Trinitarian Foundations - Brandon Scalf

If I were to ask you what Christianity was primarily about, what would you say? My fear is that many Christians throughout the ages have considered lifestyle change or living rightly to be at the center of what it means to be Christian.

But the thing that you must understand if we are to understand the Trinity is that Christianity is not primarily about lifestyle change. It's about knowing God. It's about knowing Him and enjoying Him because knowing Him and enjoying Him is what we are saved for.

We are not saved for holiness. We are saved for God, by God, and through God that we might know God. The doing then, as it were, is a byproduct of knowing and enjoying the triune God. Understanding God and His triunity is the foundation not only of our faith but even morality itself.

It is the foundation for love, or I should say He is the foundation of love. He is the foundation of absolutely everything that is. So what are we after? As we embark upon this series, we are after this.

We want to behold our triune God in His triune glory. And in so doing, we might know Him. And we must know Him if we want to behold Him, and we have to behold Him if we want to know Him. And so we must press into the Scriptures and ask the hard questions that quite honestly at times are going to seem ethereal.

They're going to seem like they don't matter. They're going to seem like high and lofty speculations of Greek philosophy, but it couldn't be any further from the truth. To know God as triune is to know the God of the Bible and how He has revealed Himself.

Because the Bible is the product of a triune God, we must understand the triune God. And in so doing, most certainly it will bring about life change because who can look and gaze upon the beauty and glory of our triune God and stay the same?

With that said, we must start with a definition. We must start asking the question, what has history said of the Trinity? A simple definition that I can give you for the Trinity is this. The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's where we begin. We could state it differently, however. God is one in essence and three in person. And these definitions that I've given you express three crucial truths that must be held regarding its truthfulness.

One, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons. Two, each person is fully God. And three, there is only one God. So as we look at the Bible, we need to figure out how has this definition, which has been the definition of the Trinity for hundreds and hundreds of years, where did it come from?

Well, it's an interesting question to ask because the word Trinity is not found in the.

Bible.

And if we are good Bible people, we must ask the question, why do we use it? Are we allowed to use the word Trinity? Of course we are. Of course we are because it describes a reality that is found in the Bible, though that word may not be in there itself.

As we will get into the history of it, it is necessary that we use words outside of the Bible to describe things that are happening in the Bible because people who twist the Bible use words of the Bible to promote their heretical ideas.

So before moving forward, we must understand that the Trinity is in fact confessional, it's orthodox, and to reject the Trinity is to reject orthodox and biblical Christianity. The Trinity is vital to our understanding of who God is, whether or not the term itself is found in the Bible.

B .B. Warfield, a theologian of yesteryear, once said this, and it's somewhat lengthy, but it helps us to understand why we must use this term Trinity. He says the term Trinity is not a biblical term, and we are not using biblical language when we define what is expressed by it as the doctrine that there is only one true God.

But in the unity of the Godhead, there are three co-eternal and co-equal persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence. A doctrine so defined can be spoken of as a biblical doctrine only on the principle that the sense of Scripture is Scripture.

And the definition of a biblical doctrine in such unbiblical language can be justified only on the principle that it is better to preserve the truth of Scripture than the words.

Of Scripture.

The doctrine of the Trinity lies in Scripture, in solution. When it is crystallized from its solvent, it does not cease to be Scriptural but only comes into clearer view. What B .B. Warfield is trying to help us understand is that the word Trinity is important to use because it promotes a real and biblical reality, and the truth of Scripture is more important than individual words of Scripture in this way.

Now, we use the most literal translation that exists, so don't hear what I'm not saying. What B .B. Warfield is trying to get you to understand, and the thing that I want you to believe, is that we can misinterpret, misapply, misquote, and use words inside the Bible in such a way as to promote unbiblical ideas.

As a matter of fact, the reason that the Trinity has been so defined is because heretics who used the Bible used the words of the Bible to talk about the Trinity in unbiblical ways. So if we want to understand the doctrine of the Trinity and what it means that God is one, and yet three in person, we must be willing to use words and language that exist outside of the Bible itself.

The first thing that we must understand if we are going to understand the Trinity is, first and foremostly, that our triune God is one God. Our triune God is one God. We can see this beginning even in the first few words of the Bible.

In Genesis 1 -1, the author of Genesis says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It doesn't say, in the beginning, gods. It doesn't say, in the beginning, there was a war with gods.

It draws a very real creature-creator distinction. There is God who is creator, and he has made men in his image, and they are his creation. There is one God and one God alone. This is why in Deuteronomy 6, which is the passage that I asked you to turn to before we began, says this in verses 4 and 5.

If you have it open, please look. It 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. The truth that the ancient Israelites understood is that we have one God.

We have one God. One that we must worship, one that deserves our affection, and one that stands above the.

Rest.

And he does not share his glory or power with anyone else and asserts himself to be all sovereign and all powerful. The prophet Isaiah, in chapter 45, verses 5 through 7, God says, I am Yahweh, which by the way is God's name.

It is his covenantal name that he uses to make himself in the Old Testament. In the Legacy Standard Bible, this is made plain because Yahweh is put every time you see the Tetragrammaton. What is the Tetragrammaton?

The Tetragrammaton is some Hebrew letters, YHWH in English, that has been put in the.

Bible.

And Jewish people, wanting to preserve the reverence of God's name, changed it to Adonai, which means Lord, which is why in your English Bibles you will see L-O-R-D in all caps. When you see that, that is speaking of God's covenantal name.

It is his covenantal name, Yahweh. But of course our Legacy Standard Bible got rid of those L-O-R-Ds and put back in God's name because God tells us that we must remember him by that name because he is the one God whose name is Yahweh.

And he says in Isaiah 45, 5, there is no other. There's not other gods that exist alongside God. He is the only one. He continues on, besides me there is no God. I will gurge you, though you have not known me, that they may know from the rising of the setting of the sun that there is no one besides me.

I am Yahweh, he says. And there is no other, the one forming light and creating darkness, producing peace and creating calamity. I am Yahweh who does all these. So not only is there one God, but there is one God who controls all things.

He forms light and he creates darkness. He produces peace and he creates calamity. Now there's a verse that causes us to scratch our heads. God is behind the good and the bad, the peace and the calamity?

Yes, absolutely. Because he's God. Well, I don't like the idea of a God who is behind all of the evil acts in the world. Rightly understood. But we don't have time to get into that. That's a different topic.

Well, I would be terrified of a God who wasn't in control of evil. I don't know about you. But we have one God, whose name is Yahweh, who created the heavens and the earth and all of creation, who produces light and darkness, and who creates peace and calamity.

This is what you should believe. This is what's called monotheism. One God. The Israelites believed it, the New Testament church believed it, we believe it. This is why James says, the brother of Jesus, in the second chapter of his epistle, verse 19, you believe that God is one, you do well.

Good job.

The demons also believe and shudder. The demons believe that God is one, that he is all sovereign, that he creates and produces peace and calamity, that he is the creator over all creation, and they shudder.

God is one. Our triune God is one. And no matter how deep we peer underneath the veil, as it were, no matter how we talk about the Trinity, we plant our feet with the rest of church history and with the Israelites of the Old Testament, that there is but one God.

Here O Christians, here O Israel, Yahweh is our God and Yahweh is one. Now what complicates the matter is the second thing I want you to know is that our triune God eternally exists in three persons. Our triune God eternally exists in three persons.

Now in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 and 5, it says that God is one, but what you might find interesting is that this word here is also used of Adam and Eve and how they became one flesh. It is the same Hebrew word that is used and for all intents and purposes, or rather, maybe a better way to put that is, we would never assume that both Adam and Eve were one singular person.

And so Deuteronomy chapter 6 is not giving us some sort of math problem to figure out. It's more so talking about this reality that there is one God whom we owe our affection to and of course he is one, but that does not mean that he does or cannot exist in three persons.

Now we must pause here and we must be careful because we are treading as it were on holy ground and one slip of the tongue, one slip of the thought would dishonor our triune God. Many adversaries against the idea of Trinitarianism would say that we engage in tri-theism, that we actually believe that there is three gods.

No, remember our feet are firmly planted with our brothers and sisters of Old Testament Israel that there is but one God. Well there's no talk of this Trinity in the Old Testament. Well I will say this, the Bible engages in what theologians have called progressive revelation.

So in one sense the adversaries are somewhat correct in that the Trinity is not as clear in the Old Testament as it is in the New Testament. The New Testament is clear. Augustine has famously said what's in the Old Testament is concealed and what is in the New Testament is revealed.

But the truth is it's not really all that concealed, it's just God is helping us to understand progressively over redemptive history what it means that God is triune. We don't get very far into the first chapter before we're confronting with, if we slow down enough to pay attention, very confusing words.

God says when he is making man in his image in verse 26 of chapter 1, let us make man in our image according to our likeness so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So the Trinity, God existing in three person, is at least, at the very least, hinted at within the first chapter of the Bible. Well that could be him speaking to the angels, Pastor, right? No, because the angels were not created in the likeness of God.

But there are other places, of course, in the Old Testament that this makes itself clear. The Psalms do, specifically Psalm 110 .1, where David is writing and he says Yahweh says to my Lord, or the Lord says to my Lord, depending on your translation, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.

God says to my Lord, God says to my God, sit at my right hand. But of course, when we get to the New Testament, things become much more clear. That which we have seen in shadow, that which we have seen through the fog, as it were, gets clarified.

One of the most beautiful places to see this reality is found in Matthew chapter 3, Jesus' baptism. In verses 16 and 70, we see all three members of the Trinity being present in the baptism of Jesus. In Matthew chapter 3, verses 16 and 70, it says, Now, let's pause here and let's look at this.

Jesus, the second member of the Trinity, is being baptized. The third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, descends upon him like a dove, and the Father speaks from heaven. This is my Son. This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Friends, it does not get more clear than that. It does not. And we see this in Matthew 28, 18, 20, the Great Commission. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, his disciples, saying, All authority has been given to me by who?

Of course, the Father, in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded.

You.

And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Notice that it doesn't say in the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We have monotheism. God is one. While at the same time, there are three names, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

So we have one God existing in three persons. Now, at this juncture, we must ask what this means, right? How do we make sense of the fact that Jesus, the Christ, is God, or at least talked about up to this point as God, the Father as God, and the Spirit as God?

Well, we must harmonize it with the reality that he is, in fact, one. But before we can do that, we must understand, and this is my third point, each member of the Trinity is truly and fully God. Not only are they said to be God, or included in God's name, or presented in the scriptures as being three distinct persons, having a personhood of their own, they are all fully.

God.

And I might add, they are all fully the one God. We've seen this as we walk through the book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Here, Paul tells us to bless or to praise God, who is the Father of Jesus Christ. So the Father is truly and fully God. The Son also is said to be God in the scriptures.

John 1, verse 1 says,.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now this is a tricky sentence. Not necessarily in the Greek, but it is tricky in that there's some wild stuff being said.

Here.

Namely, in the beginning was the Word, the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ the righteous. And that Word was with God. That is, he existed alongside God. But it also says, and the Word was God. Now this is important, especially when you think about Jehovah's Witnesses, for example.

Because they twist this scripture here and they say that the Word was a God. And that's how they get around kind of this idea of Christ being God and this doctrine of the Trinity. But the Son is, in fact, God.

Thirdly, the Holy Spirit in the scriptures is said to be God. Another thing about the Jehovah's Witnesses is they see the Holy Spirit not as a person but as a force. But let me tell you this, when I say that the Holy Spirit is truly and fully God, that he is a person inside the Godhead, which is the Trinity.

What I'm saying is that he is, in fact, a person. The Holy Spirit is not an it. The Holy Spirit is a he. Throughout the scriptures he has given titles that speak to his personhood. For instance, he is called the Helper in John, he is called the Counselor in John, and he is called the Comforter.

Persons are the only ones who can help, counsel, and comfort. These are terms that make plain his personhood. Not only that, but he has activities tied to his personhood as well. He teaches, John 14, 16, he intercedes, Romans 8, and he speaks, Acts 8, 29.

In Ephesians, which we'll get to in 300 years, in chapter 4, it says that the Holy Spirit can be grieved. So each member of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are truly and fully God, and they are distinct persons within the Godhead, and yet they are one God.

Is anyone confused yet? Well much ink has been spilt trying to figure this out throughout church history. As a matter of fact, there's probably been many blows and black eyes that have consisted as well.

Almost as soon as the church got off and running, there were heretics that were trying to assert what they considered to be fictitious nature of the Trinity, or Jesus, in fact, being God. Because this would have been an absolute affront to what we know to be true as monotheists.

How could Jesus exist as God, but also be a separate person, but also be co-eternal and co-equal? How does this all work? Well many of the early creeds and councils were gathered together to discuss this very thing.

The first two councils, the first two centuries, as it were, were really focused on the eternal Logos, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and how his deity is to be understood in light of monotheism. But then we get to the fourth century, and we have, and I'm sure you've heard this, of this council before, the Council of Nicaea, and then in the fifth century we have the Council of Chalcedon, or Chalcedon, depending on who you listen to.

R .C. Sproul says Chalcedon, so I feel like I should say that because, I mean, R .C. can't be wrong, right? But what happened in the third and fourth centuries kind of sets the stage for how we understand the Trinity, and there's kind of been a flip, and I want you to understand this historically, so we're kind of going to get into kind of a lecture mode, if you.

Will.

In the third and fourth century, there was a heresy that was attacking the Orthodox position of the Trinity, and it was called Monarchianism. It's two words put together, monarch, of course, meaning ruler, you know, one coming from the word mono, and the Greek word archē, which means beginning, and so you've got one beginning.

That's kind of this understanding of Monarchianism, and out of this Monarchianism, you have, and Monarchianism, and this is largely influenced by something that was called Gnosticism. Gnosticism was an heresy in the early church that essentially wanted to marry Christianity and Neo-Platonism, and there was a guy that was very influenced by this teaching by the name of Sibelius, and he came up with an understanding of the Trinity that everybody thought was really appealing, and he coined a phrase that I'm sure many of you are familiar with.

It is a word that used to define the Orthodox position of the Trinity, homoousios. Homoousios is another word that is brought together by two words, homo meaning same, and oousios, which comes from the present participle of to be.

Now, for those of you who don't know Hebrew, that's okay. What is the present participle in English of to be?

Being.

So, this idea here is putting across the idea that Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and God were of the same being, or of the same substance. However, though that sounded good on the surface, what Sibelius and his followers began to teach is really Neo-Platonism wrapped into a Christian ball.

And so what he understood is these modes, though it would differ somewhat from the way that we understand modalism today, although it's not much different. But the grounds of this, the understanding here, is that everything from, I think as.

R .C.

Sproul has said, from the rocks all the way up to God, have some sort of essence to it. Everything is part of God. Now, this is much like the pantheism of other conversations, but essentially the best way that I know how to explain this to you is think about a sun.

What Sibelius was saying in reference to Jesus being God is he was saying it's kind of like the sun. And you have this huge, gigantic fireball. And when you look into the sky, you see the sun, but you also see its rays.

And so Sibelius was trying to say that Jesus, of course, is God. He shares the same substance with God, homoousios, but he's a lesser God.

He's close.

He's of the same stuff, but he's like a ray of sun. He proceeds from the Father. He comes from the Father's stuff, but he's kind of different. Now, in the third century, in the year 267, this was condemned as a heresy at Antioch.

They looked at this and they were like, of course, this is not right. And so they coined a new phrase in response to this, homoiousios. Homoiousios. Homoi, instead of meaning homo, means similar instead of same.

So it's a similar being, a similar substance, because what they were trying to do was combat this idea that Jesus was, in fact, not a lesser deity. Because right in Sibelius's mind, a rock is of the same substance as God, just to lesser degrees.

And it's all the way at the bottom. Jesus is closer to the sun than the rock, but they all share the same substance. Of course, the church had to say, absolutely not. Now, what's interesting, if you know church history just enough, you know that actually, the term that we adopted as the orthodox position is actually homoiousios.

Because another heresy came along trying to threaten our understanding of who Jesus is and how he relates to the Father as well as the Spirit. And this was called dynamic monarchianism. And this was led by a guy, if you've been reading the book that the women of the Word have been reading, by Matthew Barrett, he talks about this at length.

This dynamic monarchianism was led by a guy named Arius. And he pretty much coined what we know as Arianism or adoptionist Christology. And what he believed and taught is that Jesus was the highest but not internal being that exists.

He believed that he was less than God, but he was more than man. And by living a Godward life, he became the Son of God, dynamically. Now, the church caught wind of this, to make a very long story short, and then said, well, that's not right.

That can't be true. Because Jesus and God are of the same stuff. They're of the same substance. They are the same being. So God is one in being, three in person. So the Council of Nicaea, when they put together the Nicene Creed at the behest of Athanasius, they got rid of the word homoousios and adopted homoousios.

Now, the charge, historically, is often, well, the church was wildly inconsistent. They just kept going back and forth. No, this is what's happening. And it goes back to my previous point about how to use the word trinity and why we should.

What the church understood is that it was more important to guard the being and the essence of God than it was to parse out all of these other Neoplatonic ideas. If there was going to be a word that was going to safeguard us, it needed to be the one that the heretic used, not because it was the right word, but because it was the best word to guard from this new theological error that would threaten the church in more profound ways than the earlier one.

And so we understand, then, that God is, in fact, one God in three persons that share the same essence, same substance. But the Son has been eternally begotten. You see, Arius taught that there was a time when the Son was not.

That is, that he was not the Son, that he had a beginning in time. Whereas, at the Council of Nicaea, we affirmed that Christ has always been the Son of God, has always been co-substantial, co-eternal, and co-equal with the Father.

So we do not engage with tritheism or polytheism, but monotheism, understanding that Jesus and the Holy Spirit, even though he gets lost in some of these conversations, are one with the Father, but yet three in personhood.

The next thing that I want you to see as we look at the foundations of Trinitarian theology is that our triune God has made himself known Trinitarianly in the creating, saving, and sustaining of all things.

So not only are all of these things true, but he has presented himself Trinitarianly in the Bible. Romans 11 .36, as for from him, and through him, and to him are all things, and to him be the glory forever.

When we read through Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 through 14, we see that the plan of salvation and the plan of sanctification is brought forth and presented in a Trinitarian fashion. God the Father has predestined and chose those who would be saved.

Christ the Son, put on flesh, having accepted the covenant of redemption before the foundation of the world, came and died for our sin and sends the Spirit to sanctify us, to walk with us and to care for us, to be our counselor, to be our comforter, and to be our helper.

God is one God and he operates in three, he is three distinct persons, and all three of those persons are truly and fully God, and he reveals himself in the creating, the saving, and sustaining of all things in a Trinitarian way.

Creation is no different than salvation. God the Father speaks the word, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit hovers over the waters of the.

Deep.

Your salvation is brought Trinitarianly, you are kept Trinitarianly, and you are kept for a triune God. The fifth thing that I want you to consider before moving on is that our triune God is mysterious, but he is not contradictory.

You might say to yourself, well, that seems insanely contradictory that he is one and that he is three. Well, that's not a real problem for the Bible. It's not even a philosophical problem. It doesn't even violate the law of non-contradiction.

When you think about it, there really are three ways to talk about things that seemingly make no sense. The first is a contradiction, the second is a paradox, and the third is a mystery. Contradiction, on the one hand, is something that doesn't make sense to anyone at any time because it is not something that can be understood.

For instance, you cannot say that this truck is red and this truck is blue. That's a contradictory statement. It doesn't make sense to anybody, not even to God. The reason I bring that up is because I once heard R .C. Sproul say, we're going to talk about him again because he's awesome, that oftentimes when we come to the doctrine of the Trinity or when we talk about things that we don't seemingly understand, we often say, well, those thoughts are just God's thoughts and they're above our thoughts.

Well, sure, but God has revealed himself as a Trinity so we can see the Trinity in the Bible, but then also it's not very honoring to ascribe foolishness and contradictory ill-laden logic to God. So when we talk about the Trinity being one God in essence and substance, by the way, we're going to get into all this a lot more deeper as we journey on through the series, but I'm just laying the ground and the foundation here.

We're not talking about a contradiction because a contradiction is something that cannot be true when in essence and being is not the same thing as three persons. Essence and person are not the same thing theologically or philosophically.

It's also not a paradox. A paradox is something that seems like it is contradicting itself, but in the end is.

Not.

It just appears that way, but upon further investigation, we understand it's truthfulness. It's not that. The Bible calls something like the Trinity a mystery, and a mystery is not just something that we don't know, but rather it is a secret to be revealed.

So of course there are things that we can't fully understand about the Trinity, but we must affirm all that the Bible enables us to affirm, and we must understand that this is something that has been progressively revealed to us, and it is something that ultimately will be revealed to us in eternity more clearly, but even then, who knows what that will look.

Like.

The Bible makes clear that eventually God will unravel many of the mysteries. Paul is doing it in the book of Ephesians about the gospel and how it brings people groups together in the church, but for now, on this side of heaven, he invites us to behold the mystery and worship him in light of it.

So when we come to the doctrine of the Trinity, we must stand in awe as we behold it, not seeing it as a contradiction, not seeing it as a paradox, but as a mystery that is more like a secret to be revealed.

And so lastly, our triune God invites us to behold him. One of the things that you no doubt should understand, Heritage, since we have been walking through the book of Ephesians for more than a year now, is that every time a member of the Trinity is said to accomplish a certain part of salvation, a certain refrain is given.

Do you remember what that is? To the praise of his glory. To the praise of the glory of his grace. When we study the Trinity, friends, we must do it with the understanding that God is glorious. And the Trinity is not something necessarily to argue about, it's something to fall down and worship in light of.

Our one God exists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And he has eternally existed as those three distinct persons. And yet he is one. All we can do at this point, before digging in even deeper, is to pause, to behold, and to see the beauty and glories of the triune God of the Bible.

And as we journey throughout the rest of this series, we are going to be invited by the scriptures to take more seriously God and his triunity. I have said, speaking to people in this congregation after the services, that thinking about salvation and thinking about God Trinitarianly is kind of like thinking about Calvinism for the first.

Time.

Once you are convinced by the doctrines of grace, they seemingly show up everywhere. There's not a place in the scriptures where it's like, oh no, that's not true. We have a hard time finding parts of the scriptures that aren't speaking of God's sovereign grace and election and so on and so forth.

Friends, the Trinity is no different. Once we take it seriously, we begin to see it everywhere. And that's good. Because that's biblical Christianity. And the sad reality is we have, as a church, not necessarily heritage, but at large, have really just kind of ejected the idea that the Trinity is all that important.

Why?

Because it's very high. It's very philosophical. It's very heady. Or it's very stupid, right? What do I mean by that? We usually fall off on the ditch of saying, well, it's just too heady. It's too philosophical.

It's not needed. Or we wound up being like, hey, check it out. The Trinity is kind of like an ice cube. It's kind of like an ice cube, right? At one time, it's hard, it's cold, you let it sit out for a while, it then thaws, it's kind of like the Trinity.

Or the Trinity is kind of like a three-leaf clover. I could keep going. But if you're a serious thinker and you hear such tomfoolery, what are you to do? That's something for the recycle bin. That's something not to talk about.

What are you talking about? Yeah, largely, by the way, those sorts of ways that we try to explain the Trinity. And by the way, I don't want to come down on anyone too hard, right? You guys have kids, you're trying to explain stuff.

It's like, how do you explain this? Like, there's grace, right? But we got to do the Trinity justice. And we got to talk about them in biblical ways. And we don't want to say something that could lead us, right, to a Trinitarian error.

And we must understand that the Trinity is the foundation of the gospel. And the Trinity is the foundation of Christianity. And so if we do not take the Trinity seriously, well, we might as well throw in our Christian card.

But friends, we have a Trinitarian God who shows himself powerful and mighty in salvation. We can see the Trinity so very clearly in our worship, the Trinity in our prayer, the Trinity in the act of preaching.

And the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on. Per my assignment, I'm only supposed to have three sermons. But in typical Brandon Scalf fashion, I sent Pastor Corey a list of the sermons that I wanted to do.

And let's just say it dwarfed three. And so I don't know how far we will get down this road. But my hope and prayer is that you will come back and that you will dive deep with me as we look at the doctrine of the Trinity and really take it to heart.

That it is really important, no matter how academic, no matter how out there it seems, that it is something that the Christians of the past have taken so seriously and we thank them for it. Why? Because they help us see God more clearly.

And as I said at the beginning of this sermon, that is why we are saved. We are saved to know God and to enjoy him. And so let's start by beholding him in his tri-unity. Amen? Amen. All right, pray with me.