Why We Believe - The Trinity

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If you are with us on a regular basis, you know that at the end of each service we have a benediction, and Jeff and I generally share those duties.

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And one of the texts that I will normally utilize is found at the end of the book of 2

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Corinthians. It's the last verse of 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 14.

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And you may notice it reads, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the

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Holy Spirit be with you all. Now for the

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Apostle Paul to be able to utilize words like this, without having in 2

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Corinthians laid out an extended discussion of how any of this could make any sense, says something very important to us.

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A lot of people, I remember, I remember very clearly, I worked in a television ministry at a very, very large

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Southern Baptist church in Phoenix, where did Matt go, where's

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Matt? There he is, oh, okay. And Matt and I worked there together, and I'm not sure if Matt was in the

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Bible study that day, it was up in what was called the TV area. And I was,

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I may have been 18 at the time, something like that. And believe it or not,

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I had hair. Matt can tell you, I did once, yep, he still does, which

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I think is really disgusting and unfair, but I think it's chemically enhanced, but anyway, but I remember very clearly the topic coming up and someone saying, well, where does, where does the word

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Trinity appear in the Bible? And I remember us ransacking the concordance in the back of our

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Bibles. For those of you who only know Bibles on a phone, don't even worry about that.

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But it's the search function, but for old people is what a concordance is.

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And it wasn't there. And there was a little bit of concern, there was a little bit of,

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I wonder why that is. Why is it that we do not have the chapter on the

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Trinity or the book on the Trinity? Why is it the word itself doesn't appear in the text of Scripture?

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Isn't it just a man -made explanation that came along hundreds and hundreds of years later?

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Well, let me begin with an illustration before I lose anybody, and I'm going to go ahead and use the valley of vision here since I don't see a regular paper

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Bible up here. These are all hymnals, I'm not going to use a hymnal, that would be really confusing. But let's say this is the

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Bible, all right? And if you have a paper Bible, congratulations to you. If you turn, if you want to see where the

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Trinity is, I can show you where it is. I see some ladies down here that have a regular Bible, there's a nice regular

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Bible, there you go, good. If you'll turn with me to Matthew chapter one, okay?

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So, you know, that's over two -thirds the way through the Bible, it's more toward the back.

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And if you don't have a fancy study Bible, it's got all sorts of stuff in it and things like that, if you've got a regular

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Bible, like a little bit like that one there, then Matthew chapter one might start with Malachi over on the facing page, right?

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Because that's the first book of the New Testament. At least as we organize the books today, you should be aware of the fact that Jews did not organize their, what we call the

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Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, the way that we do. The last book in their canon was 2

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Chronicles. The rest of the books were in there, they were just at different places. But in our text, you have

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Matthew on one side, and you have Malachi on the other side. And so if you want to see where the doctrine of the

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Trinity is revealed, you ready? Look in the gutter right here between the pages.

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It's not that bad of an illustration. The gutter between the pages, that's where the

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Trinity is revealed. Has he lost it? No, I hope you remember it, especially by the end of our time together.

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Because how is the doctrine of the Trinity revealed? Is the doctrine of the Trinity something where you have chapters that say, okay, there are three truths you need to understand.

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There is only one God, Yahweh. Okay, there are three divine persons,

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Father, Son, and Spirit, who are distinguished from one another. The Father is not the Son, the

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Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father. They are not confused with one another, they distinguish from one another.

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Even when the Son prays to the Father, he uses personal pronouns of the Father, glorify me

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Father with the glory which I had in your presence before the world was. That's how you speak to somebody else, not to yourself.

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They are distinguished from one another. So one God, three divine persons, and the third truth, the equality of those persons.

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Not the equal sign, as in the Father is the Son, but look at the resurrection.

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In the New Testament, the Father raises the Son from the dead. The Son says he receives back his life by his own authority.

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The Spirit raises Jesus from the dead, and by that same power, energizes our lives.

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Father, Son, and Spirit, all involved in the resurrection. Father, Son, and Spirit, all involved in creation. Father, Son, and Spirit, all involved in the creation of the church, just as Ignatius mentioned in the epistle that we read a little while ago.

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That's not a biblical text, but he's representing biblical truth. And so you have three divine truths, one

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God, three persons, equality of the persons. Why don't you just have a discussion of that someplace?

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You could just call it First Trinitarianism or something. That's what we would like, because we're

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Western thinkers, and we buy computer equipment, and we download the

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PDF, and we want a nice index, and we want to go right to the part where we need to know how to load the paper in this new fancy -dancy printer, and why does the ink run out in three seconds, and issues along those lines.

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And we want it just all laid out for us, right? But that's not how God's revelation had ever handled anything.

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That's not how God had revealed himself to the people of Israel from the beginning. He did it in what seems to us to be a really messy, personal, historical fashion.

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And so why don't we have that in the New Testament? Why do we have stuff like this, where these people speak to one another, and the apostle writes the

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Corinthians, and he can just simply talk about, oh, the love of Jesus Christ.

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Well, doesn't he also talk about the love of God the Father? He does. And the grace of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, doesn't he talk about the grace of God the Father as well? Yeah, he does. The fellowship of the

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Holy Spirit, well, doesn't he talk about the fellowship that we have with the Father and the Son, and it's through the

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Son? Boy, it just seems like when the apostle is talking to Christians, they already share this as a given reality.

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So let's say last year, and look, it's been a year, hasn't it?

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Has this been, this has been one for the record books on pretty much every level. Believe it or not, it was only a year ago that a bunch of us were up in Salt Lake City.

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And it was only a year ago that Jeff and I were invited to drink antifreeze. And there was a whole group of us that were up there passing out tracts to the

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Mormons and doing stuff like that. And I did, I've lost track of even how many debates I did that one weekend.

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Pretty much every night, that's what I was doing, we were up there in Salt Lake City. But what if, what if I sent out an email to everybody that was staying up at what we called the polygamy palace up there in Salt Lake City?

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It's this massive house. It's a B &B that we rented. And it's got multiple kitchens and enough bedrooms for a small army.

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And you wonder how that would end up in Utah. Why would that be there? I don't know. But you get the idea.

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What if I sent out an email to everybody? And I wanted to remind us of some of the stuff that we did and some of the conversations we had and some of the food we ate and some of the experiences we had outside the temple.

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Like when the Mormon couple approached Jeff and said, could we talk to you? And we ended up having that awesome conversation with them about what the gospel was and things like that.

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Would I have to, in that email, re -narrate everything that happened up in Salt Lake City?

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Or is that already the common possession of all of us that were up there? I can just simply make reference to it in passing, and everybody's going to go, yeah, sure.

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I could mention carrot hair. And see? Someone's going, yes,

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I know exactly what that was, because I was having fun with a little girl about the fact that she had carrot -colored hair, and I was going to steal it, because I need something.

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And she thought that was pretty great. I don't have to explain all of that. I had to explain it to you, because you weren't there.

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I wouldn't have to explain it to her, right? Because there was a common experience.

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Well, that's how the Trinity is described in the New Testament. It's like a bunch of Trinitarians sitting around talking to each other.

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Well, how did that happen? Because of the gutter between Malachi and Matthew.

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That's where the Trinity is revealed. What am I saying when I say that? The ultimate revelation of the doctrine of the

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Trinity is found in the incarnation, ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of the second person of the

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Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, followed by the outpouring of the

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Holy Spirit of God promised by Jesus to His disciples. And when did that happen?

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It happened in the gutter between Malachi and Matthew. That had all happened, that was already the shared experience of the church before Matthew ever got the idea to write a gospel.

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Even if most people don't think Matthew was the first, even if it was Mark. We don't know the order. There's a lot of people who think they know, but we don't know the order.

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But let's just say, before a single word of Mark or James or any of Paul's epistles, whatever was the first word of the

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New Testament written, all of that, incarnation, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, His ascension and enthronement into heaven, and the outpouring of the

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Holy Spirit, all that had already happened. And that's the revelation of the

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Trinity. So that's why I insist. You want to see where it's revealed?

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Right there. It happened in history. It wasn't some angel coming down from heaven, we have a new revelation about God for you.

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You're saying, what do you mean there's nothing about the Trinity in the Old Testament? There's prophetic material in the

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Old Testament. We just read some of it. Shocked some of you, didn't we?

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We read something other than a psalm when you're supposed to read the psalm. Well, it is, by the way,

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Hebrew poetry, so it fits one way or the other, right? Isaiah chapter nine. Who is this one who is prophesied?

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This one who is called mighty God, El Gabor, the same term used of Yahweh in the next chapter,

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Isaiah 1021. You say, but he's called everlasting father, and you just said he's not the father.

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He's called Avi -ad, Avi -ad, Avi, Abba, father,

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Ad, time, eternity, Avi -ad, father of eternity. It's not an identification of a father -son spirit situation.

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It's the one who brings about eternity, creation itself, and that's the description of Jesus in the

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New Testament. What does it say in Colossians chapter one? For by him were all things created, whether in heaven and earth, visible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created.

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By him, before him, he is before all things, and in him all things call together. That's the fulfillment of Isaiah chapter nine. He's called the prince of peace.

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How do we have peace with God? Through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's called so many things, prophetically, that we see fulfilled in the

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New Testament, but the revelation takes place in history itself.

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Once you understand that, then you can begin to see the real evidence in the

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New Testament that reveals the doctrine of the Trinity to us.

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If we're looking for chapters, if we're looking for the word Trinity in our concordance, we're looking in the wrong place to find what we need to find.

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But if we recognize what has happened in history and then recognize that every word of the

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New Testament is written in light of that and is written by experiential

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Trinitarians, then we'll start seeing it on every single page.

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What do I mean by an experiential Trinitarian? Well, that's easy. Look at Peter. Look at Peter.

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He was an experiential Trinitarian. He had walked with the

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Son for years. He had been in the inner circle with the very

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Son of God. He had confessed to him at Caesarea Philippi to be the

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Messiah, the Son of the living God. He then had been taken up on the mountain, what we call the

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Mount of Transfiguration. And there he had not only seen the glory of Jesus in a way that he had never seen it before because it was veiled during the incarnation, but he hears the voice of the

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Father. So he's walked with the Son. He hears the voice of the

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Father distinguished from the Son. He hears the prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17, where Jesus specifically prays to the

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Father and distinguishes himself from the Father, but speaks of the glory that he had in the

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Father's presence before the world even came into existence. And now he's there at Pentecost.

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And now the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus had given, if I go to be with the

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Father, we will send another comforter. And now he is indwelt by the

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Spirit of God. Peter is an experiential Trinitarian. He's heard the

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Father speak. He's walked with the Son. He's now indwelt by the Spirit. And so it makes perfect sense that he would begin his second epistle talking about our great

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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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Second Peter 1 .1. It's called a Granville Sharp construction. Both the words God and Savior are being applied to one person,

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Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior. Now the normal words in the New Testament for Father, Son, and Spirit, the

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Father is normally, if the term of deity is going to be used, is called theos,

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God. God the Father. The normal term for Jesus is kurios,

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Lord. The Lord Jesus, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the

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Spirit is the Spirit of the living God, the Holy Spirit, just the Spirit, whatever terminology is used.

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There are a couple of times, very rare, but they are there, where a writer will go ahead and use that same terminology of another one of the divine persons.

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And so Jesus is called God. He is specifically called God in John 1 .1. In the beginning was the

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Word, where is with God, and the Word was God. Not a God. Anyone who thinks that's a

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God doesn't read much Greek. The Word was God, by His very nature.

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He's also called God in John 1 .18. Now in King James, New King James, it says only begotten

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Son, all the other translations it's going to say something like the unique God, or the one and only God.

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He has revealed who? The Father. That's why we can have perfect knowledge of who the

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Father is. That's why Christianity is not like the rest of the world's religions, where we are guessing about God, or we have to go through secret rituals to learn things.

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In Christianity, we have the promise of an absolutely accurate revelation of who

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God the Father is, because the Son has come, who is His exact image and likeness, and has revealed the

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Father to us. That's why we can make sense out of the Bible, and it says, no one has seen God at any time.

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But they did. Abraham walked with Yahweh by the Oaks of Mamreh, but what, does he have his eyes closed or something?

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What's going on? No, the one who revealed the Father to us in the

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Old Testament is the Son. In fact, that's one of the greatest evidences of the deity of Christ.

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Remember when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah? Have you ever noticed, in Genesis chapter 19, remember what had happened?

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Abraham had been walking with Yahweh, and he was basically trying to cut a deal with Him.

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50 people? What if there are 50 people? How about 40? Man, I've been thinking about Sodom and Gomorrah, I don't think there are 40.

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30? 20? Remember, he's trying to get God to spare, and it finally gets down to a point where, like, if there's not that many, then, oh well, so much for a lot.

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And so he's been walking with Yahweh, and when time comes for judgment to fall, have you ever noticed what

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Genesis 19, I think it's verse 24, says? Yahweh rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah from Yahweh in heaven.

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The Yahweh who had been walking with Abraham brings the fire and the brimstone from Yahweh in heaven.

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Oh, you've got multiple Yahwehs? No, there's only one Yahweh. There is almost nothing more clearly revealed in all of Scripture than there is only one

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Yahweh. Before me, there is no God formed, there will be none after me. Is there any other

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God besides me, Yahweh says, I know of none. There's one God, Yahweh. But in Genesis, Yahweh walked with Abraham and rains fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah.

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Who is that Yahweh that's walking? Remember when Jesus was about to, the

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Jews were just about to pick up stones to stone him in John chapter 8? Remember what he said to them? Abram saw my day and he rejoiced to see it.

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And the Jews are like, you're not even 50 years old. How could Abram see your day?

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And what was Jesus' response? Prin abraam genestai, ego aimi, before Abraham was,

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I am. Ego aimi, Greek phrase for the

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Hebrew words on a who, which Yahweh uses of himself over and over again in the

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Hebrew scriptures. They pick up stones to stone him because they know exactly what it is that he has just claimed.

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When did Abraham see his day? Well, he walked with him by the Oaks of Mamre. And so you start to see that the reason the

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New Testament revelation of the Trinity is found in scattered illusions and the ease of language is not because it's not central, it's not because it's not important, it's because the revelation is being given in such a way that it's coming through people who are already self -conscious

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Trinitarians. They may not use that term, Trinitarian, but they know that the one God, Yahweh, has done something absolutely astonishing.

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In the person of his son, he has entered into his own creation, amazing.

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But once you understand this, once you recognize how the doctrine is revealed, and it's not some type of statement that has been written on a stone and you must memorize this and learn what this means, but instead it is self -revelation from God.

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It is Jesus working with those disciples who just really had to get the same lesson over and over and over and over again.

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What patience. And if we ever feel superior, how many times has he had to teach you the same lesson over and over and over again?

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It's revealed in the way that God interacts with his people. Once you understand the illustration

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I gave you about where the Trinity is revealed, then you start seeing the ease with which the

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New Testament writers will use language that would be utterly shocking if Jesus was not truly

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God. Shocking. You see, you and I, we know the end of the story.

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And so when the New Testament writers use words and have

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Jesus saying things like, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

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Did David ever say that? Abraham, Isaiah, Israel?

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No. See, you and I know who he is, so that's not shocking to us.

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But if you just step back for a moment, you go, wait a minute. If Jesus isn't who he said he was, if Jesus isn't who we believe he was, he said a lot of really blasphemous things.

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He said things that no mere human being should ever be able to say without being struck down from on high.

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And then his followers described him in that way. When there's one, in 1

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Corinthians chapter one, there's a description of Christians, and they're called those who call upon the name of the

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Lord. Now that one goes flying right by most of us. But it's interesting.

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It's talking about calling upon the name of Jesus. Jesus had said in John chapter 14 that after his leaving this world, he told his disciples,

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I'm going to leave. And that's where he says, if you'd loved me, you would have rejoiced because the

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Father is greater than I am. In other words, I'm going back to where I was before. And if you weren't so focused on yourselves, you would have been rejoicing that I'm going to have that opportunity.

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But in John chapter 14, he's talking about that time when he's gone back to the Father and in that future time, if you ask me anything in my name,

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I will do it. How are you supposed to ask Jesus anything in his name after he's left the earth?

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That's called what? Prayer. Oh, Jesus expected his people to pray to him?

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What's prayer? Prayer is worship. Prayer is an acknowledgment of I'm human, you're

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God. That's why you don't pray to Christians, but you do pray to God, you pray to Jesus.

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If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. And so the Christians were described as those who epikaleo, call upon the name of the

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Lord. This is the description of Christians in general, were people who prayed to Jesus.

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You see how you start seeing so many things. And see, we as Christians, we tend to get into a defensive mindset.

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So we want to have an answer to all the objections, and so I want to know how to deal with John 14, 28, and I want to know how to deal with what

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Jehovah's Witnesses say about John 1. And that's all fine and understandable. But it shuts us off from this huge realm of beautiful testimony, especially to the deity of Christ, the grandeur of his person.

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To reopen that realm and you're thinking, whenever you're talking with someone and you're having this conflict and this back and forth, make sure they have to give as clear and consistent explanation for their

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Jesus from Scripture as they're demanding from you. Always make sure that the shoe goes on both feet.

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So when we talk about the great baptismal formula in Matthew chapter 28, baptizing them in the name, singular, of the

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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It's not Father, Son, Spirit. It's of the Father and of the

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Son and of the Holy Spirit. Being baptized into a name, that's not something that makes a lot of sense to us

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Westerners anymore because we don't really get into that. That's not part of our experience.

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But it meant identification with that baptism into the name of the

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Father, Son, Holy Spirit made you the property of the triune God.

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You were no longer your own. You had no rights over yourself. Keep that in mind for those of you who will be baptized next

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Sunday because that's what's going on or have been baptized. You were saying to God, I am yours completely.

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I am yours completely. But we will say, see, how can

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Jesus not be the exalted person he is in light of what that verse says?

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And then turn around. If you're talking to one of Jehovah's Witnesses, so you believe that we're to be baptized in the name of Jehovah God, Michael the

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Archangel, and an impersonal active force because that's what they believe.

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They believe the Father's Jehovah God, Jesus is Michael the Archangel, and the

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Holy Spirit isn't even a person. The Holy Spirit's an impersonal active force like the electricity in these lights or water flowing through a dam.

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But it's impersonal. It's an it, not a he. So you can be baptized in the name

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Jehovah God, Michael the Archangel, and impersonal active force. If you're talking to a Mormon baptized in the name of Elohim, who begat a second

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God named Jehovah, who's Jesus, and there's just a whole lot of confusion as to exactly who the

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Holy Spirit is historically and everything else in Mormonism. Just they're really not sure.

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That's because Joseph Smith and Brigham Young had different ideas. But anyway, make sure they have to answer the same questions that they're asking of you.

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We tend to let people get away with that. Once you start seeing the ease with which the

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New Testament writers—let me give you an example that is one of my favorite examples, and it's one of my favorite examples because of the fact that so many people simply don't ever see it or have it explained to them.

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And I'm going to explain it to you today, but I'm going to try to avoid Durbanizing all of you as well.

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So, is this being recorded? I don't think it's being recorded. Is it?

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No, it's not being recorded. That would never happen. First Corinthians chapter 8. First Corinthians chapter 8, beginning of verse 4.

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Therefore, concerning the eating of things, sacrifice to idols.

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So this is just a practical—I want you to see something here. Paul is dealing with a practical issue with the church at Corinth.

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There's a temple on every corner in Corinth. Corinth. There is idolatry everywhere.

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It's part of the economy of Corinth is for people to come from all over Greece and Asia Minor to worship in the temples there, and that means they have to exchange money and they have to buy sacrifices.

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This is how Corinth made a lot of its money. Ephesus as well. And so he is addressing a practical concern.

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If you have a bunch of people who are former idol worshipers, they're now a part of the church, what do you do about the fact that almost every bit of meat that you can buy in any meat market in Corinth was originally sacrificed to an idol?

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So the sacrifice takes place, then the meat's cut out, it's taken to the meat market, and that's what it's sold for.

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Well, I don't want to eat meat that was sacrificed to an idol that I now know had enslaved me, so do

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I become a vegetarian? This was a real issue. It was a fellowship issue in the church.

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It makes perfect sense. What's fascinating is we will get one of the clearest

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Trinitarian explanations of God in the middle of dealing with a practical church situation.

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This actually happens over and over. I'll give you a second illustration after we look at this one, if I remember to do so.

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Once you get to my age, sometimes some really good illustrations just go right out the door and never get mentioned. So, concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know there is no such thing as an idol in the world.

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He's not denying that there are idols in every corner, but the idol has no reality. There is no such thing as an idol in the world, and there is no

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God but one. Christians are monotheists. Our Muslim friends think we are not.

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We are. There is only one God. For even if there are so -called gods, gods are called that, whether in heaven or on earth as indeed there are many gods and many lords like that, yet for us there is but one

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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for him, and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things, and we exist through him.

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However, not all men have this knowledge. Some being accustomed to the idol until now eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled.

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So he doesn't stop and go, oh, wait a minute,

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I'm sorry, I just said something that a lot of you are probably really confused about, let me help you out here, let me explain this to you.

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No. He had taught the church at Corinth so he could speak to them as believers who already possess the foundation upon which to understand these words, but please note something.

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Yet for us, there is but one God. Now I don't think most

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English translations do anything special with this, but in the modern scholarly

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Greek text of the New Testament upon which most translations are based, called the Nessie -Allen 28th edition, this is broken down into poetry.

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It is put into poetic form. That's normally the indication of the editors, they feel this is either a fragment of a hymn or a creedal statement from the church.

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Now you can't prove that, but I think there's good reason for believing that, and notice what it says, but for us, heis theos, one

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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we unto him or for him, and heis kudios, one

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Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him.

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Now, what scholars have recognized and what everyone in Corinth would have recognized is what the background of these words are, and it's fantastic.

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What united all of the Jews in the world in the first century?

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Well, you could say circumcision, well, that's an external thing, yes, but there was one thing that all

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Jewish people did that identified them confessionally, and each morning they would arise, there were entire sections in what's today called the

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Mishnah. The Mishnah is the collection of the traditions of the Jewish people about 250 years after Christ.

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There's entire sections of the Mishnah as to how you're to say the Shema. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad, hear,

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O Israel, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh is your God, Yahweh Echad is one, and what is the

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Greek translation of the word one, heis, heis theos, heis kudios.

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What is the Greek translation of Elohim, theos, heis theos.

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What is the Greek sort of translation, transliteration of the word Yahweh, kudios, heis kudios.

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What's Paul doing here? Paul is taking the

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Shema, which identified the covenant people of Israel, and he is expanding it in the light of what

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God has done in history. One God, the

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Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him. One Lord, Jesus Christ, that's kudios,

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Yahweh, all things through Him, and we through Him.

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An amazing thing to take the Shema that identified the people of Israel and expand it.

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Who could do that, who would dare to do that? They had to because it was God that gave the revelation.

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It was God that gave the revelation, not the council of Nicaea. This is long before the council of Nicaea.

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God forced this upon us because God was the one that made the revelation. In the middle of dealing with a serious church issue, the answer is found in knowing who

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God really is, and remember that other great text describing the relationship of the

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Father and the Son, it's called the Carmen Christi Philippians 2, 5 -11. We went through it just a few months ago.

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What was that in the midst of? That was a sermon illustration. It was literally a sermon illustration in the middle of Paul saying to the

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Philippians, don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, be like Jesus, who acted in humility of mind, and then he gives us that incredible prayer, a hymn actually, that incredible hymn in Philippians 2, 5 -11.

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One of the greatest Christological passages, and what's it about? Practical application.

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How can you do that? You do that because the Christians are already Trinitarians. You don't have to keep explaining it to them.

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It's already their common heritage, their common belief, their common belief.

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So, I mentioned to you the three foundational truths.

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We obviously could spend weeks and weeks and weeks laying all these things out, but we only have one sermon to do it in, so I wanted to give it to you in an overarching sense, something that would be memorable to you, and you could see how foundational this is.

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The sad thing is, my friends, most Christians in our day see the doctrine of the

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Trinity as a mysterious, difficult, disconnected from their everyday life concept that never comes up in their everyday life.

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Most Christians will go from Lord's Day to Lord's Day and never even give thought to the triune nature of their

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God. This day, many people have sat in churches and sung hymns and songs without any real knowledge of the

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God they were worshiping. That should not be. That cannot be.

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If we do not understand the doctrine of the Trinity, our worship is hobbled and decrepit.

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The Father seeks those who will worship Him in what? In spirit and in truth. You have to know who

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God is to worship Him aright. You have to know who God is to worship Him aright. And the

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Christian church has, from the beginning, made this a litmus test. We don't have fellowship with Jehovah's Witnesses.

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There's a reason. Now, there are some people saying we ought to give up on all that.

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Well, that's the whole point. Many denominations today that were historically firmly rooted in the

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Trinitarianism are not any longer. Why? Because they don't believe it's an actual divine revelation of God found in history and in Scripture.

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Once you lose the highest view of Scripture, there's no reason for you to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. None. Zero. And that's why a lot of those who still say the

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Nicene Creed, they do it out of tradition, not out of conviction. That's a horrible reality.

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We dare not worship as the pagans worship. The pagans worship in ecstasy a

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God they do not know. And when Christians do not know the

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God they're worshiping and yet get all excited and worship, how is that any different? How is that any different?

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We must know the God that we worship. And when we look to Scripture, we see unquestionably three divine truths revealed that I mentioned to you earlier.

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Keep them in mind. Because any debate you have, any disagreement you have, any challenge that's going to come your way, it's going to involve one, two, or all three of these divine truths.

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Number one, there is but one God. We've already read a number of texts.

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I've quoted a number to you. If you really want to have a bunch to memorize and things like that, years and years and years.

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I had hair when I wrote this. That's how long ago it was. But God's truth, unlike my head, does not change.

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Wrote a hundred -verse memorization system for dealing with Mormons. And there's a whole section on monotheism.

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It is a deeply rooted reality in Scripture that there is only one true

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God. Yahweh, which we slaughter in English as Jehovah, created all things, and hence all those texts where Jesus is identified as Yahweh.

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And there are many of them. You should know them. Some texts are stronger than others. You should know the really strong ones, the unquestionable ones.

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Every text identifies Jesus as Yahweh, the Spirit as the Spirit of Yahweh. These are vitally important texts because, as I explained to a group of Jehovah's Witness elders one

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Saturday morning, the reason we believe the doctrine of the Trinity is because the Bible says there is one true God, Yahweh, but identifies the

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Father as Yahweh, the Son as Yahweh, and the Spirit as Yahweh, but differentiates between the three.

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You do not believe everything the Bible reveals about Yahweh. They about fainted.

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They are not used to having someone outside the Watchtower Society use the divine name, let alone explain to them the doctrine of the

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Trinity in that way. We need to have that understanding. One God, Yahweh, creator of all things.

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The second is the hard one. The third one,

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I'll skip to the third one and I'll tell you why the second one's hard. The third one is where we talk about the equality or full deity of the

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Father, Son, and Spirit, so the deity of Christ, the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit. That's where normally a lot of the argumentation's going on, you know, why did

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Jesus say the Father is greater than I am, and things along these lines. That's the third divine truth, and it's not that it's an unimportant truth, but here's the problem.

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I think most Christians struggle with the second of the divine truths, and the second divine truth is simply the existence of three divine persons who are distinguished from one another.

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It is my conclusion, has been my conclusion for decades, that if I was to give a quiz to most evangelical churches in the

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United States, that over 50 % of the people that took that test would fail the test and would fail it by demonstrating they're actually modalists.

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What's a modalist? A modalist is a person who believes God exists in different modes of being.

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How do I know so many people believe that? Because that's how it was explained to me when I asked the question for the first time.

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Not purposefully, the church I went to was not modalistic in its theology, but that doesn't mean that its people actually understand what theology is.

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And so there are people that say that God exists in different modes, and so sometimes he's in the mode of the

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Father, and sometimes he's in the mode of the Son, sometimes the mode of the

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Spirit. And so you've got the United Pentecostal Church, very popular, very large, the

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Jesus -only people that baptize only in the name of Jesus. They deny the doctrine of the Trinity, and they teach

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Jesus is two persons. He's the Father and the Son. The Father is the deity part, the

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Son is the human part. So the Father has eternally existed, the Son has not eternally existed except in the mind of the

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Father. So Jesus' prayer life is an internal conversation inside Jesus.

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And then the Spirit is just another mode of existence after the resurrection is accomplished.

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No eternal existence of three divine persons. That's oneness theology.

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A lot of them out there. That second one is where most of us struggle.

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Because if we're honest with ourselves, we don't really understand how you can have three persons who are in communication with one another, differentiated from one another, and yet only one

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Yahweh. And that's because we confuse the terms person and being.

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There are people who say, you Trinitarians, you believe that one plus one plus one equals one. They'll tell it to you all the time.

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And hopefully you already know why that's wrong, but I'm going to explain it to you just in case so you can go, yes,

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I knew that. One plus one plus one is always three.

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And so if you add one person plus one person plus one person, that's three persons. The Trinity is not saying one plus one plus one, three persons, is one person.

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We're not saying that. Being and person are not the same thing. We all know that being and person are not the same thing.

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We recognize that there are many things that have being that are not personal.

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Many things have being that are not personal. I remember once,

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I don't know why these types of things are blazing in our memories, but it was a stupid thing

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I did as a kid. We were, me and this other kid were playing out in the front yard, and it's Arizona, so it's pretty much just rocks anyways.

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There were a few blades of grass. We came from back east. You know how Easterners are. They move out here and they torture a few blades of grass into greenness with a little bunch of tons of water before you give up and put a rock lawn in.

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But we were doing something, and I took a rock about yay big, and I scooted it along the ground around the corner to where my friend was near my front door.

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Well, I threw it way too hard, and it bounced, bounced, bounced, bounced up and hit the frame of the window in my bedroom and broke the window.

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Smart guy. Now, my parents were displeased for some reason with me rather than the rock, but it was the rock that broke the window, right?

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Now, if I had run up there and started screaming at the rock, how dare you?

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Would that have helped me with my parents? What do you think, kids? Think that would have gotten me anywhere?

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The kids are going, we'll try and let you know. Why would that have done nothing?

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Because a rock, though it has being, and it proved that it has being by breaking the window, you get hit in the head with it, you'll know that it exists, it has being.

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It's not personal. That wasn't Fred the Rock versus Bob the Rock. I'm old enough.

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Any of you in here, I know Matt's old enough because he's older than me, but any of you old enough to remember the about 18 -month -long pet rock craze?

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Man, that was dumb, wasn't it? But for a while, people were literally painting rocks and naming them, and yeah, it was a pet rock craze.

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It didn't last long because I can guarantee you something. You can lavish such love upon a rock that's a little bit like a cat.

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It's only reciprocated if you feed it. It has being, but it's not personal.

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And when we talk about the doctrine of the Trinity, we are talking about the being of God, which is what makes

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God, God, infinite, eternal, unlimited. And because it's infinite and eternal and unlimited, it can be shared by three persons.

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Our being is limited. Our being can't be shared by three persons. We are temporal. We only live for a certain period of time.

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We're limited in time and space. God's being is infinite, eternal, shared by three divine persons, but person and being are not the same thing.

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So three persons, one being, one plus one plus one is three. One being is one being.

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That's all there is to it. And yet many people will misrepresent what we believe by confusing those two terms.

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We have to be able to explain the difference between those two terms, and we can do so with illustrations, or we can do so biblically.

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Let Jesus explain it. Let Jesus say, John 17 5, glorify me,

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Father, with the glory which I had in your presence before the world began. How can

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Jesus know this? What does that mean about who he was? These are the things we must understand.

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I do not believe that you start off with the Athanasian Creed or the Nicene Creed. Those things all may be beautiful and wonderful in their instances of God's working in history, but that's not why

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I believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. I recognize my absolute debt to those who've come before me.

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Don't get me wrong. But I am a biblical Trinitarian.

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I am forced to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity because I believe in sola scriptura and tota scriptura,

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Scripture alone and all of Scripture. If I'm going to allow everything that the

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Bible teaches to be true, then I have three divine truths I have to deal with. There's one true God.

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There are three persons who are distinguished from one another, who are described as God, and they are said to be equal with one another in their participation in the divine nature.

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Not equal in the things they do. The Father did not become incarnate. The Son did. The Spirit has not come to direct us to Jesus.

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The Spirit came to direct us to Jesus, not the Father. So they take different roles in the economy of salvation.

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We can distinguish them in that way. But they are fully

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God. They are eternal. They are involved in creation.

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They take different roles in salvation. They take different roles in working out creation. They are fully and completely

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God. And so when someone brings an objection to you, immediately in your mind what you need to be doing is asking yourself, which of the divine revelations, these doctrines of Scripture is this person either ignorant of or denying?

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And then if you have taken time to memorize Scripture in each one of these areas, then you will be equipped to be used of God to help them to understand the truth about who

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God is. You might say, ah, that never happens. I've been on Facebook forever and no one ever changes their minds.

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I can assure you. I can assure you. We began

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Alpha and Omega Ministries in 1983. How many of you had not taken your first breath when we started

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Alpha and Omega Ministries? Put your hand up. I need some Geritol. Even mentioning

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Geritol makes me old. What's that? Over those years, we have seen

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Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, atheists, come to know the truth.

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So, what we want to be is a people who, first of all, know who our God is so we may worship

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Him aright, that we may worship Him aright. Not in ignorance. The greatest way to keep worship from becoming some type of self -centered emotional experience is for you to really know who

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God is. If you don't know who God is, you're going to have to fill in the blanks with what?

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Your own mind. If you know who God is, you can worship Him aright.

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So we as the body of Christ, we in this room, the

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Fellowship of Apologia Church, we need to know who God is to worship Him aright. But we already know that we've been called to take this message to the whole world.

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And so we have to truly be dedicated to being accurate in what we present to the world.

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We need to know our God. We need to know our God. So consider these things.

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You all know. I hardly even have to mention it. I almost feel strange mentioning it because Jeff mentions it so often.

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But yeah, I wrote a little book a number of years ago called The Forgotten Trinity. And yeah,

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I wrote that and came out in 1998. It's been around a little while now.

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And guess what? It's still true. Isn't that amazing? That's a nice thing about divine truth is it can be over 20 years old and it's still true.

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I feel sorry for folks who have grown up thinking if you haven't had an update in the past two weeks on something, it now is out of date.

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It must be untrue. Wow. That's, we need to tell the world there are some things that are really valuable that just stay true from generation to generation.

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No question about that. No question about that. Take a look at that. It'll be helpful. Obviously, you know that both

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Pastor Jeff and I have done numerous debates in many contexts on this particular subject.

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There's a lot of information that you can gather together. And I would highly recommend to you memorization of key texts of Scripture.

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Because I'm going to tell you something on a real practical level here. You don't ever know when one of those conversations is going to pop up.

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And if you dare pray, Lord, use me, he will. He will.

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He will. And when that opportunity arises, you don't have time to be looking to the 28th book of the

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New Testament called Concordance. Where was that verse? Hold on just a second. Let me, or sitting there tapping away, searching.

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Not that section. No, you don't have time. You have to have those texts of Scripture in your mind.

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And not only does that wonderfully help you, but it helps you to be better minister to others as well.

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Let's pray together. Indeed, our gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for the revelation that you have given to us in your

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Word. We thank you that this day we have been able to gather in peace and to consider that revelation, that truth.

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We thank you that when we speak of worshiping our God, we can stand with all of those who down through the ages have believed everything your

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Scripture has taught about who you are. We are thankful for that. We know that it is not because of our wisdom or our insight that we are dependent upon so many who have come before us for so much of our understanding.

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But Father, we are thankful that you have not left us wandering in darkness about who you are. That the

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Son is the perfect representation, revelation of the Father.

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And now the Spirit dwells amongst us to direct us to these divine truths, to make these truths to come alive in our hearts.

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We so thank you for the presence of the Spirit amongst us this day. We pray even now that by His power,

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He would enlighten us and help us to remember and to be passionate about divine truth.

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And now, Lord, be pleased to meet with us once again. As in obedience to your command, we come to your table.

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Be with us. Remind us of the great price that has been paid for our redemption.