Trinitarian Preaching and Praise - Brandon Scalf

Christianity as Knowing God Rather Than Behavior Modification

When we began this series on the Trinity, we asked what is Christianity all about? And of course, we asserted that Christianity is not primarily about behavior modification. Now of course, when Jesus invades your heart, having revealed himself by his spirit, he will change you.

That is a promise of the scriptures, but that is not primarily what Christianity is about. Primarily, Christianity is about knowing God. It's about knowing him and enjoying him, for that is specifically what we are saved for.

Well, this teaches us then that the doing, or the behavior modification as it were, is a byproduct of knowing and enjoying God himself. And so, when we started this series on the Trinity, we stated that we were after beholding God, and to behold your God, you must know your God, and to know your God, you must behold your God, and that means we must be beholding him as he is, which is Trinitarianly.

And as you have learned over the past several months, in order for us to do that, we need to build a new theological dictionary filled with new words and concepts that we have maybe previously not been privy to.

More specifically, in regard to what we've been speaking about thus far, we need a Trinitarian grammar. And here's what I mean by that. Not everything that we talk about is fully explainable and understandable.

In other words, not everything that we talk about when it comes to the Trinity is something that we can get our arms fully around. Why? Well, the answer is simple, because God is God and we are not, right?

He is so other that we can't even begin to understand him in his fullness. The only way we can understand him is what he has revealed to us in the scriptures. And so the task of the Christian when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity is to build a grammar, essentially, around it so that we can stay in the confines of orthodoxy.

In other words, what we want is the truth contained in the scriptures as it is revealed in the scriptures, nothing more and nothing less. And so what have we said? What theological terms have we learned up to this point?

I want to do a little review because we've had about two weeks off. First of all, what is the Trinity? Well, the definition that we have given is this. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there is a one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Stated differently, we could say that God is one in essence and three in person. These two definitions that I have just given express three very crucial truths. Firstly, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons.

Each person is fully and utterly God. And yet there is one God. And if you remember, we said that this is, of course, not a contradiction. It's not a paradox, but it's a mystery that has been revealed to us in scripture.

We clearly see it to be true. We know that God is one because of Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5, which says, Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

So we see here that God is one, and yet he has revealed himself as three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That might be hard to understand, but that doesn't make it less true.

What else have we learned? We learned that God is simple. That is, we discussed the nature of the doctrine of divine simplicity. And when we said God is simple, we're not suggesting in any sort of way that God is easy to understand or that, you know, he is unable to think clearly or whatever the definition is that we give the word simple in today's vernacular.

When we say that God is simple, we are saying that he is not made up of parts as if he was a pie or a puzzle. Another way you could say it is that he is not composite or a compounded being. Now, that's just a fancy theological way or philosophical way to say that all that is in God is God.

He is 100 of himself 100 of the time. God is his attributes. For instance, in 1 John chapter 4, it says that God is love. It doesn't say that God has or possesses love. God gets to define what love is because it's bound up in him ontologically, right?

So why can we... We were just talking about this before our gathering began with a few brothers. Why can we go to pride parades, for example, and say it's unloving for you to engage in homosexuality and the like?

Why can we do that? Well, if it's our opinion, it doesn't really matter. It's because the Bible says so. But even that, and I want you to hear me correctly and don't hear what I'm not saying, that's not even enough.

The reality is we can go and say that because there is no love outside of God. God is love. You hear what I'm saying? So he's not taking these things that exist outside of him and channeling them as it were, or using them, or being dictated by them, or adopting them.

He is love. The only reason that love exists in this world is because that's what God is. The second thing that we talked about was God's acts and operations in creation and salvation are inseparable.

This, of course, we labeled the doctrine of inseparable operations, and when inseparable operations teaches the absolute unity of God's identity and action. In other words, when we think about the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, we often think about different persons inside the Trinity, or if we're honest with ourselves, three different gods who achieve different things.

But that's not how it works. Every act of God in creation and salvation, or anything, is the act of every member of the Trinity. Now, this is a complicated doctrine to explain. It's a harder one to understand, but it doesn't make it untrue.

Matthew Barrett gives a great definition in his book, Simply Trinity, which some of you will be familiar with. He says, inseparable operations means every act of God is the single act of God, or the single act of the triune God, I'm sorry, and there are not different acts by different agents, but one act according to one divine agency.

Singularity in will, singularity in operation. The entire Trinity, in other words, the case that I'm making, is acting in every work of God. What that means practically is that God is Savior, right? The Father is Savior, the Son is Savior, the Holy Spirit is Savior, and they work together as one God because there is only one God who exists in three persons.

And so, we see them in Scripture as three different persons, but it is still one God. Now, I was reading a book that gave a great illustration of this. Some of you are going to hang with me, and others of you are going to jump off the ship.

That's okay. Try to hear what I'm saying here. As we look at the Scriptures and we see God's act of salvation in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, as we watch through Ephesians, we see three actors, so to speak, or three characters accomplishing salvation.

Yet there is one God who is accomplishing that salvation through the three persons. This author of this book that I was reading on inseparable operations says, if you can imagine it, imagine it like this.

Get some smiles because some of you know where I'm going. Here's the deal. Imagine if you were playing, or you existed in, that's a better way to put it, you existed in a 2D world, a 2D world. That is, when you look at the TV, you can't walk around the TV and see different angles of different people.

It's two-dimensional. But imagine another character shows up, and he is three-dimensional, and somehow he can get into the two-dimensional world. That's what it's like. God is a three-dimensional character, as it were, in a two-dimensional world.

So we see God acting in these persons as Father, Son, and Spirit, and they seem distinct and different to us, and they are in one sense, but they do everything together. It is one God acting as three persons.

It's not three gods doing three different things. Which brings us to the third thing that we learned, which is the difference between the ontological and the economic trinity. There's a difference between who God is in his being and how that plays itself out in the economy of redemption.

And so when I say this, it's typical for people to assume I'm speaking of two different trinities. That's not the case. There's one trinity, and we just think about it differently. Who God is in himself, in his being, ontologically, or we could say the imminency of his trinity, that is, who God is in himself, is that the Father eternally begets the Son, and the Son is eternally generated from the Father, and the Spirit, the Holy Ghost, proceeds from both the Father and the Son from all eternity.

That's who God is ontologically. However, in the economy of redemption, we see this differently. It's not a different trinity. We just distinguish among the three persons of the Godhead in terms of their roles in creation and redemption.

So it's not wrong to say the Father did this, the Son did this, and the Spirit did this. Ephesians does that. Paul does that. You could say, for instance, the Father plans, the Son secures, and the Holy Spirit applies salvation.

Or the Father initiates, the Son acts, and the Holy Spirit protects. It's not wrong to say those things, but just know when you're saying those things, you're speaking about the economic trinity and how he is doing his work in the economy of redemption, that is, in redemption itself.

And then last time we met together, we learned that the triune God is the foundation of prayer. He's the foundation of prayer. He is the reason prayer works for the believer, and it's because of his very trinitarian nature that that is so.

The Triune God as a Preaching God

Today, today we are going to talk about the trinity as it pertains to preaching and praise. Preaching and praise. So trinitarian preaching and praise. The first thing that I want you to know is that the triune God is preacher.

Preacher. Just like the triune God is savior, the triune God is preacher. That is, in the Godhead, God is, by nature, a preaching God. Now I want you to hang in here with me, because this is an interesting concept.

In John chapter 16, verse 13, Jesus says something very interesting. He says,. But when he, that is, speaking of the spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself.

Now pay attention. He will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will disclose to you what is to come. Martin Luther, commenting on this verse, says here, Christ refers to a conversation carried on in the Godhead, a conversation in which no creatures participate.

He sets up a pulpit both for the speaker and for the listener. He makes the Father the preacher and the Holy Spirit the listener. It's a wild concept, is it not? But it's one that I think is real. God, by nature, is a God who cannot be wordless.

He speaks the word because, well, as John 1 .1 states, he is the word. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. When we look at John chapter 16 here, it's as if, with the triune God, there is, in eternity, a pulpit.

The first sermon, the first proclamation of the word, was not in Acts 2, it was not in Genesis 3, it was not anything that happened on this earth with this green grass and all of these flies. God the Father is an eternal preacher, and he is ever speaking and preaching out his word, and the Holy Spirit is eternally listening, and has been eternally listening, and continues to pour forth that truth which he hears to us.

Before any creatures were brought into being, Michael Reeves says in one of his books called Delighting the Trinity, the Holy Spirit was enjoying the ultimate sermon, a sermon he now shares with us. In the triune God, there is an eternal conversation, and to which we have been brought into through the preaching of his word, it shows us that inside God, in him, his nature, he is a preaching God, and this helps us to begin to understand why preaching is so important, and why Heritage Church prizes the pulpit above all else.

We could be doing a million other things, we could be doing a Q &A, we could be doing evangelism work, we could be doing all of these sorts of things, and all of these things are good, but the pulpit, the pulpit stands above them all as the primary means of grace because it exists in God himself.

In other words, God doesn't just happen to preach, he doesn't just have a word for us, he is a preaching God who preaches himself, the word of God. As I said, John 1 in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

Michael Reeves says again, human preachers then are not hirelings of God's incapable or unwilling to do his own publicity or teaching. Let me begin that over, stumbled over my words a little bit. Human preachers then are not simply hirelings of a God incapable or unwilling to do his own publicity or teaching, as if God entertains himself with angel songs while his servants go out on the stump.

Preaching is a natural expression of God's identity. The spirit who speaks what he has heard enables preachers to join with God's own proclamation of his Son. It's wild, right? To preach Christ and to hear Christ preach is to participate in the life of God.

Here's why that's important. Since the word of God is God, when God preaches, he communicates nothing less than himself. So here's the big idea. In Trinitarian preaching, right, preachers are communicating God himself.

Now, that's a weird way to say something, right? Like, what do you mean by that, pastor? What is Michael Reeves getting at here since you used him as a quotation? Well, it's the difference between the word being beside God and being God.

Now, I want to be careful here. The Bible itself, with its pages and its leather or its pleather or whatever, this is not God. It's paper. It's paper. That's why you mark it up, you get a new one. You mark it up, you get a new one.

If it was God, we'd have it chained up somewhere and we'd worship it, but it's not God. But the son who it makes much of is, and this very word is breathed out by God, so it cannot be separated from God, right?

In the beginning was the word. The word created the worlds in Genesis 1 -1. The word is breathed out for edification and our building up and our reproof and our correction. And because God is internally a preacher, and because Jesus is the word, God communicates not just ideas, but himself.

Let me bring it down here, for example, Islam. Islam has a book. This book is called the Quran. But nowhere is Allah or anybody else in the Quran said to be the word, they just have a word. In other words, if Allah was God and he is not, he could do without it.

But since God is eternally speaking, eternally preaching, then we cannot have a God without a word. We cannot not have the word of God. We cannot not have preaching. If God is eternally preaching and we are made in his image, then we must understand what preaching is all about.

We must give ourselves over to it, and we must understand that in the preaching of God's word, he communicates not just a word about himself, but himself. This helps preachers to understand some things.

It helps hearers to understand some things. Fathers, it helps you to understand some things as you are leading your family through family worship. Namely, that you do not need to make God's message more relevant.

Preachers, as both Martin Luther and Michael Reeves and many other theologians have said, herald the word, not just of God, but who is God. Clear as mud? The second thing that I want you to see or to think about is the triune God not only is preacher, but the triune God shapes preaching.

That is, how it's done and how it is made efficacious. It goes without saying that in order to be a Christian, you should be a Trinitarian. But too many people just say, yes, that's true, and then they go on about their lives as if it's not true.

They don't pray like Trinitarians. They don't preach like Trinitarians. Why? Well, because for the last several hundred years, we've essentially ejected it from our pulpits, our schools, and so on. Why?

Because, as you have maybe felt since this series started, it seems very impractical, very heavy philosophically and theologically. And I will say that is why we're doing it on Sunday nights, because this is the reverend.

This is the small group, right? It's the ones that are really bought in, that really want to hear what the word of God has to say, even about really, really heavy topics. And so instead of people engaging over the last couple hundred years, something that was so crucial to Christianity, and so defining of orthodoxy, we just chucked it.

That's too hard. There's not a lot of practical relevance. Well, I hope we've shown in this series, though it can be heady, there is immense practical things about it. And so we preach a Trinitarian God and a Trinitarian salvation, but more than that, in the act of preaching, God is working in a Trinitarian way.

What do I mean by that? I mean that God the Father, on the basis of the Son's perfect work, preaches salvation and sanctifies his people through the preaching of his word by the Holy Spirit. Does that make sense?

God the Father, on the basis of the Son's perfect work, preaches salvation and sanctifies his people through the preaching of his word by the Holy Spirit. I was meeting with a group of men at a custom car shop the other day, because God is strange and that's where I wound up.

I was meeting with a brother and he's like, you've got to meet my friends. And so we went down there and there was a bunch of Christians at this car shop looking for a church. As a matter of fact, one of the gentlemen joined us this morning for church.

And we were talking about God and his salvation. And we were talking about the reality that not many people think about all of the work that happens here. But more than that, they overestimate or underestimate preaching in general.

And so I very quickly tried to give them my theology of preaching. And I basically told them that the preacher only has authority in so much as it accords with this book right here, because it's God's word.

And through the preaching, God flexes his muscles in using silly people, imperfect people. The men who get up in this pulpit or any other pulpit in America are not perfect men. They're going to let you down.

They're going to hurt you. They're going to be people. And God delights in doing that to make much, not of the guy standing in front of the pulpit, but himself. And so preaching is important and it's not important because I'm up here.

It was important this morning when Pastor Corey was in the pulpit. And it's important when any man gets in the pulpit and preaches God's word as it is. Why? Because there's something that happens that has nothing to do with the guy standing up front where God himself, on the basis of Christ's work, that is because of what he purchased on the cross, because of his wrath absorbing death.

He can reach down through the Holy Spirit and save sinners from hell and damnation and sanctify saints. I am not under any illusion, if I'm going to be your pastor for 50 years, that we're going to make it all those 50 years and you never having to hear the same stuff you've heard before.

But I don't need to have a new word for you. The same word does the work and it will always work. Why? Because when you preach, the triune God is Trinitarianly working. The Father, on the basis of the Son's perfect and finished work, preaches salvation and sanctifies his people through a silly man who's broken.

And just like everyone else, by the power of the Holy Spirit to make much of himself. Now, with everything that we've said up to this point, when we consider, for example, Trinitarian preaching, we have to consider or understand a third thing.

Christ at the Center of Trinitarian Preaching

In Trinitarian preaching, Trinitarian sermons must promote the triune God's divine emphasis. I'll say that again in case it was confusing. Trinitarian sermons must promote the triune God's divine emphasis.

Though there is one God who exists in three persons and though their operations are inseparable, we cannot miss the fact that this entire book points to and lifts up and magnifies the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ. The one held out by the Father and the one to whom the spirit of truth testifies is the eternal Son, who firstly comes from the Father full of grace and truth. And 1 John, or not 1 John, regular John, John 1 .14, John says,.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. Hebrews chapter 1 says that Jesus is the exact imprint of God's nature.

He is also the fulfillment of the law. Romans 10 verse 4 says,. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Not only that, but in Luke chapter 24, verse 27, we see that the prophets and the apostles and all of scripture testify of him, of him.

After Jesus rose from the dead, he's walking with some men and it says,. Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he that is Jesus interpreted to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.

Everything is about Jesus. Everything is about Jesus. And if you think I'm not being Trinitarian, let me read for you a quote by John Calvin, who was very Trinitarian. John Calvin says,. This is what we should in short seek in the whole of scripture, truly to know Jesus Christ and the infinite riches that are comprised in him and are offered to us by him from God the Father.

If one were to sift thoroughly the law and the prophets, he would not find a single word which would not draw and bring us to him. And for a fact, since all the treasures of wisdom and understanding are hidden in him, speaking of scripture here, he's plucking scripture out.

There is not the least question of having or turning toward another goal. Not unless we would deliberately turn aside from the light of truth to lose ourselves in the darkest of lies. Therefore, rightly does St. Paul say in another passage that he would know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

In other words, what John Calvin is saying and the argument that I am attempting to make is that we should be Christ-centered because the triune God is. We should be Christ-centered because the triune God is.

A few months ago, we had a little commercial made for Heritage to kind of promote what we're doing here and hopefully reach the city more for Jesus. And if you give me a week to prepare something, I'll get up in a pulpit and I'll feel like I didn't just blow it, but if you just walk up to me and stick a microphone in my face, I'm liable to say something ridiculous, okay?

And so on a whim, we decided or Nathan decided that what would be good is if I said some sort of introduction to the video, like, hey, come hang out with us or whatever the case may be, right? And I said something and after I said it and then after I watched it in the video, I was like, man, I don't know if I like what I just said there.

Because what I said is, if you join us, you will find an expositional and exegetical experience where we behold our triune God. Now I like that part. That's a good sentence, I think. It encapsulates what we're doing here and it's what every church should be about.

But then I said, with Christ at the center, and I wondered, you know, like, is that truly Trinitarian? I think the Bible makes the case that, yes, it is. John Calvin just made that case. We should preach Christ and be Christ-centered because the triune God is, and does not take away from anything that we have said thus far.

But we can all agree in the Incarnation, something very special happened. God put on flesh and the Bible says that Jesus was given a name above every other name. And the purpose of every text of Scripture then is to testify in some way to Christ, to magnify, as Paul said in Ephesians chapter three, which we just went through the two mornings ago, to magnify his unfathomable riches.

Jesus shows us who God is because he is God. And so, fourthly and lastly, I want you to understand that the triune God, in the preaching of the triune God, hunts glory and praise for his Trinitarian work of salvation.

Or, I could say it another way, the triune God hunts glory and praise for his Trinitarian work of salvation put on display in biblical or Trinitarian preaching. If you remember, in Ephesians chapter one, Paul praises God for extending his blessings to his children in droves.

As a matter of fact, every spiritual blessing that can be had has been given to every believer that calls on the name of Christ. And then he begins to walk through salvation from a Trinitarian perspective, showing us the economy of redemption.

And after each member of the Trinity is spoken of and what they have done in salvation on our behalf, there is a refrain repeated. In Ephesians 1 .6, after speaking of the Father and his work, it says, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he graciously bestowed on us in the beloved.

Ephesians 1 .12, after speaking of the Son, it says, to the end that we who have first hoped in Christ would be to the praise of his glory. In Ephesians 1 .14, after speaking of the work of the Spirit, it says, who is given, the Spirit is given as a pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory.

And so after we have looked at God's Trinitarian nature, and we have seen him in his complexity and his beauty, and after we have seen him as Father, Son, and Spirit, these three distinct persons and yet one God, and after we have seen his work in redemption, and after we have seen how he makes prayer efficacious for us and what he does through the act of preaching, the response is not, cool, I know some new stuff.

The response is, what an amazing God. Let me praise him. Let me rejoice in him. Let me see him for all that he is and continue to tell everyone about this beautiful and amazing God. Praise him, praise him, praise him.

When you behold God, you can't help but praise him. You can't help but rejoice in his work of salvation. You can't help but stand in awe of him for who he is and for what he has done. And so often as Christians, we move right past that first thing.

We love God for getting us out of hell, but do we love God and praise him for just who he is in himself? In other words, could you love God and rejoice in him if all you had was God? Well, friends, all you have is God.

And so you rejoice, you praise. Jonathan Edwards says it like this, God is glorified not only by his glory being seen, but by it being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it.

God made the world that he might communicate or preach, and the creature receive his glory. Both with the mind and the heart. When your brain gets turned on, you learn new information. The goal is to get that here.

And the problem with many of us, and the reason we continue to engage in the sin that we do, is because the information, God's word, just hasn't traveled 12 inches south. It hasn't been absorbed in our heart.

We aren't seeing God with our spiritual eyeballs. He continues, he that testifies is having an idea of God's glory, doesn't glorify God so much as that he testifies also his approbation, i .e., his heartfelt commendation or praise of it, and his delight in it.

So how do you glorify God with your life? Well, of course, you do what the Bible says. But more importantly, is you behold God, you praise him, and you delight in his godness. And it's there his glory is put on display.

And so beholding our triune God becomes beholding God's glory. And when we behold his glory, and who he is, and what he has done in creation and salvation, we praise him. We praise him. And friends, that is the beginning and end of preaching.

Martin Lloyd-Jones says, when he was asked, what is preaching? And he said, well, I would say that preaching is giving God preeminence. And more than that, it's giving people in the pews a sense of God.

He even says in his book on preaching, at the end of his life, he stopped preaching even though he was one of the greatest preachers in his era. He's arguably one of the greatest preachers of all time.

And he got cancer. And he stepped down from his pulpit at Westminster Chapel, everybody's very upset about it. And he would go to other churches and he would sit and listen to other preachers because at the end of his life, he began to feel a burden for other preachers and wanting to help them become better preachers.

And he said, I have heard so many bad sermons. There's so many, quote unquote, bad preachers out there. He said, but I can forgive a man for a bad sermon. Everybody has them. He said, but what I cannot forgive is if I don't get a sense of God.

If you guys walk out of Heritage Church and all you have is a list of things to do and not to do, I failed you. But if you walk out of here, beholding your God and his Trinitarian beauty, that's going to do far more for you than a list of 17 uses, as helpful as those might be.

So I hope that this series has been one that has helped you in that regard to behold your triune God. Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you. We thank you that you are bigger than our minds can comprehend and greater than we can perceive.

We ask now that you would take these truths that we have learned over the last several months and drill them deep into not just our heads, but our hearts, so that we might walk out of here a different people, a people enthralled with you and enthralled with what you do in salvation and in prayer and in the preaching of yourself.

We ask this all in Jesus' name, amen.