1689 London Baptist Confession (part 9)

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So last week we were talking about the sovereignty of God, and not just the sovereignty of God in salvation, but the sovereignty of God in all things.
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And I thought we might start by looking at Paul's prayer this morning in Romans chapter 11, and really at the end of the chapter, starting in verse 33.
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Would somebody read 33 to the end of the chapter, please? When you read that, how do you reconcile that with questions like, how could
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God let this happen? You know, it's almost like when somebody says, well, how could this happen to me?
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Or how could God let that happen to so -and -so, who's such a good person? And you go back and you read this and you think, these two things,
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I mean, what is that when we say, you know, how could God let this happen? Well, or to, you know, how could
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God let this happen to Bob Bowman? How could he leave Bob Bowman alive another day, except for mercy and grace?
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Yeah. Somebody else? Gary. He's not in control, right?
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If we question, you know, how this is God's will or something like that, then yeah, he's not in control.
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But more generally, what would we call that? Yeah, judging God. Questioning God.
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And basically accusing God of doing what? The wrong thing, right?
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How could God let this happen? Doesn't God know? Isn't God aware? Doesn't he, doesn't he,
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Bob Bowman does not deserve this. And I appreciate
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Bob being here this morning. So I can say, Bob Bowman does not. And it's so, it's so foolish.
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I mean, I want to be nice here, but look at this verse 35, or who has given him a gift or a gift to him that he might be repaid.
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What does God owe somebody? I mean the whole idea, you know, and I see this all the time on Facebook, cause you know, you have a lot of, maybe you don't, maybe you're more sanctified than I am, but I have a lot of unbelieving friends and you know, how could
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God let this happen? Or, you know, was God asleep at the wheel or whatever, you know? And I mean, you could spend your life trying to correct unbelievers thinking about God.
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And the right thing to do of course, is to bring them back to reality if you can. But not only is salvation a gift, but even as Bob was saying, pastor
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Bob was saying life itself is a gift. Every breath you take is a gift.
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And so if we look back at this, that he might be repaid, who has given a gift to him? Who, in other words, to whom is
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God obligated or indebted? Who does he owe anything to?
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And the answer is nobody of course. And then backing up a little bit, for who has known the mind of God, of the
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Lord or who has been his counselor? In other words, did he ask for your advice? Was he interested in,
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I mean, you can go to God, you can bring your concerns to him and this is good and right. You're his child, right? But to say,
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God, you didn't do the right thing here. Or God, maybe you're not really thinking right because this girl ought to marry me.
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God has his own ways. We have our own ways. And thankfully his ways are not like our ways because I've said many times, and I think you would agree with me.
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I mean, I usually say, I'm not God and you should all be grateful. But we could also say,
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Bob Bowman is not God and we should all be grateful, any one of us here. Why? Because if we were
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God, we're transitory. We're also given to change.
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We change our minds. We change our emotions. We would not rule and reign with the wisdom and knowledge and power of God.
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We would rule and reign, dare I say, capriciously. We might be something more like, oh,
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I don't know, the God of Islam, but I digress. So to pick up where we left off last week, and I think when you read that,
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I think Paul is in awe of the sovereignty of God, the wisdom of God, the knowledge of God.
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And he says, you know, who can really, who can plummet its depths? Who can fully understand it? And the answer is nobody, because we don't have the mind of God.
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We don't have the fully, we don't understand the mind of God. All we can do is look, we can look at his word and we can look at the past and try to make sense of it and usually just kind of accept it.
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But when it comes to future events, we can, again, look to scripture, but as to what
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God ought to do or what he ought not to do, if it's not in his word, we don't have any insight into that.
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Any questions or thoughts about that? Any questions or thoughts about the sovereignty of God or how that relates to sin or anything else, anything that we talked about last week that you've been mulling over and just thinking,
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I don't know if this is right. I mean, I really appreciate this. God's eternal decree is his blueprint for history.
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He decreed it, and now he's bringing it to pass in time. And instead of being afraid of that,
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I think we ought to embrace that. Yes, Bob. It is safe to say that he ordains everything, even our sin, but not in such a way that he is the author of sin.
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Yeah, Pastor Bob says it's verse 32 of chapter 11 that will send you scurrying for your safe place.
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For God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all. And you just go, how can that be?
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And will he have mercy on every single person? Is that what it means? Hmm.
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Well, the answer is no, but we're not going to go into that right now.
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Other thoughts or questions? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do about the wicked,
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Habakkuk says, and God tells him in Habakkuk's like, you know, TMI, too much information, right?
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Is that right? Is that the right thing to do? Yes, of course it is. What God does is always right.
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It is by definition rights. Can God, you know, can
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God err? I know I always like to say err instead of error because both are right.
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And it's just more fun to say err because then it makes it sound like I don't know what I'm talking about. Can God err?
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Can God make a mistake? The answer is no. We often, you know, in our minds, you know, we make all these decision trees and all this other stuff and we try to sort out, try to figure things out and what we ought to do, but God's not like that.
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And we, any, any thoughts of God that we have that are like that, we should shed them.
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We should get rid of them. Other thoughts? Okay. Yeah, I think we're finally ready to move on to the
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Trinity. Is that right? Well, I think it is.
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Okay. So, chapter two of the 1689, and I think
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I may have started in on this and then gone off to the other thing, but we'll get back to this now. Chapter two, 1689
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Confession of Faith reads this way. The Lord, or part two, it's chapter two of the books.
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The Lord, our God is... I want to make sure that I don't just go over the same stuff here.
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Okay. I did do that. So I'll just review this. Van Dixhorn says about the number of gods there are.
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Well, maybe I should read this because it's been a few weeks. The Lord, our God is but one only living and true
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God whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself.
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And that is so critical to think about. You know, we want to understand God, but we can only understand him how?
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Finitely, as he has revealed himself, both in creation and through revelation. Anything else, you know, hoping to have a comprehensive understanding of God is a forlorn hope.
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It's not going to happen. So, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself, a most pure spirit, invisible without body, parts or passions, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light, which no man can approach unto, who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will for his own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long -suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
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And oh yeah, now I remember reading this. And Whittle, most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin and who will by no means clear the guilty.
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I err in my reading of Whittle. Okay. And then
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I know I read this part, Van Dixhorn, because I remember saying that the book
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I've been using for the 1689 just kind of glosses over this whole trinity argument and didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me what
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I did read. So, I went to another source and he said that we can't, of course, ask questions about who
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God is, but scripture often first answers the question, how many gods are there? And we talked about the
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Shema of Israel, Deuteronomy 6 .4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the
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Lord is one. Which really separated them from all the countries around them, all the peoples around them who had either a multiplicity of gods or were willing to accept the fact that there were, in fact, other gods.
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But Israel is like, there's one true God, all the other gods are idols. He says, whatever is in the father is in the son, since the father is not a creature, neither is the son.
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The will of the father and the will of the son are one since they are indivisible. Now, this is a general statement of the trinity.
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It may be stated thus, in the Godhead, three distinct persons who are the same in substance and equal in power and glory subsist in a single indivisible essence.
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This is a slight expansion of the shorter catechism. The larger catechism names the three persons and adds these are the one true eternal
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God, the same substance, equal in power and glory, although distinguished by their personal properties. Somebody recently said, a famous preacher on the radio said that if you can't explain the trinity, did we talk about this?
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If you can't explain the trinity to a child, you don't understand the trinity. Think about that for a moment and tell me what you think. If you can't explain the trinity to a child, you don't understand the trinity.
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Anybody want to walk into one of the six or seven -year -old classes and try that one? Brian's just like,
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I confess. But if you can't confess for all of us, I don't know about that. Thanks, Brian.
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We could easily get the six or seven -year -olds to our level of understanding, okay? Well, there are mysteries in the
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Bible, things that we're not going to understand. I think this is something that we can understand. I think we can say it, we can sort of semi -explain it.
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But ultimately, it's kind of hard to fully wrap our arms around. But here's what you can say.
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You can say that God is one. Okay, we know that. We know that there's one
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God. But we also know that there are three persons in the Godhead, in the trinity, right? Father, Son, Spirit.
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Each one of them, the Father is fully God. The Son, Jesus, fully
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God. Holy Spirit, fully God. And yet, there aren't three separate gods.
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And you say, well, okay, then is God either the
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Father or the Son or the Spirit at any one time? No. That's a heresy.
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Yeah, that's a oneness heresy, oneness Pentecostal. So that would be wrong.
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But we know by studying the scriptures, we know that the Bible calls each one of them
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God. But just going back to Deuteronomy 6, there is one
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God, not three gods. I mean, I don't know that you could explain much more than that to a six -year -old or whatever.
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And I don't know that they'll fully understand it. And, you know, that's why I listened to that. And I was like, somebody actually texted me that, said, you know, so -and -so says, if you can't explain it to a child, you don't understand it.
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And I'm like, I just wrote back, hmm. Because A, I hate texting.
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And B, I just kind of, I wanted to think about that one for a while, because that was just kind of a, hmm, little head -scratcher there.
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But to buttress my argument, because I like to do that, listen to what the
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Westminster Standard says, that God has subsists in three persons. That's what I said. The names of these three persons are the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Well, okay, Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, King James, you know, language there.
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These three are properly called persons, because in the Scriptures, the qualities of personality, such as individuality, intelligence, and free agency, are ascribed alike to these three.
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Okay, we're tracking right with them. In other words, self -consciousness and self -determination, the elements of personality, are applied in the
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Scriptures equally to the persons of the Godhead. The Father stands first in order of being and operation, hence
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He is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. And I don't want to get into all that, except for to say, there's what is called an economy within the
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Trinity. Who wants to explain the economy of the Trinity to me? They don't have the same function, although we would see there is some overlap, but, you know, and I don't remember exactly how it's phrased here, but sometimes, you know, there seems to be one of the
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Trinity who is primarily, you know, the operator in a given sphere.
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You know, for example, we could say, the Father primarily elects or, you know,
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He's the one who generally does that. The Holy Spirit primarily convicts of sin, but, you know, could you say that the
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Father doesn't convict of sin, or Jesus doesn't convict of sin? I don't think you could say that, but,
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I mean, they all have individual things in which they seem to be more preeminent than the other persons of the
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Trinity. But yeah, I mean, so the economy would be, you know, that theologians would say that Jesus proceeds from the
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Father. The Bible would say that the Father sent Him, right? He says, Jesus says, the
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Father sent me. What did Jesus say about the Holy Spirit? He said, I will send you a comforter, right?
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But we also know, for example, Isaiah 48, 16 says that God the
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Father is sending the Son and the Spirit. So the
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Spirit proceeds from both Jesus and from the
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Father. Now does that mean that the Holy Spirit is less? See, and this is the kind of issue that you run into.
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There's a functional hierarchy, in other words, how they operate, but there is no, like, definite, how do
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I want to say that? There's not a rank, you know? It's not like the
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Father's number one, Jesus is number two, and, you know, the Holy Spirit is number three.
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It's not like that. But there is a functional operation to the
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Trinity, much like there's a functional operation in your household. You know, the husband, because the husband is called the head of the household in Ephesians 5, does that mean, you know, that when
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God looks at you, He says, well, the husband's more important than the wife?
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Well, of course that's right. No, no, that's... But nevertheless, there is a functional difference.
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Why? Because if both had the same authority, not the same importance, but the same authority, then you would have no real sense of order in the household.
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Questions? Comments? Troubles? Okay. Yeah, then they get into the peculiar properties here.
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In other words, the ones that are focused on one person of the Trinity, and they say the peculiar property of the
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Father is paternity or fatherhood. The term here is taken in its narrow sense as expressing the relation of the
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Father to the Son. The property of the Father is to beget the Son eternally. And this is important.
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When we hear about, you know, the only begotten or whatever, this does not imply the
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Genesis or the beginning of the Son in time. This does not imply that Jesus had a beginning.
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Why doesn't it imply that? Jesus is the eternally
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God. If we look at John 8, 58, Exodus 3, 14, the concept of I am, which
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Jesus applies to himself. There is no sense in which someone who says before Abraham was
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I am, or tell the Israelites, you know, that it's I am who sent you when he says that to Moses.
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There is no sense in which I am can possibly have a beginning. And so when we say that Jesus existed before time existed, that's literally what we mean.
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Why? Because that's what I am means. It means he exists in and of himself.
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So, you know, when Isaiah says that in Isaiah chapter 40, at the very end of the chapter, you know, the eagle's wings verse that everybody loves so much, they put it on their key chains.
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I once had a key chain like that, by the way. Have you not known? Have you not heard? This is verse 28.
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The Lord is the everlasting God. He does not fain or grow weary.
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His understanding is unsearchable. And I think because I remember preaching through this years ago, there is a place where it talks about the sun is just the hiding of his power with all the power of the sun, that it's just the hiding of God's power, the shadow of it.
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And the idea here is that God never loses any power, even though he's sustaining all of creation.
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He's spoken into existence. And even now he's upholding all things. That if you go back in time as far as you want to go, or you go forward as far as you want to go,
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God is not losing any energy. It's not like the batteries in this microphone charger. It's not like, you know, going do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
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God is an inexhaustible supply of energy. And so when
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Jesus says, I am, he's saying that he is entirely self -sufficient, has been, always will be, will never run out of energy.
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The fancy -schmancy word for that is a seity, A -S -E -I -T -Y.
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Secondly, the peculiar property of the sun is affiliation, not affiliation.
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I'm affiliated with the, no, affiliation or sonship. Sonship is taken here in its special sense as it bears upon the relation of the son to the father.
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The son is begotten eternally, which simply means that the son from all eternity sustains that relation to the father.
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According to that, according to which the person of the second person, the person of the second person is constituted and ever abides.
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Time not being taken into account at all is eternal constitution of person and not temporal communication of essence, which should not be made prominent here.
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In other words, Jesus has always existed as a son and did not at some particular time become the son.
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This is just the nature of the second person of the Trinity. Now, did he become the son in a special sense when he entered into the world?
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Well, yes, because he became the physical embodiment of the triune
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God. Questions, comments? Okay, seeing no objections.
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Thirdly, the peculiar person of the third person, peculiar property of the third person, is procession or spiration.
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This means from eternity the Holy Ghost holds the relation of one proceeding from the father and the son.
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It is to be remembered here also that this relation does not imply a beginning in time of the third person.
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It is rather an assertion that from eternity the third person sustains a certain inner constitutive relation to the other persons, which the term procession in a measure denotes, it describes it.
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In regards to the proofs for the fact of the Trinity, the standards in the larger catechism really state the headings of the proof from the scriptures.
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In a large measure, this proof relates to the divinity of the second person and the personality of the third person, for the personality of the second and the divinity of the third have scarcely ever been called into question.
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In other words, the objective of the larger catechism is to show that Jesus Christ is divine and to show that the
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Holy Spirit is a person. Why? Because the tendency is to say Jesus was certainly a man, because we can tell that from the scriptures, but maybe he's not divine.
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Also, the other temptation would be to say that the Holy Spirit would be a force rather than a person.
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So those are the proofs that the larger catechism focuses on.
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Divine names in various ways are applied indiscriminately to each of the persons. This is done by the scripture in such a way as to indicate the true deity and personality of each of the persons.
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In the scripture, names often indicate nature. Okay, I don't have any great examples of that right off the top of my head.
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Divine works such as creation, inspiration, working of miracles, and regeneration are connected with the agency of each of the persons, and this again involves true deity and personal agency.
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Can you think of an example where this is true, where we might see the
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Trinity working together either in creation, inspiration of scripture, the working of miracles, regeneration, any of those things?
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Or maybe different passages where it talks about these things coming from different sources.
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Is that clear? Let me put it another way. Can you think of a place where it would say that the Trinity is involved in creation?
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I hear that voice. I hear that murmur. Genesis. Genesis chapter 45.
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No, she didn't say Genesis chapter 45. Yes, Genesis chapter 1, creation, right? In the beginning, in fact,
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I want to tell you something. You want to get excited. You know, I found out the Bartlett's are going to be grandparents here via Facebook, which is where I get all my important information these days.
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I mean, people get saved. What's the first thing they do? Call their pastor? No, they post on Facebook. They're going to become grandparents.
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What's the first thing to do? Wake their pastor up in the middle of the night? No, they post on Facebook.
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Congratulations, by the way. So speaking of things that I have not posted on Facebook, and you guys get to find out first because you're my best friends because you're here in Sunday school.
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Friday night, the fishes were over at the house and they're leaving. You know, they have this fancy schmancy new car, which you also heard about for me first, not on Facebook.
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And as they're getting ready to leave, January's in the backseat and she's got an open book and she starts reading.
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And she reads this. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness is over the face of the deep.
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And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. That was a beautiful moment.
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I'm so I said, you know, listening to that, I just thought, you know what that means? She said, no.
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You know, that means God created everything and the Holy Spirit was there. And then if you turn to John one, what do you read?
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You would find out that Jesus created everything. So you read this and you go in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and you go, okay, well,
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Jesus created the heavens and the earth. The Holy Spirit was involved. And you get the idea that the
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Trinity was involved in creation and you would have the right idea. We could also read Ephesians one, where it talks about the three persons of the
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Trinity being involved in salvation. We could read about, you know, election and we could say, well, it's the father, but Jesus also says that he chose the 12.
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So which, you know, which was it? And, you know, the Holy Spirit causes people to be born again in John chapter three, but in first Peter chapter one, who is it that it causes you to be born again?
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It certainly seems like it's the father. So who is it? Well, it's God, father, son, and spirit working together.
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Inspiration. You know, we would say scripture is inspired by God. Well, that's certainly true.
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It's inspired by the Holy Spirit. Right. But what did, what did
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Jesus say? He said, you know, my words, you know, and things like that. So, and you know, they actually physically came out of his mouth.
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So are they the words of Christ or are they the words of the Holy Spirit? Yes. Is it the word of God or the word of the
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Holy Spirit? Yes. It's the word of the father or yes. Um, fourthly says divine worship and homage.
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What's homage by the way, besides a very oddly spelled word that sounds like an omelet makes you kind of hungry.
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Yeah. Tribute and honor. So he says, uh, divine worship and homage, tribute and honor are to be given to each of the three persons.
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Now I would say, you know, we tend to neglect, you know, the Holy Spirit and thinking rightly of him.
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And then there are some churches, I think that just go out of their way to overemphasize the
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Holy Spirit. He says, this is evident from the terms of the apostolic benediction and of the formula of baptism, right?
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You're baptized in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit. If none, but God is to be worshiped.
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And if each of these three persons is to be reverence as God, then each must be truly of the essence of deity.
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From these mere heads of proof, it is very evident that essential deity and true personality belong to each of the persons and that the father, the son, and the
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Holy Spirit, I just, that Holy ghost thing, Holy Spirit are distinct divine persons.
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This is the doctrine of the Trinity as taught in the Westminster standards. But a word may be added in regard to the modes in which the three persons stand related to the divine activity and creation and providence and redemption.
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In general, it may be said that the father works through the son by the Holy Spirit. Another statement is to the effect that the father and the son operate through the
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Holy Spirit. Still another way is to state the same thing. And is that all divine acts in all divine acts, the three persons concur and agree.
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You know, there's a very odd thing would, and this is one of the great arguments.
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Well, let me just read this again. All in all divine acts, the three divine persons concur and agree.
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Would you agree with that statement? Hmm. We're having an election and the three votes that count are the father, son, and the
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Holy Spirit. When Jesus Christ dies for sinners, is that a divine act?
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Okay. In all divine acts, the three persons concur and agree.
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So Jesus Christ dies, pays for sin on judgment day.
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For the sake of argument, I'll skip over the part that Jesus is going to be the judge, but on judgment day, will
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God look at the, at the center for whom Christ died and refuse to take payment for what
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Jesus did? Well, then why would people say that Jesus died for all people?
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If in fact the Trinity works in harmony, right? They're all in perfect agreement. Jesus went and died for all people, knowing that not all would believe, knowing that his sacrifice would be rejected on judgment day.
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And the Holy Spirit apparently isn't doing his job because he's not convicting every single person and regenerating them and bringing them to faith.
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Tell me for whom Christ died and I'll tell you the extent of his atonement. Because if you tell me that Christ died for the whole world, then what does that say about the extent of his atonement?
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And it's why, you know, limited atonement, I'm not really a fan of that particular redemption or particular atonement is better.
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But the best I think is what? Definite atonement.
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Jesus Christ died for his sheep. What'd he say? I laid down my life for the world.
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No, for the sheep, right? My sheep hear my voice. They know me.
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They follow me. Those are the ones I'm laying my life down for. And so when we think of the
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Trinity, it gives us a much better idea of the atonement. The atonement had a design, right?
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If the father from all eternity chose to elect some, to save some, then in time sends his son, the
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Lord Jesus Christ into the earth to redeem those people. Why would Jesus then die for an indiscriminate, undefined, indeterminate number of people?
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And the answer is he wouldn't. And we would find that if we just thought about the Trinity logically, we would understand that the
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Trinity works in harmony, not at cross purposes. Questions or thoughts about that?
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As we look at the clock and see that it's a little ahead of time, which is a fine thing to do because that makes everybody a little bit nervous.
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Like Steve's going too long. That's right where I want you.
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Okay. Thoughts or questions? 1689 identifies the three persons of the Trinity as the
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Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. Good question. You know, if we look at Psalm 2, it says, you know, okay.
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No, go ahead, Barry. Okay. Psalm 2 is quoted a number of times in the
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New Testament or referred to a number of times. Today, I have begotten thee.
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You know, if you take it in the sense of that he has caused him to be born, then you have a number of problems, a number of issues, things that you really would struggle to understand.
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Here's what I would say that there is, you know, much like the
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Holy Spirit. I don't want to go too far afield because I don't have much time here. But if the Holy Spirit resided in the
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Old Testament saints, and I believe he did because otherwise it would be impossible for them to do the things that they did when they were faithful.
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In that same way, we look at the day of Pentecost and there's something new that supposedly happens there at the day of Pentecost.
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And we're to be, we're to understand that there's a newness to the way that the
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Holy Spirit comes across people or comes into believers. And I think in that same way, there's a greater fulfillment is what
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I'm trying to say, you know, from the Old Testament to the New Testament. In that same way, I think there's a greater fulfillment when the
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Son actually comes into the world. But he always existed as the
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Son. He's eternally the Son, eternally begotten. And I think there is a genuinely greater sense of that begottenness when he comes into the world.
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But I think there's more to it than that. And I don't have time to develop the whole Psalm 2 thing. Maybe I'll write a note for myself about that to remember when
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I come back in a few weeks. And with that, we will close.
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Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the truth of the Trinity. Thank you that Father, Son, and Spirit are working together for our good.
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That you have ordained whatsoever comes to pass that we can trust you.
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And Lord, what a blessing it is to think about just this simple truth that you elected us. You came and you redeemed us in time and that you have sealed us and that you will carry us right to the very end,