The Mystery of the Trinity, Pt. 4

Park Meadows Church

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the flu and the colds if you're here today, or some of you maybe getting over it. And so let's pray for those who couldn't make it today.

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I hear Dave and Katie just came down with it last night and everybody else has had it. And so I guess we shared it with them.

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That's the Christian thing to do, but pray for them because it's no fun. And I'm sure they wish they could be here, but not today.

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They're gonna go home and rest. All right, we have a guest with us today. Doris Music is with us back here and so glad to have you with us today.

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And always good to have our home folks with us. And I had a great Sunday school lesson at 10,

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Ben Mitchell taught, and we had some good discussions about bearing fruit, what that means.

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Fascinating. You can make it at the 10 o 'clock hour, come because you're missing out by not being there if you're not there.

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So try to be there if you can, it's fantastic. But you are here and that's the main thing.

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So let's have a word of prayer. We'll get started. Lord, we thank you so much for the services already. We ask you

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Lord to now bless the teaching and preaching of your word. In Jesus name, amen.

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This sound is a little off today, but you know the weather affects it. Sounds okay. Yeah, I don't hear any bass for whatever reason.

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Yeah. Usually I have lots of bass, but you can't fix it.

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We'll do it later. And I think it's the weather. I think if you just get the volume a little higher, it'll bring the bass out anyway.

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I don't, yeah, that's probably, there, I can hear it now. Is that too loud though to y 'all?

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And finally I can hear it. Okay, that's perfect, Matt, you did it. Good job. Well, let me get you to turn to Colossians chapter two, verse two.

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And this verse has, well, we had a couple of verses in there, but this verse in particular has had us studying now for several

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Sundays. And let me read it to you and we will discuss a little bit more about why we're taking so much time on it.

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It may be the most important doctrine of the entire Bible. And that's the doctrine of the

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Trinity. And, you know, there's a lot of discussion about this.

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There's a lot of disagreement about it. And really, I think most of the disagreement is philosophical because when you look at what the

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Bible says, it's quite plain. The Bible makes it quite plain. The philosophy makes it somewhat difficult.

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But, so let's read this verse, Colossians chapter two, verse two, that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love and into all riches of the full assurance and of understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the

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Father and of Christ. Now, this word, acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of Father and of Christ, there you see the triune nature of God.

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You see God and the Father and Christ. In this case, the word God must be a reference to the

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Holy Spirit, but we have all three persons mentioned. And it says that Paul is praying for his new converts that they might acknowledge the triune nature of God is basically what that's saying.

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Why is it important? Well, if you keep reading all the way down to verse four, you see, because if you don't acknowledge it and understand it, false teachers will beguile you and pull you out into their cult group.

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So it's very important to understand this particular doctrine. This doctrine, and what does the word doctrine mean, by the way?

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It just means teaching, major teaching of the Bible, is so important because if we don't understand this is

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God, how God exists, then we cannot answer. There's a lot of questions in the

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Bible we're not able to answer if we don't understand this, or if we put it in the positive, if we do understand it, there are a lot of things we can understand that other people can't grasp, other people grapple with, they can't figure it out.

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It's because they don't understand this first. So this is so important. Now, this word acknowledgement often is just translated in English into the word knowledge, but there are several different Greek words that can be translated into the one

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English word knowledge. It's kind of like love. English has one word, Greek has three, three kinds of love, right?

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And it's very important to know that there are those three, especially if you're doing marriage counseling, you gotta know all three of those kinds of love and participate in all three of them in a marriage.

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But this word for knowledge, it's got several different Greek words that are all translated into the one

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English word knowledge and that's too bad because we're missing out by not understanding the different colors or shades of meaning.

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But let me give you a couple of examples. The word that's found here, acknowledgement is literally, you know, skein, which means knowledge, but it denotes intelligent comprehension of something.

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Intelligent comprehension of the truth of something. So let me give you a couple of other synonyms in Greek that are close enough to be translated knowledge in English, but don't mean this, they mean something else.

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For example, the Greek word, esthanestai. Good word, huh?

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Can you remember that for next Sunday? I'm gonna give you a test. No, I can't even remember it.

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But that word is translated into to know something in English, but guess what it really means?

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It means to feel something. Now, why is this important? Because if you think about it, most of the

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United States of America, which is the leader of the West, the Western world, most of the philosophy of the

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West today, I'm talking about right now, not historically. If you go back to when our country was founded, this is not true.

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When our country was founded, it was based on true knowledge of truth. But now, knowledge in the

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United States and in the West means something you feel is true. You see the difference? Oh, I just feel it's this way.

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This is my truth, what's your truth? That is not the kind of knowledge that this word is talking about.

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This word that we're looking at for the acknowledgement of the mystery of the triune nature of God means, means knowledge is based on facts of the way things really actually are, not on how you feel they are.

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Now, we can take it to another level. In our churches today in the United States, most of the doctrine that's in the fastest growing, largest churches in this country are based on experiences and feelings rather than true knowledge of the truth and the way things really are, as the word of God tells us they really are.

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And that's very, very sad. It will be the demise of the United States of America. I can predict that based on many nations that are gone now, but especially on one that's not really gone, it's still there,

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England, it's still there in name, but it's not there in power anymore. They used to control most of the world,

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England did before World War II. It was the country upon which the sun never set.

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They had islands in the Caribbean. They had nations in Africa.

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They had India. They had part of America. All of America at once, right?

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And so then right before World War II, and then God gave them the gospel in some of the most powerful ways that you can even describe.

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I'll just name one, Charles Spurgeon, the greatest, the Prince of Preachers, every denomination pretty much, that's a true denomination says he's the

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Prince of Preachers, England, right? And then as soon as the man went to be with the

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Lord, all of a sudden within another 50 years or so, nobody was going to church in England anymore.

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I say nobody, I'm speaking in generalities, but the churches were declining. Very tiny little churches with very few people, these beautiful, not synagogues, but beautiful cathedrals with five or six people in them.

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And then World War II happens and all of their young men are wiped out pretty much. If we hadn't stepped in, the

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United States hadn't stepped in they'd all been destroyed. All their young men would have been killed, they would have had no future.

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Most of them were killed before we got there though, many of them, and they never returned to power, why?

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Because they set aside this book. This book was not important anymore. All that mattered,

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I guess, were their feelings. And so their philosophies weren't based on the truth of the

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Bible and look at the demise of that nation. Charlotte and I have been over there recently and there's very few believers left over there.

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They're secular and you look in their eyes, they're walking dead people. Very, very sad.

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Now, we don't want that to happen in America, but it is happening, but it's happening differently.

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If we could go out a hundred years in the future, if we have that much longer before Jesus comes, well, we will, because we have a thousand years beyond when the

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Lord comes back. So there will be history of the United States. And here's what it's gonna look like.

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It's not gonna look like England because our churches are not empty. Our churches are more like the mustard plant that's grew from a tiny seed that you can barely see.

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And it's supposed to create a little plant about this tall. But in the Bible, Jesus told a parable about where that little mustard tree was a huge tree, which is abnormal, not supposed to be that big.

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And it was full of black birds. And the black birds, Jesus said, are false teachers.

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And that is a depiction of the end times church that is huge, mega church, full of people, but it's full of black birds and false teachers.

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And it's way bigger than that church would be if someone came in there with this Bible and just preached it for about six months, it would whittle those churches down to around, you know, maybe if they've got 30 ,000, they might have around 1 ,200.

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I mean, you could send almost any man in this church that knows the

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Bible, let him preach there for six months, it would whittle that thing down to about 1 ,200. If they're running 1 ,500, it will whittle it down to about 120 because false people can't stand the truth.

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So it's very, very deceitful because America looks like she's doing just great because she's got churches full of mega churches with 20 ,000, 25 ,000, 30 ,000 people every

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Sunday morning. She looks like she's thriving, whereas England was just 20 or 30 or six or five people.

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And it was obvious that they were dead. Well, false churches are just as dead if they're full of people as they are if they're empty.

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That's the problem. And so America thinks she's fine and you can read about it in the book of Revelation.

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She thinks that she's wealthy. The church thinks she's great, she's powerful.

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And yet from God's viewpoint, it says that she's paltry and nothing.

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She's just sick and paltry and very, very weak. That's the Laodicean church that you see in America today.

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Well, a lot of it is because the doctrine is so bad and the fruit is so bad of the leaders in these churches.

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Many of them involved in adultery and all kinds of things. And then they continue to preach just maybe after six months of rehabilitation.

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And then they continue. So, I mean, the fruit is there, it's false fruit. And Jesus said, that's how you know the doctrine's wrong.

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Now, this word to acknowledge the mystery of the Trinity is intelligent comprehension of the truth of a matter.

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It is not this Greek word that means to feel something. There is another

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Greek word that can be translated into knowledge in English. And it is aesthesis, which means a sensation or a sensual perception of something where you just, you believe it because you've experienced it.

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And that's not what the true word for knowledge in Greek means. See, that's not knowledge of truth, which comes from understanding the scriptures.

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That's knowledge that you base on some perceived thing that you think you saw happen. Therefore, it must be true because you saw it happen.

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And the worst mistake is you think just because you saw it happen, God did it. But the Bible tells us that Satan himself can mimic the

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Holy Spirit. He can mimic the works of the Holy Spirit and that it's done quite often.

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And so you have these churches that are basing their doctrine on their experience. That's not the right

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Greek word for knowledge. And so on and on. So this word is more likely akin to, if you wanna look at the proper synonym, logos, which means to reason.

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That's a better word. But this word gnosis comes from it.

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It means true knowledge of what something really is. And if you don't have that, verse four,

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I'm sorry, verse three says that when you do have it, you have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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Verse four says, when you don't have it, any man can beguile you with enticing words. Ben talked about that for an hour in Sunday school today.

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Quite good. So this is where we are as we're talking about this.

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Now, let me remind you of this. We're talking a little bit about the definition of the triune nature of God.

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God is one God who subsist as three distinct personages, all right?

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Now, that is a little hard for us to understand because he's on a higher level. He's at least four dimensions.

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We're three dimensions. So it's hard to comprehend something in a higher dimension. So it's not like three different people in the room.

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That's not how God is because that would be three gods. It's not like that. He is one God, but just like you can exist as a body and a soul and a spirit, that's three things in one,

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God can exist as one person, if you want to say it that way, one God who exists with three distinct personalities who talk to each other, who call one of them him or you, and the other one he, you know, like they talk to each other.

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One will send one to do some job. One will send another to do something else. And so you have to agree that there is a distinction in the persons of the

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Godhead. Now, here's a good way to think about it. They are the same in essence. They are the same in what they are because what they are is one

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God. They are the same, but they are distinct in who they are in person.

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And so you could think of that this way. They have different functions. They have different vocations.

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I'm talking about the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. They have different commissions, the job they're sent to do or supposed to do.

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And who sends them? Each other, God himself, the Godhead agrees.

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We call it the great counsel of God. He agrees on how he's gonna do things. For example, the

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Godhead agreed that Jesus would be the part of the Godhead who would die on the cross physically as a man and be born into the world and be the

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God -man, right? And the Holy Spirit, whose vocation was to be sent by Jesus after he ascended into heaven to fill us and live within us to give us peace and comfort and truth until Jesus comes back, all right?

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So who sent him? Jesus. Who sent Jesus? The father. Very good.

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And you can go back even before time began and you find out that the father and the

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Holy Spirit together sent Jesus into time and space. So way back then, the

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Holy Spirit sent Jesus, but when Jesus ascended, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. But the truth is that shows the oneness, right?

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They're both God. They can send whatever they want to do, but they have a different commission, a different job to do.

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They have a different responsibility. The Holy Spirit is not the shepherd. Jesus is, right?

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A different operation and so forth. So we talked about that last time. Those are great words to remember to help you understand the distinction of the

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Godhead, the different persons of the Godhead, how they have different jobs. It doesn't mean they're less God than the other.

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They can't be. They're fully God, fully God. And we'll see that as we get to the scripture. So now let's turn to 1

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John 3, 5. We're gonna look at a lot of the actual Bible passages that teach this great doctrine.

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It really wouldn't matter if you had a single church father that ever spoke on the issue.

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Although we have had them going all the way back to AD 200, and then on up to around, what is it?

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420 or something when, I forget the exact year, when Augustine was living and writing.

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He was really given credit to be the first person to really speak of the triune nature of God in an intelligent way where people could say, okay,

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I understand that a little bit. I'm starting to understand that better. But you don't need that because you have the

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Bible. Now, one thing that the Old Testament saints didn't have was the

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New Testament yet. So we're of all people most privileged. We have the whole of the perfect.

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We have the whole perfect Bible. So let's look at it. Turn to 1

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John 3, 5. And I like you looking at it while we're studying these.

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So either turn in your Bible or if you've got a phone or an iPod or something, iPad, not iPod.

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We're not gonna listen to music. Turn to 1 John 3, 5 and look at this. And you know that he, this is speaking of Jesus, was manifested to take away our sins and in him is no sin.

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Now, before we go any further in that, the reason it's important, as Paul says in Colossians 2, verse two, for us to fully comprehend with an intellectual knowledge and understanding from the truth of the triune nature of God.

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The reason it's important to understand that God is one God who subsists or exists as three distinct personages is because later on all through the

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New Testament is going to particularly talk about Jesus Christ and the fact that he is a man, but he is fully

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God. It's all through the New Testament, even the Old Testament. We're gonna stick mostly with the

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New Testament today. It talks about the deity of Jesus Christ so much.

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Why do you think it talks about that more than it talks about the deity of the Holy Spirit? Who can give me a shot at that?

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Why do you think that the New Testament speaks more of Jesus being

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God than it does of the Holy Spirit being God? Well, who wrote the New Testament? Which person of the

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Godhead? No. Yes.

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I didn't think they could get that one, but he got it on the second try. Very good. The Holy Spirit wrote the Bible.

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Now, the thing about the Holy Spirit is, and this is one way you can tell a false church from a true one. I mean, one way, one type of false church is they talk about the

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Holy Spirit all the time. A true church will talk about Jesus most of the time, not the

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Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit himself speaks very little of himself in the scripture.

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Check it out, check it out. And he speaks all the time about Jesus. He promotes

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Jesus. He will not talk about himself hardly ever. He will show us and teach us the things of Jesus Christ.

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That's part of his vocation. That's where he's different than the

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Father and the Son. He will uplift the Son all the time.

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He says very few words in the whole Bible about himself. A few, like in Genesis chapter one, he hovered above the waters of the earth when they were in chaos and he brought unity to all the molecules and atoms of the earth and probably the whole universe at the same time.

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The Holy Spirit says of himself that he did that, but you don't read a lot more about him in the whole Old Testament.

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I mean, you see the Spirit of God come down on people like Samson a few times, but you don't see a lot of talk about himself.

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He talks about Jesus, the coming Messiah in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament about Jesus. Now, when you find these churches that every other word is the

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Holy Spirit, even when they pray, they say, well, I asked the Holy Spirit to do this and do that. The Holy Spirit doesn't talk that way.

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Now, some of that is baby Christian or you've been misled by your church leaders. And so I'm not against,

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I mean, I understand, that there are sheep that are misled by the false pastors. And, but you need to read your own

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Bible and address that and fix it. You need to talk about Jesus and the

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Father more than you talk about the Holy Spirit. It's just, it's how the Holy Spirit does it. If you're full of him, that's how you will do it.

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All right, now, is that important? Not so much for a baby Christian, but is it important for those of us who are trying to grow and be more mature in the

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Lord that we speak correctly? It's not wrong, by the way, from time to time, for you to talk to the

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Holy Spirit. You certainly may pray to the Holy Spirit. He is fully God, but he will most likely direct you to talk to Jesus or the

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Father. That's just him doing that inside of you. That's just how he is. He promotes Jesus. He promotes the

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Father. Now, Jesus will speak of the Father mostly. Isn't that interesting?

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But guess who it is that draws you to Jesus if you're really saved? The Father. He said, the

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Father draws, nobody comes to me unless the Father draws them. So see, different parts of the

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Godhead have different duties, vocations, and so forth. But most of what we will see in most of these verses, some of them will talk about the entire three persons of the

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Godhead, but most of them will talk about Jesus and prove that he's God. And because the

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Holy Spirit wants to prove that and will prove that more than anything else. So look at this first one, 1

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John 3, 5, and you know that he, Jesus, was manifested to take away our sins and in him is no sin.

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But we've got to think about this now. What does this word manifested mean? In the

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Greek, it is the word phanero, p -h -a -n -e -r -o, and it means to render apparent.

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It comes from a Greek root word, phaneros, which means shining, shining like a bright light.

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Or it can be used to mean made apparent. And so, or to lighten something.

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It comes from the very root word phos, which means fire or light or rays of light.

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And so what we understand is that it actually means to bring something before the senses that human beings have.

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What senses do we have? We have five, who can name some? Somebody give me one, what's a sense? Smell, what's another one?

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Hearing? Taste? Sight? Touch, all right.

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So it's to bring something that's real before the senses of a human, where the human can see that it's real or feel that it's real, or hear.

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Did we say hearing? We can hear that it's real. We can smell that it's real.

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So when it says that Jesus was manifested, it means he already existed. We looked at that earlier in some of our recent

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Sundays, where he existed with the father and was always the father's delight before him all. Before God made anything,

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Jesus, the eternal son has always existed. He never came into existence for he has no beginning.

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He has no end. He's the alpha and the omega and he has always existed, but he was not always brought before the senses of human beings.

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That happened sometimes in the Old Testament when Jehovah would speak with an audible voice and are from a burning bush, and what sense would

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God would manifest himself there? If he spoke from a burning bush, you're hearing, and that's all.

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You couldn't feel him. You couldn't smell him. You couldn't see him. You could only hear him in some cases.

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Or sometimes he spoke with an audible voice to the prophets, didn't he? In the Old Testament, doesn't do that now, but he did it in the

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Old Testament. Hebrews 1 .1 says he no longer does that, but he did do it in the Old Testament. So that's before the hearing.

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But when Jesus was born in that manger, what of which of our senses was he manifest to?

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About five of them. And even more if you wanna include emotions that come from the inside, right?

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He was God, all right, so I don't wanna get ahead of myself. So this verse says that Jesus was brought before the senses of human beings, and the first reason he was brought, now how, let me ask before I go to the rest of this verse, how was he brought before all five of our senses?

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No, no, I don't mean the state he was in, but well, I do mean the state he's in, but I'm not talking about his moral state, but his physical state.

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He was born, he was born of a virgin into a human what?

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Body, he was fully man, we could smell him, we could taste him, you could feel him, you could touch him, you could see him, you could hear him.

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And why though does this verse says that the Godhead determined in God's wisdom that Jesus, the eternal son, would be brought forth into the world, perfect time to talk about this at Christmas season, right?

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Into the world, he was manifested, why? Number one, to take away our sins, and in him is no sin, two actually, two reasons.

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One is he lived in this human body and was tempted with every temptation we have been tempted with, and he didn't sin, and he said no every time.

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Secondly, that he could take away our sins, how did he do that? By dying, he gave the blood of his life, the lifeblood of himself to save us, he couldn't do that without a body.

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So the first two reasons he was manifested, and this means God, the eternal son, the part of the

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Godhead that would be sent here, he was manifested to be tempted, and yet without sin, and live the perfect life that we cannot live, and totally pleasing to the father, that's the first reason.

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Secondly, so he could die and give his blood as the ransom price to set us free.

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Now there's more, look at verse eight there, 1 John 3, eight, for this purpose, the son of God was manifested, brought before the senses of the world, come into the world as a man, he was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.

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So now there's a third reason, how did he destroy the works of the devil? Because when he rose again, three days later,

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Satan now knew he had messed up, he thought he had killed the Messiah, didn't he?

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He put it, who put it in Judas' heart to turn Jesus in? Satan, think before you speak, think before you speak, because I know you know the answers.

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Now, Satan, right? So now all of a sudden

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Judas turns him in, and later he's crucified, and Satan thought he won, didn't he?

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For about three days, but on the third day, what happened? I'll show you, young girl, express this in song once in a revival, like I've never seen before, he trembled and she did her hands like this when she was singing the song.

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She was singing a song about how Satan thought, it was all about the devil, how Satan thought he had won, but when

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Jesus rose, the song paused, and then it comes back in, she goes, he trembled and goes like that, and I've never seen a revival like broke out at that moment when that song was finished, and that preacher had never seen it either.

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This was in a Baptist church, and the preacher got up and walked up there, and he looked at them, he said, would you sing that song again?

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And they said, same song? Yes, and he sits down, and they did it again, and just blew the place up, and then two different preachers preached, and by the time it was over, you didn't know if you were crying or laughing or running or walking or jumping or sitting, you didn't know.

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God came down on that place in a way I've never seen before. Not a single charismatic in the room, they were all

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Baptist, none of them believed in tongue speaking, none of them believed in faith healing, none of them believed in any of that, but God came down, and nobody could deny that.

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Myron was sitting behind me laughing at me, because he knows I'm pretty much like, feel it on the inside guy, right?

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Like, I'm pretty much feel it on the inside guy, but he saw me jumping up and down like a bunny rabbit, and then he thought that was funny,

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I don't know why. Well, it was also funny too, because this woman, he was sitting behind me, this woman that I didn't know sitting here, she was just going, whoa, whoa, and I'm over here going, you know, because she's gonna backhand me accidentally, and Myron thought that was humorous for some reason.

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Well, so Jesus was manifested to destroy the works of the devil.

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He could not do that without a human body. He had to die, but he also had to rise again, which he did.

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So Jesus is God manifest in the flesh.

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Now, there's another verse that says that more clearly, but this is alluding to it here in 1 John 3, this whole passage, all right?

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Look at 1 John 1, verse one, but I wanna ask you a question to think about, and then we'll read this.

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Why is it, or let's put it this way, would it be a good definition of the

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Godhead to say that Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the

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Father are simply three different manifestations of God, that God will sometimes manifest himself as Jesus, he will sometimes manifest himself as the

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Holy Spirit, and then at other times, he will manifest himself as the Father? Would that be a good definition of the

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Trinity or not? He is one God, but he manifests himself as either Jesus or the

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Father or the Holy Spirit. Think about that a minute, okay? 1 John 1, one says, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes.

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Now, let me explain what's going on so you can think about it while I read this. That which is from the beginning, he's speaking of Jesus again.

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It goes all the way back to the beautiful passage where he was joyfully before the Father, before anything was made.

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So you go back to John 1, one, I'm sorry, Genesis 1, one, when everything was spoken into existence and you go back one step prior to that,

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Jesus was already there, right? He is from the beginning, he's always existed. He's eternal because he's

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God. Now, so Jesus, that which is from the beginning.

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Now, what I'm gonna say is this passage from verse one to verse four is probably the best Bible definition for what it means to be manifested.

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What does it mean when you say Jesus was manifested? Well, I gave you the Greek definition and part of an

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English Webster's Dictionary definition to be brought before the senses. It's what Webster says, he was a

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Christian, by the way. The guy that wrote Webster's Dictionary is a Christian. But I wanna show you how

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God defines it. What does it mean to be manifest? Now, you have to listen carefully. That which was from the beginning, so that's

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Jesus, which we have heard, what sense is that?

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Hearing, which we have seen, four eyes, right? Nobody laughed at Emily.

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Which some of us don't think it's funny to have to wear glasses, right? Which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon.

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Now, that is a little different than just seeing something because when you gaze upon something, you're taking a long look.

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You're taking a long look and you're analyzing everything about that person. Kind of like when you're dating somebody and you're deciding, is this the one

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I wanna date only? You know, that kind of, like you're looking, it's more than just they pass before your eyes, but you're actually looking at them and sizing them up, right?

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All right, so, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, what's feeling? Okay, gave you the answer.

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That's feeling, right? That's the sense of feeling of the word of life.

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So here we have heard, we have seen, we've gazed upon and our hands have touched and handled the living word, the word of life,

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Jesus. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. We have handled him.

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We have handled God. Now, we didn't get to live 2000 years ago, but those apostles handled

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God. In fact, by the way, don't ever be deceived by this. Many, many denominations say they still have apostles.

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All they have is false apostles because one of the definitions of an apostle, they had to walk with Jesus on this earth.

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They had to handle the word of God to be an apostle. There ain't any people here that have done that, okay?

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So they're lying to you. So don't believe their doctrines either because they will be false.

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They'll be 90 % true, 10 % false, 95 % true, 5 % false. But that 5 % could kill you, rabbit trail.

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So we have handled the word of life. Now, verse two says, for the life was manifested by whom?

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Think again. By God, by God and the Holy Spirit, by the

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Father and the Holy Spirit and the eternal, you got it one third correct because the full

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Godhead before time began determined that Jesus would be the part of God.

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I shouldn't say part of God, he's fully God, but he would be the person of God that would be manifested that we could touch and feel and walk with and hear.

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And the Bible says Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world. That means the Godhead determined before God made anything that Jesus would be manifested to destroy the devil and to set us free from our sins and all the things we just read about in these verses.

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So the life was manifested because God decided that he would be. The word

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Jesus was manifested, we have seen it and we now bear witness and that's our job.

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Now, we didn't get to see him with physical eyes, but we behold him and that's a different Greek word for see that's translated see.

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And there's so many English words, there's one word for about three different Greek words, but there's a difference in Greek between seeing something with the eye and beholding something.

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And the word for beholding is translated see in English, but it's not the same thing because Jesus said, whosoever sees me and believe in the father shall have eternal life.

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Well, you can't see him, but you can behold him. And the Greek word, if you look at that, it's not the word for see, it's the word for behold.

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It's a big difference, important difference. You can behold him with your mind. You can behold him with your heart because you have his words.

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And he said, my word is spirit and my words are life. You can behold him by reading his love letter that he wrote to you.

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It's from his heart, from his mind and you can behold him and you can't be saved until you do behold him.

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And you can't behold him until the Holy Spirit opens your eyes and your heart and your mind to behold him.

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But I tell you, if you care about your soul and you care about where you go when you die, then he's working on you.

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He's working on you to turn all that equipment on so that you can behold him. And so it's

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Jesus that was manifested that we have seen. And now it's our job to bear witness that we have beheld him.

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It's one thing to show them scripture, the Romans wrote or something about how to be saved.

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It's another thing entirely to tell your testimony about he lives in my heart and he's alive now, he lives in me.

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And when I walk, I'm walking in him and he's in me. And man, you should see what that's like. That's a whole nother way to share the gospel is with your own testimony.

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And so we have seen him, we bear witness and have shown unto you that eternal life.

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So now it goes back to God and says, God has not only, not only we supposed to bear witness, the apostle said, we've seen it and we bear witness, but now it's back to God and the apostles and us, all of us,

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God plus us together, God working in his children, show you the world out there.

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We show them eternal life. And he was with the father.

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Now you see, that's what John 1 says. Jesus was with God and he was

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God. And so it says Jesus was manifested to us.

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But before that, before the world was made, he was with the father and with his son,

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Jesus Christ. Now that's fascinating, isn't it? Oh, I'm sorry. Our fellowship is with the father and with his son,

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Jesus Christ. Now I gotta ask you this. Could you ever have fellowship with an invisible spirit being who doesn't live in time or space?

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If you didn't have the word of God to tell you about him, could you see the father?

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Has the father ever been manifested? The only time I can think, there is one time.

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It's a bit of a trick question. There's one time that I know the father was manifested.

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When was it? You might get it wrong.

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Think about the baptism of Jesus. I'm getting ahead of myself because it's one of the scriptures we'll look at. When Jesus was baptized, here you had the eternal son in the water.

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You had the Holy Spirit descend as a dove upon him from heaven. And you had a voice from heaven, which was the father speak and say, this is my son in whom

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I'm well pleased. That father, that voice from heaven was a manifestation to the hearing by the father.

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But that's all you've ever, he's never manifest himself to anything other than your hearing.

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And I don't remember another time other than that one. So normally

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God who is manifested is gonna be Jesus. Rocky Freeman used to say,

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Jesus is God seen. The Holy Spirit is God felt. That's how he would, one way he would put it.

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So here we have the fact that Jesus was with the father.

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He was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us.

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And truly our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. And these things right when to you that your joy may be filled.

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Isn't that something? So if you keep reading in that chapter, which

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I won't today, but you can go through chapter two and drop down to verse 21 through 23, actually through 26.

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I'm talking about first John chapter two, 23 through 26. And then chapter three also continues to talk about the effect that Jesus Christ has upon us because he was manifested to us.

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Now turn to first Peter chapter one, verse 18. I think the passage in first John chapter one is a great definition of what it means to be

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Jesus, to be manifested before us. First Peter chapter one, verse 18, for as much as you know that you are not redeemed, and what is redeemed to mean?

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To be purchased, set free by paying a price. We are purchased by the ransom price, which is his blood.

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Jesus' blood purchased us from Satan and from sin and from hell and set us free, paid the price and set us free.

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But you're not, that didn't happen because of corruptible things like silver and gold or things that false religions would use, idols, false religion, things like that.

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You weren't redeemed by the vain conversation or lifestyle or tradition of your fathers like the

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Roman Catholic Church does where they put their traditions here and they put the Bible down here way below it.

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You're not redeemed by that tradition. It can't save you, it can't even add one whit to it. In fact, it gets in the way of it.

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So you're not saved by your lifestyle, you're not saved by the vain tradition of your fathers, you're not saved by false idols.

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But verse 19 says how you are saved. You are redeemed, you are ransomed from the slave market of sin with the precious blood of Jesus.

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Now, could he have given that blood had he never been manifest and brought into this world as a man?

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No, he couldn't. So Jesus was God manifest as a man so he could give his blood as a ransom price to pay for the sins of all

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God's people. But with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, he had no sin, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world.

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Now, we talk a lot about how God foreordains who will be saved, don't we?

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It's called the elect, the chosen ones. Out of a huge race of human beings that are lost and headed to hell,

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God determined he would save a small remnant for Jesus' sake because Jesus loves humans and he loves the earth and the father loved

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Jesus. So he chose some of us to save from a fallen race. And you say, well, I don't deserve that.

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You're right, you don't deserve that. You say, well, it's not fair that I'm saved and other people aren't.

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You're right, it's not fair because all of us should have gone to hell. But in his grace and in his mercy and his love for his son, he saved us.

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Now, do you think the father loved us too though? Do you think he knew us?

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Ephesians chapter one said, he also loved us before the foundation of the world. So the father saw all of us with Christ as his brother and sisters before he made anything and it was flat gonna happen.

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Now in your life, you didn't know that because there was a time when you were lost. But the

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Holy Spirit's job was to awaken you, which he did. Or you wouldn't be sitting here today, you'd be on the lake fishing.

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I shouldn't tell stuff I used to do or I gotta say, right? But I mean, this is just God's way.

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This is how he works. And don't you find it interesting though that verse 20 says that Jesus was foreordained before the foundation of the world.

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But what was he foreordained to do? Was he foreordained so he could get saved?

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I don't think he needed to be saved, do you? He's the savior. But he was foreordained before the foundation of the world and was manifest in these last times for you, for us, for his people.

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So we could touch God, we could taste God, we could feel God, we can walk with him, we could hear him, we could see him.

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That's why he was manifested and it was foreordained before God made anything, before anything was created, the son would be the one out of the

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Godhead who would come and do this for us and be with us. So he was manifested in these last times for you who by him do believe in God.

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Now, don't you find it fascinating? And the world can't understand this. They would call it circular logic.

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They can call it what they wanna call it. I call it the word of God. And it says,

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Jesus said, no man will come to me unless the father draws him. Right? But look what this says.

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And by Jesus, you believe in God. So the father will draw his sheep before the sheep even believes in God.

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Do you get that? Why does the father draw you to the shepherd?

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So by sitting under the shepherd and hearing his word, you can then know

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God, the one who drew you to him. So why did the father draw you to Jesus? So you would know the father.

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God, the father wants you to know him. You can't know an invisible spirit being if you don't have the word of God explaining him to you.

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And that's Jesus, the living word. So Jesus was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times for you who by Jesus do believe in God.

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That's why no other religion of the world gets anyone to heaven, because they don't have a Jesus. They don't have a son of God.

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I've had them tell me that. I've had Islamic people tell me the difference is we just have

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God, we do not have a son of God. Guess what? They don't know God because without the son of God, you can't know him.

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Impossible, you cannot know him. He was manifested so we could know him who by Jesus do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory that your faith and hope might be in God.

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Being born again, this is us, not of corruptible seed. You can't lose your salvation.

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It's not human. It's not of the world. It's not corruptible. It is of God and is the operation of God.

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You're born again, not of corruptible seed, but God's seed. You're born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which lives and abides forever.

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That's all we have time for today. So we will stop there. But listen, you guys don't know it maybe, but you have the light of the universe and of the world in your hands in that Bible.

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And your neighbors don't know God. They may be going to church. Listen, we live in a Bible belt. Everybody is a Christian.

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How many of you think they know what we talked about today? Ask them, ask your neighbor, tell me about the

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Trinity. And if they don't know, share it with them. We are not here to sit here among ourselves and be warm and happy and filled with our marvelous homemade food and this word of God that everybody that teaches here gives you.

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That is just the equipping for what we're supposed to be doing out there, which is sharing this with everybody you come in contact with that the

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Holy Spirit tells you to. If the Holy Spirit moves you to speak, speak.

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You don't have to just spout out scripture. Just say, isn't it a wonderful season, Jesus was born and see what they say about that.

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This is an easy time to witness. You don't go right at it. You just throw out something spiritual and see if they respond.

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If they do, then go further. If they don't, change the subject and talk about the Dallas Cowboys, God forbid.

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That's how Otis used to witness, you know. Anyway, love you guys and I love equipping you, but we need to use it.

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God expects us to be, remember how it said, we have observed him and now we're supposed to witness, tell people about he's living in my heart.

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So let's do that, especially this season. You're gonna have lots of interesting things and interesting people at your house around Christmas, maybe you never know, family members that may not know the

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Lord or that are into some of this false religion stuff or whatever. Throw a little something out there and see if they'll talk with you.

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And you never know what the Lord can do. Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, we thank you for your word.

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We thank you for sharing with us the knowledge of the truth of the triune nature of you.

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And Lord, help us to be able to explain it the best that we can with your help to other folks who don't know you, even some who do know you, but they don't understand how you exist.

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And Lord, help us to be better witnesses, stronger witnesses, and brighter light in this world.

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And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. We'll see you in a few moments. We have food prepared.