomprehensibility because we understand that there are things that we cannot comprehend. the world. And I'm not going to read the first paragraph of quote that's given here, that I've given here from Dr. Waldron, but I do want to read the second one. You go and read the first one, look up those scriptures, it just shows you how comprehensive the incomprehensibility of God is. in the Scriptures and a sampling of the Scripture references. But the second paragraph says this, divine incomprehensibility means that though we have a personal, true, accurate, and comforting knowledge of God as Christians, we do not and cannot have an exhaustive knowledge of Him that removes an awesome sense of vast and eternal mystery." I thought that was a very powerful statement. These quotes don't come from his exposition of the Confession. They come from a chapter that he contributed to another book by He contributed to a volume on this chapter, different other theologians contributed other chapters to that book. And he goes in great detail on chapter two in that volume. This is what I want you to remember when you think about this category of the incomprehensibility of God. God cannot be, and here's the key word, fully comprehended by any but Himself. We can learn much about God, but we will never, in fact, I don't think even in eternity, will we fully comprehend God. It's not possible. And, of course, Exodus 3.14 would be one of the key verses for this and others that you'll see in the Confession. So let me see if I can cover the fourth category of spirituality. It's captured in this phrase, a most pure spirit invisible without body parts or passions who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no one can approach unto. So we all know that God is spirit even though there's quite a bit of mystery and incomprehensibility associated with this category as well. Our confession divides up the spirituality of God, the spiritual nature of God, into five segments. And so let's look at these quickly. Some of them are easy and one of them is not so easy. The first one is pure spirit. And basically what that means is that God is not material. He's not plastic or metal or leather or flesh like this. He's none of those things. He's not wood. He's non-material completely. So this is what Jesus is speaking of in John 4 verse 24 when He says, God is spirit. And those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. And so when the confession says, pure spirit, it is pointing to the perfection and holiness of the God who is spirit. And this emphasizes as the spirit He is impeccable. Impeccable means not able to be tempted. It means that He is not tempted. You and I, material things really tempt us. If we don't have certain material things and we think we need them or we want them, we're just tempted by the very sight of them. And then non-material things where we feel like God lacks nothing. He's not tempted by anything. He is a pure spirit in the highest sense. of those two words. Second segment communicates that He is invisible. What this means is, along with pure spirit, is He cannot be seen with the human eye. So John 1.18 says, no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. So, God is pure spirit. He's invisible. And thirdly, we have a phrase, without body, parts, or passions. And I'm gonna describe this as simple. God is simple. Now, that word, I mean, the first time I heard people talking about the simplicity of God, I thought, what's wrong with those people? God's not simple. Because I didn't really know and understand what this concept theologically communicates. When we say that God is simple, it means that he's not made up of parts. So we discussed this in detail when we were doing a series on the attributes of God some years ago, and some of you will remember that. God is not made up of parts. He is not a composite. He is not a compound being. We are finite creatures, and as such, we are made up of parts, you and I. We are composite. God is not a compound or a composite being. He is not made up of parts. That's why we have the phrase, He is simple. So let me illustrate this. I got this from Dr. James Dolezal, one of the many really good illustrations that he gives. He says, an automobile is complex. It's a composite, complex compound. The automobile is made up of many parts. It has a starter, has an engine, has seats, has a steering wheel, has all these multiplicity of parts. And all of those parts, not all, but most of those parts, you know, the engine and those parts are essential to the running of the vehicle, but the other parts are also essential to us enjoying and getting benefit from the automobile. I mean, if there was no windshield, you know, bird hits you in the face. Bugs would, you know, get in your mouth. If there was no top on it, you'd be rained on when you're going down the road. I mean, you can see that the whole thing is designed for human comfort and transportation. But it's complex because of all these. So if your starter quits like mine did a few weeks ago, you know what? Till you replace it, it's not going anywhere. God is not made up of parts. And it's very important for us to understand this and not to talk about, well, there's the love of God, the holiness of God, the justice of God, and think that all of these are different, we'll say, pieces of the whole. They are not. God is love. God is holy. God is just. Okay, so we can speak of unique attributes, but there are different aspects of God that we can identify, but God is whole. He's not made up of parts. So if God were composed of parts, then these parts would have some existence apart from himself, or they would maybe be pre-existing. So all these different parts make up God. You know, there was love in the universe, and there was justice in the universe, and somehow all these came together to make God. And people have tried to argue or think in these particular categories, and they're completely wrong. Everything in God is God, and it is all God. And it's a... God is simple, and that's the language that has been used as some of the best use. Now, so we have without body parts, and we can understand no body, because the first two segments, pure, spirit, and invisible, refer to the fact that there's no body, and therefore there's no parts. But even spiritual parts, there's no spiritual parts, there's just God. And then it says, and passions. And basically, we use the word, this word passion means to suffer. We speak of the passion week, the week of the passion or the week of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now certainly, this phrase takes more than that into consideration, but the essence of this and all we have time to deal with is God does not suffer. Incidentally, there have been various heretical views that developed that the Father suffered. So, we have to be aware of that. God does not suffer. And then the fourth segment is immortal, which means He's not mortal. God is not mortal. He has life in and of Himself, and His life can never cease to exist. So 1 Timothy 1.17 says, Now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. And then the fifth segment under the spirituality of God is unapproachable, which means we cannot see God with our human eyes. We cannot approach Him in ourselves. And 1 Timothy 6 and verse 16 says, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen. So what you've noticed is this considerable amount of overlapping in all five of these segments. but they're all communicating to us in different words and ways the spirituality of God, the fact that God is spirit. Now, before we close this evening, I need to give an explanation because some of you are good theologians and you're thinking, and you're thinking, okay, all of that sounds good about God the Father, but what about God the Son? So here's my explanation. The category of spirituality, that God is Spirit, is referring to God from all eternity. And it is referring to all three persons of the Trinity, but this is not Our confession and the teaching of the Scriptures is not taking into account in this limited presentation, it's not taking into account in the confession the incarnation of Jesus. So something amazing and glorious and wonderful. Chapter 8 of the Mediatorship of Christ, yes, Chapter 8. We'll look at this more at that time. But Jesus ceased to be these in His incarnation, or that is, in His human nature. He took on human flesh. and He could be seen, and He could be approached, and He had a body with parts, and He had passion. He suffered and he had emotional passion, like a love and so forth, human love, we would say, a part of the human nature. And he was mortal in that sense and approachable. So you can see how this particular is important to be put in here because of all the Scripture that we've seen and the statements. And then we'll see more of the detail of Christ later, but we need to point that out here. And what these good theologians tell us is that what we're seeing about Jesus at this point is captured in the phrase in Philippians 2 and verse 6 when it says that He was in the form of God. So we're going to stop right there. We'll come back, Lord willing, next Wednesday, and we will finish the first paragraph. You can see that this is, these are meaty and weighty concepts, and we want to do justice to them.