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Well, as we begin, I want to thank first Pastor Tim for opening his doors to us tonight, allowing us to be here, and for spearheading this evening, and also for John and his leadership. And I met him just a few months ago over coffee and began to talk about our shared desires to see reformation.
And I'm thankful that he has asked me to speak on a subject which is very close to my heart. The doctrine of the Trinity is something that I have studied and written about and something that I believe.
The first line of the book that I wrote, God in Three Persons, says simply this. It says that it amazes me in this day and age how many people do not seem to understand that the God that we worship is the Trinity.
And so tonight we're going to be looking at several things. Hopefully you have the handout. As I was preparing, and I do want to ask your pardon, I started coughing five minutes ago. And so if I cough a few times, I apologize.
But as I was preparing for tonight's lecture and I was thinking about what I wanted to say over the last few weeks, a few things happened during those times. A few weeks ago, a youth minister from another church came to my church just to talk to me.
He's a friend. We've known each other for years. And when he came in to talk to me, he told me that he was thinking of leaving his wife because she's a difficult woman, is the words that he said. He said, I'm thinking of leaving my wife because she's a difficult woman.
And I told him, well, actually, he said, well, I'm not happy. And I said, well, God hasn't called you to be happy. God has called you to be holy. You need to repent. You need to go home and love your wife.
And he was thankful that I was honest with him, that I didn't sugarcoat the issue. And now he and his wife are in counseling with me. It reminded me of another man who several years ago was in the ministry of another church and he left his wife.
He left her and went and departed from their marriage, from their children. And he and I just happened to be passing each other in Walmart one day. And I was not looking for any type of confrontation, you know, but he walked and we just sort of face to face, looked at each other.
And he started talking to me about ministry. And I said to him pretty much the same thing I said to the other guy, I said, brother, I said, you need to repent and go home and love your wife. I said, you don't need to be talking to me about ministry.
You need to be talking about you need to be talking to me about repentance because that's what you need. And he called me judgmental and walked away. So it's interesting how you have two different responses to almost the exact same situation.
But I begin with these two stories, not because my lecture tonight is on marriage. It is not just in case I'm confusing anyone, but because I want you to realize that ministry is a hugely practical endeavor.
And if you're in ministry or you're preparing to be in ministry, or if maybe you're here tonight and you're part of this church or another church where you are ministering in some capacity, you need to realize that what you're going to face in ministry is real people in real life, in real situations.
It is rarely sanitary and never simple. And as such, as we talk about the doctrine of the Trinity this evening, I want you to realize that what I want to come at this from is from the pastor's perspective and from the ministry perspective.
Why is the doctrine of the Trinity something that we should even be concerned about? How should the shepherd relay these truths to his people? How should the shepherd recognize and battle the wolves which come from within and from without?
How should the shepherd correct the errors which his people have picked up from bad teaching or their own vain attempts at trying to formulate truth on their own without any leadership or guidance? How many of us have heard our own people, our own church members, friends, people that we go to church with come up and say, yeah, I believe the Trinity.
God's like any man.
He's, you know, I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm a brother. So sure, God can be father and son and spirit. And that's all it is. Right. That's so simple. Right. But the problem is that illustration doesn't make sense because the only reason I'm a father and a son and a brother is because I'm in relationship with three other people who are not me.
And so you see, if you begin to think about the Trinity and you begin to try to over simplify in a vain attempt to make something make sense, which is really beyond our ability to fully and completely comprehend, you will do violence to the doctrine and demonstrate that you really don't understand it.
Pastors that are here and those who are who are in ministry here, do you know what your people believe? Do you? Do you know that you have taught them the doctrine of the Trinity? Members of churches here, is your pastor teaching you?
Do you know these things? Are you learning on your own? Years ago, I was invited to sit in at the ordination of a man who was going for the gospel ministry in a Southern Baptist church. I was asked to sit in on his ordination evaluation one hour before his ordination.
So if we can, this this evaluation was nothing more than a mere formality. But me and several other men were asked to come to simply, I guess, lend our name to his certification or his ordination. So we sat down and every man got to ask him a theological question.
When it came my turn, I said, sir, now this is a man who's a seminary graduate. This is a man who is a student and teacher of the word, supposedly. And he invited me personally, which later he would regret.
But he said, it came my turn and I said, I want you to think of a scenario. Imagine a woman in your church marries a man who is a former Jehovah's Witness. He's been brought up as a Jehovah's Witness his whole life.
His parents are Jehovah's Witnesses. And he has been taught his whole life that the Trinity is a doctrine of devils, a heretical untruth. And now he's coming to your church as having married a woman in your congregation with or without your approval doesn't matter.
He's there. And he comes to you after a sermon and he says, I don't believe the doctrine of the Trinity. Prove it to me. Go. That was how I asked the question. Stunned silence from the man and the gentleman next to me who was on the panel with me.
So that's too hard of a question. That's too hard of a question. For a man who's about to preach the word of God to the people of God, and that is going to be his life's responsibility to preach the truth, and he cannot even explain what we mean when we say God is a Trinity.
For shame, I watched the video last week and I bet several of you did as well.
In 1993, Dr.
Al Moller was the new president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And when he was being brought in as the new president of Southern Seminary, he was questioned, i .e. grilled by the people of the seminary because they did not want him there.
In 1993, Southern Seminary was a bastion of liberalism. And here comes this man, Al Moller, Calvinist, he didn't believe in female preachers. And that was the big issue of the of the of the questions.
Everyone who asked the question asked the question, what about this passage? What about Galatians? What about this? And what about that?
What about Priscilla?
And what about, you know, it was all it was all these questions. And finally, this woman stood up and she said, Dr. Moller, I know that I have been called to the pastoral ministry and I want to have your time.
I want to be the first appointment on your calendar so that I can sit down and tell you how I know the Holy Spirit has called me and it has empowered me for ministry. And I said, now, wait a second, you are at the largest Southern Baptist seminary in the world and you're going to call the Holy Spirit and it the biggest problem in the church today is not that people hold the wrong view of the Trinity.
The the biggest problem is that people don't think deeply enough to even have a view of the Trinity. It's not that they think wrongly about it. It's they don't even think about it. When they talk, they don't even talk in those terms, they don't even address God in that.
Way. They don't.
It's not on their mind. I might not need this. I don't want to yell. I get sorry. I'll pretend I'm preaching here in a moment. The reason why modalistic and tritheistic models and by the I'll explain those in a moment if you don't know what they are.
But the reason why modalistic and tritheistic models are used to describe the Trinity is because they do not take any real thought to comprehend. Both models are unbiblical, but both models are easy. So that's why they're adopted.
When trinitarianism says that to understand God's nature, you must begin by making a distinction between being in person, between substance and subsistence. The average church member in the 21st century says that's too much.
I can't go there, I'm not willing to go there. And so someone comes along with a modalistic or tritheistic system which doesn't require those types of distinctions. And they're happy to be satisfied with such.
I want to ask a rhetorical question. Should the average church member be able to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity? Now, I think I think you would all say yes, especially if you're here. Now, if I ask that, you know, if I go downtown and stand in a Max pulpit and say, hey, should everybody be able to articulate the doctrine of Trinity?
Maybe not everyone would agree. But if I asked you all, you'd probably say, yeah, everyone should be able to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity. However, if we were asked for the reason why. Why should everyone in the church be able to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity?
We'd probably give different answers. Some might say, well, the reason why everyone should be able to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity is because people need to know the truth for the sake of the truth.
The truth itself is worth knowing. And for the sake of the truth, that's that's enough. Other people might say, well, we want to be able to confront errors, you know, just like the Jehovah Witness I talked about.
Or maybe those two guys with the nice white shirts and ties with the short sleeves come to your door on Saturday and we need to articulate the truth to them. Right. Maybe that's the reason why you think you should know the doctrine of the Trinity.
But I submit to you this and I propose to you a new idea. Is it the reason why the Trinity is essential to teach our people is because Deuteronomy six tells us that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
And I submit to you that to love God is to love the Trinity, not the doctrine of the Trinity, but the Trinity as God. When we say we love God, we are saying I love the father. I love the son. I love the Holy Spirit for these three persons are the true and living God who deserve our love.
Apart from the knowledge of the Trinity, our love for God will be at best uninformed and at worst misguided. So the purpose of this lecture is not just to convince you to believe as our ancestors have in a series of doctrinal truths.
It's to give you a better understanding of who God is, that you might love him better and present him better and more completely when you are sharing him with others. To love God is to love the Trinity.
The being of God, which is shared by three co-equal and co-eternal persons, the father and the son and the spirit. To love God apart from loving the Trinity is to love an idol, for this is the only true and living God who has revealed himself to us in sacred scripture.
I imagine if I were to ask the average church member today if he believed in the doctrine of the Trinity, he would say that he does. However, if I were to push the issue and ask him if he can understand or even explain the doctrine of the Trinity, he would most likely not be able to.
He would probably provide some of the one of the ancient heresies, which I've already mentioned, modalism and tritheism. And I know there are others, but I want to I'm going to focus on those later and you'll see why.
I remember years ago, the pastor said, well, the Trinity is like three in one oil. It's like what you put in your lawnmower. And I thought. That's not right, but that's if you're really wanting to simplify something to the point of being wrong.
Say something like that, it could be argued also that a person doesn't need to understand the doctrine of the Trinity to believe it. And and and that is true, is it partially you don't have to fully be able to comprehend something, comprehend something.
And when you talk about comprehending, you're talking about being able to wrap your mind completely around something. And no one in here, even when I'm finished, will be able to totally wrap our minds around all that is God because he is infinite and we're finite.
But. I thought of an illustration, I was driving this week, I was driving my car down the road, and I got to thinking about that argument when somebody says, well, I don't have to understand something to believe it.
That's true. But if you understand something wrong, then you're believing wrong. For instance, I don't understand how helicopters work. I don't understand how these little thin blades pick up, you know, tons of material and lift it into the air on on on the on the power of just these little small blades.
I know it do because I see it do, but I don't know how it did. So we know that. But what if I believe that the reason why helicopters work is because there's thousands of tiny butterflies that have grabbed a hold of the top of that helicopter and with the power of their little wings have fluttered to the to the max and with that maximum fluttering power have lifted two tons of helicopter into the air.
Would I be wrong? OK, would I be wrong? Yes. And now what if I went and told everybody that and what if I got some people that believed in that and we become the butterfly helicopter sect of the helicopter believers?
We'd be wrong even if we even if all we were saying was helicopters can fly. Well, yeah, we all believe helicopters can fly. But if you don't at least seek to understand how that is, you're liable to be wrong when you try to explain it to someone else.
And that is a very silly, maybe illustration of what happens with the doctrine of the Trinity. Somebody says, I believe in the Trinity. And then I began to describe the Trinity in such a way that does violence to the scripture.
It does violence to the one being of God. It does violence to the three co-equal, co-eternal and distinct persons of the Trinity. That is an issue that we need to consider tonight as ministers, theologians, Christians, members of churches.
We ought to be passionate about the nature of God. And concerned that we accurately understand and articulate what we mean when we use the word Trinity, that our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ might do so as well.
So tonight I'm going to provide you with a that was all introduction, by the way. This is my my church loves it because my introductions are always half the time. But tonight we're going to look at four different areas of this doctrine.
I want to provide an overview of the historic doctrine of the Trinity. I will look at some of the most relevant scriptures and I'm going to try to do this all in a short amount of time. So we're obviously going to be moving relatively fast, but we're going to ask four questions.
It's not on the handout I gave you. I'm sorry. And maybe I should have put it there. But the four questions we're going to ask tonight is what is the Trinity? Why do we believe in the Trinity? How has history shaped our understanding of the Trinity and forth?
And finally, what issues are currently facing us as Trinitarians? So that's the four point outline of the lesson. And I've given you an out a handout and I'm going to grab one because I didn't bring my own.
But everyone should have a copy of the handout that looks like this on the back of it is the Athanasian Creed. I wish we had time to go through the Athanasian Creed. We do not. So I simply printed that for your benefit.
It is one of the most extensive and articulate expressions of what we believe about the Trinity. And if you're interested in how the the ancient writers have put together what we mean when we say Trinity, the Athanasian Creed is helpful.
So this is for you for later, not necessarily right now. But as we ask the question, what is the Trinity? If you pull out the handout, I've tried to make it as clear as I can, because to the first thing we need to keep in mind is to understand the Trinity depends upon making proper distinctions.
If we are not willing to make distinctions, and by the way, this is the issue that almost always comes up. You ever heard somebody say in your church or maybe somebody somebody you're talking to and they say, well, if Jesus was God, why did he pray?
I mean, that's that's that's a question that people often bring up. And if you can't make a distinction. About the being of God, the persons and the dual nature of Christ, that he is both God and man, if you can't make distinctions and articulate those distinctions and you won't have an answer to that question.
When somebody when you're talking to the Jehovah's Witnesses, I was at Hardee's one day, she had a whole thing set up. I don't know who owned that Hardee's, but he gave her a whole section for the Jehovah Witness table.
And I walked over to her and I was trying to show her how in Hebrews one, it says of the sun, it says this. And then you go back to the psalm and it says that's of Yahweh. And I said, this is Yahweh and this is the sun.
The sun is Yahweh. And I was trying to explain this to her. And she pulled out a passage of scripture that says that the head of every man is Christ and the head of Christ is God. OK, the Bible says that, but what does that mean if you can't make a distinction and you're not able to make the distinctions between being and person and then you're not maybe able to make the distinctions between the human and the divine natures that Christ has both, then you won't be able to answer that question when it's posed to you.
So Trinitarianism depends on our ability to make and understand proper distinctions, the classic formula is simple. There are three foundational principles, don't call them three pillars because Islam has five and you'll get confused.
The three foundational principles of Trinitarianism is this. God is one in essence. God is three in person. These three persons are co-equal, co-eternal and distinct. Now, in the box on the sheet that I gave you, you'll notice at the top it says God beside it.
It is the English transliteration of the Hebrew word below it, which is the four letter name of God. The Tetragrammaton is what that's called. And the word is Yahweh. Sometimes Yahweh, sometimes you'll see it written as Jehovah.
But Jehovah is a Germanic adulteration of the Tetragrammaton. So I don't tend to use it. Not that it's bad, but that is. There is no Jah-Jah sound in Hebrew. There's no Jah-Jah sound in Greek either.
So there is no Jesus. There's no Jehovah. It's Yeshu or Yahweh, depending on whether you're speaking Greek or Hebrew, be, you know, Yeshua in Hebrew. So anyway, God is what? One in essence, that is a distinction from person because we say he is one in essence and three in person.
This is where a lot of people get off the boat because a lot of people don't want to make a distinction between being in person because they've never had to make a distinction between being in person.
Because when I meet, I met a lot of you tonight for the first time. Brother Tim and I met a while back and I met his brother tonight. You're being at a person and you only get one for one. Right. And when I met Brother Tim, one for one, Brother John is one for one.
It's a one being and one person. I've never met a being that was that was more than one person. So a lot of people thinks because they've never met a being that was more than one person that it can't be.
But you cannot deny that what we are saying is that there's a distinction between being in person. Do you believe that there's a distinction between being in person? Now, I'm going to quote Dr. James White here because he uses this illustration a lot.
And if you've heard him use it, I don't want somebody to come and say, oh, Dr. White says that. Yes, he does. And I like to use this illustration as well because being in person are not the same thing because I could pick up a rock and a rock has being, but a rock doesn't have person.
A rock has being if you don't believe it, I'll throw it at you when it hits you, you that being just hit you. If I walk up and and look at the pulpit here, this has being I can touch it, I can feel it, but it doesn't have person.
So we make a distinction between being in person. All right. God is one being, and this is why we don't deny when the scripture says here, oh, Israel, the Lord, your God is one Lord. This is why we don't deny Isaiah 4310.
This is before me. There was no God formed and there will be no God after me. That's what you got to show the Jehovah witness because he says Jesus is a created God that came after Yahweh or Jehovah. He cannot be a created God because Yahweh has said there will be none after me.
You see. God is one being. We don't deny that we are monotheists. We are Trinitarian monotheists, not Unitarians, Muslims. Jehovah witnesses, Orthodox Jews, they would be Unitarian monotheists. We are Trinitarian monotheists.
We do not deny. That God is one in essence or substance, and people say, what do you mean by essence that the R .C. Sproul says the stuff he said, whatever God is, that's one. And we only get one of those.
And we know what God is because Jesus speaking to the woman. What do you say? God is spirit woman. Well, John, for God is spirit. And those who worship him must worship him in spirit. So we know when we talk about the stuff we're talking about.
God's spirit is one. God is one. And yet at the same time, God is three in person, person is different than being. Again, it's hard to understand how that is, but you have to understand something. You are not on the same level of being as God.
You never will be even in your glorified state. You'll never be a God. The Mormons got that wrong. They said you can be God one day. You know why they believe that they believe that because they believe God was once a man.
And if you believe God was once a man, then it's the idea you could be God one day. God was never a man. God has always been God. And he's always been one God. And yet there have always been three persons.
That are that one God and person is different than being. I want to provide an illustration with a major caveat. There are no illustrations proper to the Trinity. So any illustration I give, I am forced to at the beginning say, it ain't good.
And you say, well, why would you say it? Because I'm not really trying to explain the Trinity. I'm trying to explain a being on another level than you. So understand that I'm not trying to define the Trinity.
I'm trying to divine being on another level. If you saw a rather, I mean, that backup, a single cell organism doesn't have the capacity to think, right? There's not enough there, but a single celled organism would look at me and say, as a multi-celled organism, how many or how many cells are in my body?
Billions. I'm a big man, more than you. So so we got me. I'm a multi-celled organism. A single celled organism would look at me and say, well, there's there's several beings, but I'm one being. So I look at God and I say, I'm one being one person.
God is one being three persons. He can't be that because I'm not that. He can't be that because I've never seen anyone else like that. Well, that's what he's got. Of course, he's going to be different than you.
You know what the word holy means? It means other it means different.
God is not like you. He's not like us.
And so because we try to capture him in these human restrictions and say, OK, we've always had a one for one. One being one person. God must be one being one person. No, nothing, nothing demands that except our unwillingness to say that God can be more than us.
The father, the son and the spirit are all God. But the father is not the son. The son is not the spirit and the spirit is not the father, and that is where the distinction must be made. God is one in essence or substance.
God is three in person or subsistence. And a contradiction occurs when you say something is and is not in the same time and in the same relationship. So we do not say that God is one God and three gods or one essence and three essence or one person and three persons, because in doing so, we would be exercising a contradiction.
And God is not contradictory. The distinction between essence and person must be maintained to eliminate the possibility of contradiction. Now, below the square, you'll notice another line. The distinction between the ontological and economic trinity must also be maintained to eliminate the possibility of confusion.
Ontological simply means that which pertains to being and in God's being, he is one in essence and three in person. Economic means that which pertains to their role and each person works a unique role in redemption.
The father elects, the son redeems, the spirit regenerates. They all work a different role in your salvation. Jesus said this. He said, all the father gives me will come to me. That classic Calvinistic passage where he says, you know, all that the father chooses, he gives to the son.
If you are saved tonight, it is because the father gave you to the son as a gift. You are his bride, the father chose you to give to the son. Confusion in this area can lead to misrepresenting the individual work of each person, the trinity, the father didn't die on the cross.
You understand that, right? You understand that the father is not the one who suffered for sin. He was not the one who became incarnate. A distinction must be made in the history. Some have not. Something called patripassionism, the idea that the father was the one who was dying on the cross is not true.
So we need to be able to make distinctions if we are to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. OK, all right. So that is what the Trinity is. Let's quickly review misrepresentations of it. I don't have a handout for this.
I'm sorry, but if you want to make notes, you're welcome to misrepresentations come in. And you could go back and you say, well, in historianism and Apollinarianism, you go through all these big words.
But let me just make it simple. There are people who believe that God is more than one in essence. We call that tritheism or simplified tritheism. The idea that God is three essences or three beings. You've seen the triad view of God where there's three beings and they're all sort of sort of like in confluence with one another.
My wife and I were in a Mormon church one time. I'll tell you why later. It's kind of a weird situation. But we were actually in the Mormon church and we were not Mormons, but we were there. And one of the ladies invited my wife back and was showing her to a few of the rooms and trying to convince my wife that we were the same.
Well, we are not. But you walk into one of the rooms and there was a painting. And you've probably seen this. If you've ever had a Mormon give you literature, oftentimes this painting is in their literature.
It's a picture of Joseph Smith down on his knees and he's standing in front of two people. But if you look at the painting, it's two pictures of that 17th century Jesus that we all are familiar with. Looks like Jim Caviezel with a bad mullet.
You know, we know that picture. Right. So you got two Jim Caviezel's together facing Joseph Smith. And if you ask, well, what's this? Well, that's Jesus and the father. But in Mormonism, see, Mormonism isn't even on the Mormonism doesn't count when it comes to this conversation.
Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion in the world because they believe in an infinite regression of gods, that gods have always been and have always gone back, that they believe in more gods than the Hindus.
And they believe you can all be gods. You have more in common theologically with the average Muslim than you do with a Mormon. And we'll talk about why later. But honestly, Mormons are so far off the rails on this.
It's not just that God is there are many gods. Trippism says there's three beings. That's wrong. The next one, God is less than three in person. This is more common today. It's sometimes referred to as modalism.
How many heard modalism? OK, several of you. That modalism also referring as can be called Sibelianism, Sibelius's view is a little different than the modern expression of modalism. But the modern expression of modalism is this, that there is one person who manifests himself in different ways.
So God is one being and one person. But he manifests as the father in the Old Covenant, Old Testament. He manifests as the son during the time of the Gospels. And he currently manifests as the spirit now.
And you kind of think about that, those old plays where the where the person would play two parts and he'd have two masks and he would put the one mask on and he'd change his voice a little bit. And he would say, yes, I'm this person.
And then he'd take that mask off and he put this mask on. But it's the same guy.
All right.
Modalism is is sometimes referred to as oneness, oneness theology, because they'll say, well, Jesus is the father and Jesus is the spirit. And you'll see their theology worked out and how they worship, too, because oftentimes when they're worshiping, that will make it self-known, especially at baptism, because they will baptize not in the Trinitarian name of the father and of the son of the spirit, but they will baptize in the name of Jesus only.
And that's why they're often called oneness, Jesus only groups. So you have God is more than one in essence, that's tritheism. God is less than three in person. That's modalism. And then you have the three persons are not equal, eternal or distinct.
And that's Arianism. How many you ever heard of Arianism? Now, let me back up, because you could talk about Arianism as white supremacy. That's a different type of Arianism. So be careful that you don't confuse.
And I'm serious, because if people are confused, sometimes Arius was a fourth century leader in the church who believed that Jesus Christ, while divine, was not equal with the father. And it was Arius's views that caused the Council of Nicaea to come together in the Council of Nicaea was where.
And I don't know if you know this story, my favorite story in history, and I don't know if it's true, but I love to think that it's true. St. Nicholas punched Arius in the face.
St. Nicholas.
Yeah, that one, Santa Claus. St. Nicholas lived in the fourth century. He was at the Council of Nicaea and St. Nicholas of Myra, apparently, while Arius was speaking, walked up and smacked him in the head and he got sanctioned for it, which is awesome.
Here's a great story. Whether or not it's true, I don't know. But anyway, the whole issue of Arius, Arius didn't believe that Jesus was of the same substance as the father. And that was the big question of the Council of Nicaea, and I'm getting a little ahead of myself because we haven't got the historical part yet.
But the question of Nicaea was homoousia, homoousia, or heteroousia. Ousia is the Greek word for essence or substance. Homo means the same. Hetero means different. Homoi, adding the ota, means similar, of similar substance.
So the question was, is Jesus Christ the same substance as the father? Is Jesus Christ similar in nature or substance to the father, or is Jesus Christ of a different nature? Athanasius, whose creed you hold, made the argument, along with the rest of the bishops of Nicaea, that Jesus was homoousia, same substance.
Arius didn't argue that he was a different substance, but he argued that he was similar, but not the same. That small ota, that small line, made the difference between orthodoxy and heresy. So I got a little ahead of myself, but we'll skip that when we get there then.
So the next question, what is the Trinity? I think we've looked at that. What is the, why do we believe the Trinity? Why do we believe the Trinity? Well, I want to say this as clear as I can. We believe the Trinity because of what the Bible teaches.
I guess I could just leave it there, but I want to say a few more things about that, but that's just it. Christians believe the Trinity because it is the only way to understand all the biblical data that we have regarding the nature of who God is.
It's the only way to understand all that the Bible says. Tritheists have to deny some of what the Bible says. Modalists have to deny some of what the Bible teaches. Trinitarianism is the only way to make sense of all the data that we have.
The Bible teaches that God is one in essence. I've already mentioned that. Deuteronomy 6, Isaiah 43. The Bible teaches that God is three in person. If you want a few scripture verses for that, and I don't want to spend all night.
I love to teach John 1, 1 through 3. And the beginning was the word, and you all know, and the word was with God and the word was God, right? And all things were made through him. Nothing was made that wasn't made by him.
You know, we know John 1 very well. But that most important section there is when it says the word was God, because it identifies who the word is. Later in verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father.
Right?
So who became flesh? Jesus. There's no question about who the word is. So you go back to the first verse in Archaea and Halagos. In the beginning was the word, right? And then it says that the word was God.
In Greek, it actually says that God was the word. But we changed the word order in English because of the predicate nominative. But it's saying that the word was God. And it says the word was with God.
Now, the only way to understand that, apart from the Trinity, if you say we don't believe in the Trinity, the only way to understand that is believe there's more than one God or to believe that Jesus is a lesser God.
And that's what Jehovah Witnesses believe. Jehovah Witnesses are not as monotheistic as they proclaim. Jehovah Witnesses will say, no, we're absolute monotheists. There's only one God. Jehovah Witnesses are henotheistic.
We know what henotheism is. You know, polytheism, let's start out monotheism, one God, polytheism, many gods, henotheism, that there is one God who is over the other gods or one God per tribe. Go back to the ancient Jewish writings, the Old Testament, and you talked about Baal, right?
And what was Baal? He was the God of that tribe. Who was Jehovah? He was the God of our tribe.
And who's greater?
Well, Jehovah is greater than Baal. No, Baal is greater than Jehovah, right? And so they go back and forth. I'm not saying that ancient Israel was henotheistic, but those other religions were. They didn't deny that Jehovah existed.
They just said our God is better.
Our God is greater.
Jehovah Witnesses believe in Jehovah, one God, but they also believe Jesus is a God. Because if you pick up one of their New World translations, I have one on my shelf for reference. If you pick up their New World translation, it says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.
They don't deny that he was a God. He's just not the God. So, again, the only way to understand John 1 .1 without being a Trinitarian is that you have to have more than one God. Whether or not he's a lesser God, whether or not he's sub-God or God-like, he is called God.
The Bible is so clear. I hear people say, the Bible never says Jesus is God.
Right here.
And by the way, F .F. Bruce says the only thing they proved by adding the indefinite article is their own ignorance of Greek grammar. Because there does not need to be an indefinite article. That little letter A is unnecessary at John 1 .1.
And actually all it proves is they don't really know what they're talking about. Colossians 2 .9, in him the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. In who? In Christ. The fullness of deity dwells bodily.
Colossians 1 .15, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. That is used by some to say that Christ is the firstborn in the sense that he was created. That's not what the firstborn means there.
Firstborn means preeminent one, the one who is the head of all creation, because he created all things and all things were made by him. Which is what it goes on to say, for by him, all things were created.
If you look at a New World translation, you know what it says there? For by him, all other things were created. They had the word other. It's in brackets, but pick one up. It says by him, all other things, because they say Jesus is created and he created everything else.
But he was Michael the Archangel. He wasn't even Jesus then. Again, Jehovah Witnesses theology is far afield. Revelation 22, 13, Jesus says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
No mere creature could say such a thing. And of course, at the end of John's gospel, when Thomas was doubting who Jesus was, he said, I will have to see the scar in his side and the nail prints in his hand.
And what did Jesus do? Come and see my side, that it is I. Touch me. And what did Thomas say? Hakuri asmu kai hafe asmu, my Lord and my God. Talked to Jehovah Witness once and he said he was just saying like anybody else who sees something surprising.
Oh, my God.
I like to give away a second to kind of giggle. That was his. That was just an expletive. I said, yeah, it made sense that standing before a divine being, Thomas would throw out the name of God as it were an expletive.
I'm going to go with no, but it doesn't work anyway, because he didn't say, oh, God, he said, my Lord. And my God, the Holy Spirit is also spoken of as a distinct person. John 16, verses seven to 11, is something I encourage you to look at when you have time.
John 16, Jesus is speaking. He says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is your advantage. I go away for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. That's where that word comforter percolate toss in the Greek.
That's where that word comes in there. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment concerning sin because they do not believe in me concerning righteousness and judgment.
Because I go to the father and you will see me no longer concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. Jesus just referenced all three members of the Trinity as being completely distinct.
I'm going away. The spirit's going to come and I'm going to be with the father. He just kicked modalism in the chest because. Modalism is destroyed if this is true, because if Jesus is just one person wearing the mask.
And he's going to take that mask off and put on the other mask, then he's going nowhere. And he's going to no one. And we all know the story of Ananias and Sapphira, where Ananias was brought before Peter.
He lied. And what did Peter say? He said, you have lied to the Holy Spirit. You have not lied to men, but to God, identifying the Holy Spirit as God. The Bible supports the coexistence of these three persons in the verses we've already seen, but also in Matthew 28, where Jesus tells us to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.
In what way? Through baptism, baptism is is is one of the ways a person enters into that discipleship relationship with Christ. And how is that person to be baptized? In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.
B .B. Warfield has a great quote that is rather long and extensive, so I'm not going to read the whole quote to you. But I will say what the essence of his quote is this. He's saying that by saying the name of God is the father and the son and the spirit.
He was saying that now Jehovah is to be known as the father and the son and the spirit. Now, I want to kind of hasten to the end because of time, and I would like to give you a few minutes to ask questions because I enjoy doing that.
Third, third question, how has the history shaped our understanding of the Trinity? Well, I want to tell you this. Some people will say. And it became very popular just about 15, 10, 15 years ago when Dan Brown wrote the Da Vinci Code.
Some people will say some of you might not even remember that, but they'll say, well, nobody believed Jesus was divine until the fourth century. And the Council of Nicaea met to to make Jesus God because Constantine wanted to have a divine being that he could control and people could worship.
History proves that that is not true. Clement of Alexandria, who lived between 150 and 215, said this, both as God and as man, the Lord renders us every kind of help and service as God. He forgives sin and as man, he educates us to avoid sin completely.
Our educator, O children, resembles his father, God, whose son he is. He is without sin, without blame, without passion of soul. God, immaculate in form of man, accomplishing his father's will. This was 200 years prior.
Well, 150 years prior to Nicaea and Clement is telling us. There's no question Jesus is God. Hippolytus, who lived between 170 and 236, said this, the blessed John in the testimony of his gospel gives us an account of this economy and acknowledges this word as God.
When he says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. If then the word was with God and was also God, what follows? Would one say that he speaks of two gods? I shall indeed not speak of two gods, but of one of two persons, however, and of a third economy, the grace of the Holy Ghost.
Now, beloved, that's 100 years before Nicaea. And he just gave the Nicene understanding of one nature, three persons. So if some knucklehead comes to you and he says, well, nobody believed Jesus was divine before 325, say that's wrong.
That's not true. That's false. Don't call him a knucklehead, though. Save that for here. The Nicene Creed, though, did make one important statement regarding the Trinity that I think we should all understand.
How many of you have memorized the Nicene Creed? I brought my hand. No. OK, that's fine. Nicene Creed is not short. You know, I mean, it's not terribly long, but it's something that a lot of people don't do.
Churches. I noticed when I got here tonight, brother, and I see the Apostles Creed is here. Do you guys recite that in worship? Oh, praise the Lord. I love that. And I like to see responsive readings in churches.
That's wonderful. Well, the Nicene Creed made an important distinction that is something that I think historically has been helpful. It said that Jesus Christ was begotten, but not made. And if time would allow it, I'd really like to get into what they were trying to say.
But for simplicity's sake, God, the Father, God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit are in a relationship with one another. And the historic doctrine of the Trinity has always said that the father begets the son and that the spirit proceeds from.
And the question of whether or not he proceeds from the father or from the father and the son is a question that was actually divided. The Eastern Western Church is 1056 because the Eastern Church believed that he only proceeded from the father alone.
The Western Church is a proceeded from the father and the son. But whether or not that's an issue is not really the issue. The question of is an economy. The question is of begetting and proceeding. So we do understand that the son is beget by the father.
But he is it is an eternally begotten relationship. It speaks of relationship, not one necessarily coming from the other in the sense of giving birth where there was not one there. And now there is because of a birth.
But it's just in effect, a stating of a relationship in the same way that the spirit proceeds from both the father and the son. The son is begotten, but not created. He eternally is from the father as mysteriously as the father himself is from eternity.
Thank you. But but that's it. The mystery, the mystery of that begotten nature is as mysterious as God's eternal nature. But we don't deny it. Fourth and finally, what issues currently face us as Trinitarians?
Number one, what issues are facing us as Trinitarians? The first thing, ignorance. Most people do not know enough about the doctrine to articulate it at all. And that's a problem. I mentioned earlier, my introduction was lengthy because I was going over how people misunderstand the Trinity.
Don't talk about the Trinity. And here's the issue, guys. And I'm thankful for little Germany and what you guys are trying to do. But we also realize that we cannot solve all the issues in every church in Jacksonville or around the world.
But we are going to try to ensure that the churches that we represent and are a part of are growing in these areas. And and I am I am convinced that as a pastor, my goal for this year, every year when I sit down at the beginning of the year, I map out my preaching calendar and I think about what I'm going to preach.
I'm in acts. I've been in acts for two years. I'll continue this year. But as I'm preaching, I think about the direction I want to go. And it just so happens that this Sunday I'm preaching on the story of when Paul comes into Ephesus and he meets the 12 or so disciples that are there that didn't know about the Holy Spirit.
And they they didn't really know about Jesus, they only knew about what John had taught. And Paul comes in and shares Christ with them and he baptizes them. And the title of my sermon is Deficient Theology.
We live in a world of deficient theology. And it would be bad enough if the deficient theology was at the bus station or if the deficiency theology was at the Walmart or at the Lowe's. But the deficient theology is in the churches and in the pulpits.
The ignorance is here. When I asked that guy who was being grilled to be a pastor, if he knew the doctrine of the Trinity, could he explain it? The guys were upset with me for asking, not with him for not being able to answer.
Ignorance is an epidemic that we are dealing with. So what do we do? We shine a light in the darkness, right? We understand the truth so we can share it with others. That's part of what the only thing we can do.
Number two, intentionally anti-Trinitarian teachers. There are those out there who are convinced trifeists, who are convinced modalists, convinced Aryans who are out there with large followings. And I got to tell you guys, some of them, I'm sure you know, you probably know T .D. Jakes.
T .D. Jakes is a modalist, even though he's tried to weasel out of it and he's tried to work his way back and forth. I mean, he's got enough heresy everywhere else. He didn't have to add to it. But I mean, but his heresy regarding the modalism stuff, it just kind of just just puts the little, you know, just nail in the heretical coffin, as it were.
But he's not alone. Phillips, Craig and Dean, like anybody knows who they are anymore. But if it's Phillips, Craig and Dean, the music, music guys, Christian music guys, it's funny. They were called the Holy Trinity of contemporary Christian music in the 90s.
Well, they didn't believe the Trinity and modalists. Oneness, Pentecostalism. And I got to tell you, if any of you have friends, well, I mean, I'm sure that you all have friends. As do I, who go to different churches.
Some of you have friends. You must have friends that go to oneness churches. They probably don't even know it. It's hidden, it's not proclaimed, and it's part of the teaching, but it comes under the radar.
But it's there. Those who shepherd churches must warn those in our hearing about those people and be sure to point them out. I was once, one person left our church one time. She says, all you do is talk about other people.
And I said, well, that's not fair. I said, but I am going to warn our people about the wolves. I wouldn't be much of a shepherd if I opened the gate and went home, went to sleep. You know, you have to point them out and say, you know, people bring the shack to church.
Get out of here with that nonsense.
They just shack.
You know what that is? They're about to make a movie about it. It's an anti-Trinitarian nonsense work of fiction. And people say, oh, this helped me understand God better. No, it didn't. No, it did not.
Third, and this one, some of you will care a lot. Some of you will not care at all, but try to care a little bit. There's a question going on about subordinationism and the subordination debate. And the only reason why I bring this out tonight, because I know my time is running out.
I bring this out because this is an issue among reform guys. And we all at least are here at Little Germany. You understand this is a reformation society. So if I drop names like Calvin and Luther and Zwingli and Huss and all those guys, you're not going to throw me out or stone me.
But in reformation minded groups, there are questions about the issue of subordinationism. What is subordinationism? That the father has always exercised authority over the son and the son has always been in submission to the father in their relationship within the Trinity.
That there has always been a submission father to son and where this gained legs is because it was espoused by Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware. And if you're familiar with those guys, Wayne Grudem wrote one of the most influential systematic theologies, even though it's charismatic in its view of the gifts.
But he wrote one of the most influential reformed systematic theology. So people say, oh, wow, Wayne Grudem believes in eternal subordinationism. Maybe we should, too. Bruce Ware, Southern Seminary, he's huge.
Bruce Ware is a smart man. And he wrote on the subject, they both did a debate with another two guys on the subject, and they were arguing for the eternal submission of the son to the father. And one of the reasons why they make this is because they were trying to make an argument for the submission of the wife to her husband.
That there's equality, but submission.
Right.
And so in arguing for the equality and submission role of the wife to the husband, they were saying, well, in the Godhead, there's equality, but submission from the father to the son. And I understand trying to find an illustration.
I understand trying to make a point, but I while I respect both of the men and I do understand, in part, the position they take, personally, I do not agree with it. However, I do want to say this. In the incarnation.
There is submission, the son to the father. He said it. I came not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me.
I mean, Jesus made a willing submission. Philippians two in the carbon Christi. When it says, you know, he emptied himself. It doesn't mean he gave up divinity, but there was a humbling of himself and coming in the form of a man so that he could die as men in the place of men and become their savior.
So there is a submission. The question of why did Jesus pray? Because he was a man. He is fully man and fully God. So so there's really not an issue there. But the question of whether or not Christ is subordinate to the father.
John Calvin says this in the Institutes. He's talking about John's gospel. He said, John, declaring that Jesus is the true God, has no idea of placing him beneath the father in a subordinate rank of divinity.
He's referring to John one one. He says he says John Calvin is talking about John one. He says here he calls Jesus God and he's not calling him a second type of God or some kind of subordinate God. He's referring to him as God.
And there is no rank. In the Godhead, the Athanasian Creed, which I handed you, says in this trinity, none is a four or after the other. None is greater or less than the other. But the whole three persons are co-eternal together and co-equal.
So the ancient teaching of the church is this, that the father, the son and the spirit are co-equal. Co-eternal and distinct. And here's my thought, not that it matters for much, but I'll share it with you because, well, you're you're all trapped.
So I'll share it with you. When you think of God as a perfect being, an infinite being, the concept of submission and subordination is unnecessary as a quality when you have a perfect unity of will. So for me, it becomes a non-issue.
If they are co-equal. And they are both perfect, then subordination is not a question. For some, it is. But for me, it is not. So as I draw close, draw to a close, I want to reiterate something I said at the beginning.
My very reason for wanting to teach this lecture tonight is to say again to you to love God is to love the Trinity, not the doctrine. But the being of God. And I would ask you tonight, do you love him?
Do you love God, who is one in essence and three in person? Do you love the father? Who chose you, do you love the son who died to redeem you, and do you love the spirit who lives within you? And that is the question we all should be confirmed in.
Above all else. Father in heaven, I thank you for the opportunity to teach. I, Lord, come to you in humility, saying I thank you for this opportunity. Lord, I thank you for your word, which I believe is clear on this issue and we cannot get around it.
And I pray that now, as we move into a time of questions, a time of prayer and a time of fellowship and food, that you would bless our continuation. I pray, Lord, if there is anything that I've said tonight that has been an error, that you would wipe it from the mind to these people, that you would make it clear to us.
And Lord, that I would repent of that error. And I pray, Lord, those things which have been true, helpful and fitting. I pray that you would write them on our minds, Lord, by the work of your spirit. In Jesus name.
Amen.
All right, John, did you want to let them ask questions or we have no answer?
Yeah, if you guys have any questions or anything like that before we have some food together and fellowship before we pray and dismiss. Yes, sir.
I heard. I stated that you can take the translate where you can take it as let us make man as many. You see the Trinity in that. And I've also heard that that doesn't necessarily mean that as a Trinitarian, that's somewhere we can go to.
I personally do not believe in some somebody will argue this. I personally do not believe that you can prove the doctrine of the Trinity from the Old Testament. I believe in progressive revelation, which means that as the Bible unfolds, we learn more about God.
I say something in my church that sometimes offends people. I say I believe we know more about God than Abraham did. Because Abraham didn't know what we know about Christ, about the gospel. He knew the gospel because the gospel was preached to him.
Galatians tells us that. And he was closer to God than we because he was called the friend of God. But I think knowledge has been expanded and our progressive revelation that came to us through the word.
And when I say progressive revelation, I don't mean now. I do believe that revelation ended with Revelation, the book, as far as divine inspired revelation. But I do believe that when you go back to the beginning and the writings of Moses and throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament, there is an expansion of understanding of who God is and what he's done.
And I think the Trinitarian understanding of God is something that is limited to the New Testament. However, there are hints of Trinitarianism in the Old Testament. Even in the term which is used, and I can't remember exactly the Hebrew word right now, but the word when it says in Deuteronomy, our Lord is one Lord.
That word one in Hebrew is a oneness of unity, not an absolute singularity or oneness. It's often pointed out like one has been a costalism, things like that. So going back to the question of Genesis one, this is one deals with, I believe, God and his majesty.
And there's something called the majestic plural, which is any time a king talks about himself, he rarely talks about himself as I, but he talks about we because he's speaking of himself and his and his authority as well.
And so if you talk to someone who doesn't believe in the Trinity and you try to point to Genesis one, they will often say, well, that's just a majestic plural. That's God speaking of himself as more and greater than single, a simple one being.
And that can be. But I think there's also the hint of Trinitarianism all throughout the Old Testament. But I just don't think it's explicit enough to prove it.
So in other words, would you be saying that there. Actually there isn't enough, but obviously now we have.
Yeah, we can look back at it now. Yeah, I would say we look back at it now and we see those hints. We see things like the angel of the Lord who exercises the authority of Yahweh. And what do we say about that?
Is that a theophany or is that a Christophany? Who did Isaiah see in Isaiah six? He saw Jesus in there when John tells us that in his gospel, he said it was spoke of Jesus when he when he said he beheld his glory.
Right. And then when John saw the Lord, what is the first chapter of John say? No one has seen the father. A bunch of people in the Old Testament saw God, they had to have seen the son. So we know the son was there and we can look back and see that Adam and Eve walked with Christ.
Because it says no one has seen the father, that's the universal negative. OK, anything else? I love these questions. Yes. Yes, I would say there's a distinction between and again, what I say earlier, that we always have to make distinctions.
And the distinction is between the human nature and the divine nature of Christ. Jesus said, I don't know when the return when I'm going to return. He was speaking in relation to his humanity. I think when he was on his knees and he was sweating drops of blood and he was saying, father, you know, if there be another way, let this cut pass from me.
I think he's speaking from his humanity at that point. And I don't think there's a division in the Godhead. I don't believe there's ever been a division in the Godhead. I'm going to say something else that may get me kicked out.
I don't know. Let's see. A lot of people say when Jesus was on the cross, there was a division in the Godhead because the father turned his face. Bible doesn't say that. Jesus said, hello, I am a subordinate, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
He was quoting Psalm 22. And if you read all of Psalm 22, you'll see that at the tour, it is a quote. And I believe that Jesus was doing the same thing there that some of you might do if you say, for God, so love the world.
You say, for God's love, the world, what am I supposed to think? John 316, right? Well, if somebody says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You're just quoting the first verse of a psalm. That's a full psalm.
And the psalm is a psalm of victory. When Christ said, hello, I am a subordinate, he's crying out, not that the father has turned his face away, but the father is pouring out the wrath that he has promised to take in that moment.
There's no division in the Trinity, even on the cross. But in his humanity, he can say, I don't know, and his humanity and get hungry and his humanity, he can sweat. And he can say, not my will, but I will be done.
So you have to have a perfect sacrificial, you have to have a perfect sacrifice that represent humanity. So he was fully God. I think we forget that he was fully man.
And I've heard people say, well, Jesus couldn't be fully man because he didn't sin. And to be a man is to sin. And that's not true because Adam was a man before he said. Why Jesus called the second Adam?
Because he was as Adam was before he sinned. There's something called paspacari and pasnapacari, you've often heard that term, the ability to sin or the ability not to sin. Right before Adam fell, he had the ability to sin or the ability not to sin.
But after he fell, he lost the ability not to sin. Jesus came into the world. And the big question for theologian students, theology students, is whether or not Jesus had the capacity to say not that he did or didn't.
But the whole issue of what we call peccability, that Jesus have the capacity to sin. And I'm not going there.
We're going to have that debate.
But you understand that is a question that people ask because Adam, we know, had the capacity to sin or not to sin.
But I believe we ask some of the questions because of Adam's sin, I think some of the questions that we ask, and I think this is for me, it is a danger in studying too deep, not too deep because you want to get truth.
But sometimes in order to answer depraved men who say scripture isn't enough, and like you say, we draw analogies that need to be drawn. It gives clarity concerning the wife and the husband. Yeah, there's no need to try to, you know, feel the depraved curiosity of men because the carnal mind is not going to understand the things of God.
And so I think we sometimes become ensnared by trying to answer depraved men for the falling nature and not trusting the Holy Spirit, just take what God has given us to do that. So I think that is a big danger that I see as well.
I agree.
We can't get lost trying to make people understand something that comes by the work of the spirit in their heart. You know, it's just like if I thought it was my words, my works, and my articulate nature that would get people saved, I would be nuts.
I would just be absolutely crazy because I would think that somehow I was the one that was doing the work of saving people. And every time I talked to somebody and they rejected Christ, I'd feel like it was a failure on me.
But it's God who opens their eyes to believe, and it's God who opens up people's understanding. And this is something for you reformed guys, you theologians, you guys who talk to people. You talk to Arminians, and they will get on your nerves because you'll be showing them Romans 9, and you'll be showing them John 6, and you'll be showing them John 8, and you'll be showing them John 10, and they'll be talking about one verse.
And you'll be like, I'm showing you whole chapters, man, and you're showing me one verse. And you'll be going back and forth, and you've got to remember, but by the grace of God, you'll be in the same place that they are.
And having a little bit of patience with somebody who might just not be understanding it as well as you do is part of what we are called to do. In fact, that's what the Apostle Paul told Timothy. He says, we are patient with them that God may lead them to repentance.
Is there anything else? I smell the food. Go ahead, brother. I believe the Holy Spirit worked on them in giving them the ability to believe. Because I don't believe that belief is something that is conjured up by man in man.
Jesus said, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me grant it to him. So I believe first and foremost that the work of the Holy Spirit in giving people the ability to believe is across the board from Genesis to Revelation.
However, there is a promise that the church will have a dispensation. And I'm not a dispensationalist. Throw that out there. And if you are, that's fine. But by using that word, sometimes I can put myself in the corner.
I'm about to sue you out of your mind.
But I do believe there's a work of the Spirit that is new for the church that was not in the Old Testament. And I think that that's clear in the prophecy of Joel, which is fulfilled in Acts 2. I think there is a special work of the Spirit that is an indwelling, abiding work that gives us the ability to worship God and serve God and to minister in his name in a way that is different than the Old Covenant saints.
But that is not to say that they weren't saints and not to say that they weren't believers because the Bible clearly says that they were. And we see the Spirit indwelling certain individuals, David, and coming upon certain individuals for certain tasks like the Hare, Samson.
Sorry.
Think about different people. You see these acts, but the indwelling, permanent indwelling of the Spirit is a New Testament promise. Does that make sense, that answer?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, I would say that the moment in Acts 2 when the tongues of fire came down is when the... Because Jesus said, unless I go away, you can't come. And when he comes, this will happen. And we see the gift of tongues and things like that that accompanied that gift.
Yeah, I would say during the ministry of Christ, they didn't have the same indwelling of the Spirit that they had after Pentecost.
So previously, just in a different way?
Oh, okay.
I didn't mean to be unclear. No, I would say the indwelling and abiding of the Spirit came after Pentecost. There is a point, though, that does raise a question, and I'll ask the question. There is a point where Jesus breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.
And then it was later that Pentecost comes. And that one's understood in different ways by different theologians. Some people think in breathing on him, he gave them the Spirit then, and later everyone else would receive the Spirit at Pentecost.
There are others who believe that in breathing on them, he was giving them the promise that would later happen at Pentecost. And it, in my opinion, is not entirely clear as to how to justify those two together.
But we do know there's a moment where Jesus breathed on them, he said, receive the Holy Spirit. And we know that they did. So whether it was in that moment or whether it was what happened later, we're not certain.
I'm not certain. I would say we, you might be completely certain.
I'm not certain, but I would go to say that he did. And it goes to show the calling upon him as the apostles, how it's different from the calling upon us today as Christians. And it's not that I would disagree with someone who does not, you know.
Yeah, I'm just saying there's a question there. And again, of course, we know there was at least one apostle who did not receive the Spirit. Well, I mean, you know, have I not chosen twelve, and one of you is a devil.
Can I ask you a question too that a lot of people ask? Because we talk about the Spirit, John the Baptist.
What's the...
Is he filled with the Spirit?
Yeah, I think just like any Old Testament saint who was given the gift of the Spirit for a task, I think he was filled with the Spirit from birth. But for the task of being the forerunner of the Messiah, he is the last Old Testament prophet.
And I think in that he was... I think the prophets of old were filled with the Spirit. I think Isaiah couldn't have done what he did were he not filled with the Spirit. Again, and I think, again, the Spirit is working in the people of the Old Testament.
I just think in a different way than the New Testament. So I'm just trying to be, again, making distinctions. Because I've had this question before myself. Did the Old Testament believers experience regeneration?
I believe they did, because I don't believe you can believe apart from regeneration. Regeneration is what causes faith. By the way, if you're a Calvinist, that's a big distinction. The difference between you and the Arminian, while there are many differences, the biggest difference is you believe that regeneration causes faith, and they believe faith causes regeneration.
That's the distinction. So if you say, I believe that because God regenerated me, I believe, you're a Calvinist. If you say, because I believe God regenerated me, you're an Arminian. That is the linchpin of difference, because either God did the work and you responded, or you did the work and God responded.
Anyone else? I'd be happy to bless you. Father in Heaven, I thank you for, again, giving us this opportunity. I pray that the questions and answers have been helpful. I pray that you'll bless this food, bless our fellowship and our time with our friends, our new friends, to get to know each other better.
In Christ's name, amen.