The Doctrine Of The Trinity

Last week, we stepped out of our gospel studies and did something a little on the practical side.

We go back to John chapter 17 this morning, certainly a trust that the study of John chapter 17 likewise has a practical application, the same way that's here to save the battery a little bit.

We have been just starting into this high priestly prayer of the

Lord Jesus, and if I recall correctly, and I will call upon the keepers of notes because this is a text that I have to deal with fairly regularly.

We did work through verse 3, particularly in the context of the fact that it is very often used as an attack upon the deity of Christ.

So for example, a couple of weeks ago, I was riding on a

Saturday morning and I pulled into the little parking lot at the end of 40th

Street, just south of Shea, where 40th

Street ends down there, and you can go hiking and stuff like that, and there's a parking lot there and a restroom and stuff. There was a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses that set up a table there and they were passing out literature.

Well, actually, they were just sitting there. Most of the hikers were going around on each side or whatever.

But I went over and chatted with them for a while, and we didn't actually get into this particular subject, but I can guarantee you that one of the very first texts outside of John 1428 that I would have heard from them would have been

John 173, and that's why we went through it last time, as I recall, discussing the categories that are there, the fact that Jesus, as the

God -man, remains a monotheist, that the only way that you can read verse 3, isolate it from verse 5, and the rest of the testimony of the

Gospel of John is that you have a goal in mind. You're not trying to allow the text to speak for itself.

It's something you're trying to prove, in essence, and that if the

Incarnation took place, that the Incarnate One would worship the

Father, because as a perfect man, that's the very command of the

Scriptures themselves, is to worship God, so if you're going to be a perfect man, you're going to do that. The thing to keep in mind when you encounter folks citing this, they're assuming

Unitarianism You cannot assume what you're trying to prove, but over and over and over again, if you'll just think through the arguments that people are making, you'll find those foundational, presuppositional assumptions they're making, that's where you have to challenge them at that particular point.

So we also noted that to have eternal life, to even define eternal life, it doesn't say this is the one who has eternal life, this is eternal life.

They may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. So I don't know that we really expanded out much upon the fact that, once again, we cannot avoid noticing the particularity of the

Gospel message here, and what I mean by that is there is a tremendous push for pluralism in our society, there is a tremendous push to adopt a form of religious belief where all religions are equal, all roads lead to Rome, all roads lead to whatever,

Mecca, however you want to put it, to lay aside the idea that the truthfulness of one religious belief, by necessity, negates the truth claims of a different religious belief that contradict that.

When it comes to religion, what we're being told is we need to be irrational, because religion is itself irrational, it's not a scientific thing to see, and so you have to allow for competing statements to be equally true, which means you have to embrace the idea that there really is no religious truth.

It does help us, in our conversations with others, to break it down to that point.

In fact, you can't always do this, because there are simply people who are just too emotionally driven to even go here.

But I find myself, more and more, when I identify the fundamental claim that is being made, even though it's frequently hidden in the form of a question, you can tell it's actually an objection, pretending to be a question.

But we all know, if you watch Piers Morgan or somebody like that, he's not actually very good at it, he's just vociferously anti -Christian, but for a lot of others in the media, you'll get this question, and you know it's actually an objection.

And the skill that we need to be cultivating is the ability to identify what the fundamental error is in the assumption that lies behind the objection which is masquerading as a question.

And what I find myself doing more and more is just immediately jumping to it and challenging that.

Somebody will say something to me, well, how can you believe that the

Bible is the Word of God, and I'll just respond. So you don't believe God can communicate? And you're like, where'd you get that?

As soon as they've now said, where'd you get that, they've now allowed me to define the ground for the discussion.

And I can immediately go to what the real issue is, rather than trying to do the peel the onion thing, and finally get to where the objection originally lies.

In the same way, theologically, in a conversation with someone like this, someone raises this particular text, and I'm immediately going to go, well, do you think the

God -man would be an atheist? And they're like, what do you mean? I say, well, the rest of the

Gospel of John is made very, very clear that this is the Logos, he's eternally existent, he's become flesh, and if he is, as Christians have always believed, the

God -man, as Ignatius of Antioch, one of the first writers outside of the New Testament, described it, the

Theanthropos, the God -man, the very term we use to this day, if he's the God -man, he's this perfect man, is he going to be an atheist?

He's been in eternal communion with the Father, on a level of intimacy unknown to his creatures, and you think that's just going to stop once he enters into human flesh?

Is he going to say you're one God amongst many gods? Is he actually claiming to be another God? Don't you see that you're assuming almost a polytheistic view here?

What if God is as we say he is, if God is one being, there's only one being of God, shared by three divine persons, one of those divine persons enters into human flesh, does that now mean there's multiple gods?

What else would he say than this? How else would he address the Father? He addresses the Father as Holy Father and things like that, but as far as categorically, and why does he say this is eternal life to know

God and some creature? Really, how does that work?

What other prophet has ever said this is eternal life to know God and me? So many of Jesus' words are just so blasphemous when placed upon the lips of a mere creature.

I like to go for the assumption that is being made because honestly, sadly, my experience is 99 .9

% of the people I talk to have never been challenged on that one. The Christians they've talked to have just not really thought through how to reason with someone on an issue like this.

That would be my suggestion is to cultivate that ability to recognize what is this person assuming in the objection that they're making and eventually, like I've said many times, well, let me just ask because I've said it many times, what are the three foundational doctrines, three foundational biblical teachings that make up the doctrine of the

Trinity? There are three foundations, you've got to know. First one is the fact there's only one true

God, absolute monotheism. There is only one true being of God.

Psalm 965 says all the gods and peoples are idols. There is no such thing as demigods.

While there might be spiritual, there's angels and things like that to sometimes function with the power of God, they themselves are created.

When it comes to the uncreated, created division, there's a big old chasm and God is alone over there and everything else is over here, all right?

Absolute monotheism. First foundational, have to know that, have to affirm that, not just with Mormons, but have to affirm that with the

Muslims because they think that we violate that. They think that we are not true monotheists. So absolute monotheism, that's number one.

What's the second? That God is revealed.

Thank you very much, offspring number one. Yes, that God is revealed himself in three persons.

In other words, the denial of Sabellianism, modalism, the idea that the father is the son, the son is the spirit, the spirit is the father, the common, most of the common illustrations that people come up with the

Doctrine of the Trinity are violations of this very revelation. They're actually modalistic.

There's a hilarious, absolutely hilarious satire channel on YouTube called

Lutheran Satire, and the Lutherans will actually satire us too, so be prepared for that.

But there's one that they just put up recently where there's these two Irish peasants and they're talking to St.

Patrick about the Trinity. And they, you know, Patrick, what are you trying to tell us about this

Trinity here, you know? And so Patrick starts telling them stuff, oh no, that's modalism, that's

Sabellianism. And these two nobodies know all this stuff about church history.

And finally Patrick just gets all frustrated and just gives them the Athanasian Creed and they said, oh, well, why didn't you tell us that from the beginning?

It's really, it's very educational and really funny. And they just put one up where the same two guys take on two more missionaries, which is really hilarious.

But look it up sometime, you might find it to be interesting. They also did one with the current pope. They call it, what do they call it?

Frankie the, Frankie the hippie pope. Frankie the hippie pope.

Where they keep asking him questions and he says these weird things. And then they've got some handler guy off that has to come on and say, well, he didn't really mean that.

What he meant was this, you know, because he's been saying all this weird stuff. And so it's on the same channel.

So you might find it to be rather intriguing. But anyhow, you know, the idea of the three leaf clover, you know, no, that's not what we're talking about.

And the idea of, well, I'm a, I am a husband and I'm a father and I am a son.

Yeah, but you're one person. That's modalism. Wrong. The, the biblical revelation is that the father is not the son.

The son is not the spirit. The father speaks to the son. It's right here in verse five that you're going to get one of the clearest indications.

That is a category of, so I would not describe that as a biblical doctrine as much as it is a necessary way of understanding how the

Bible addresses us and how God has created us. So, I mean, where would

I go in scripture necessarily to? Exactly. Yes. Yes. Unitarians who deny the

Trinity will go that direction. Not all denials of the Trinity necessitate that, but most of the historical ones do.

Yes. But when I define, when I'm, when I'm talking about, uh, the, the, what, what

Brother Callahan's referring to here is once we define the Trinity, we have to, uh, address the issue of being in person because we're talking about one being of God.

We're not talking about, never is the Trinity one being of God who's three beings or one person who's three persons.

Many people misrepresent that. They say, you're saying one is equal to three and three is equal to one. And we're not doing that.

We differentiate between being in person. And I don't think that we could function without making that differentiation.

We function on the basis of that presupposition every single day. We recognize, uh, uh, you know, this morning, for example,

I picked up, uh, Kelly has one of these plastic plants. They're about the only plants we can keep green. And, uh, and one of the, one of the cats or something had done to one of these, some of this plastic plant and one of the leaf things had come off and ever tried to put one of those things back on a plastic plant.

I said, it's not worthwhile. So I, I picked the thing up and I chucked it in the trash. And it just happened to cross my mind that, you know, if that was a real leaf,

I would probably look at it differently than that plastic leaf. And then I walked down the hall and forgot about it.

But the point was, I recognized that is a thing. It has being, uh,

I mean, if I took it, it had a little, a little bit of a scratchy surface on it. I might be able to scratch you with it. It has being, it has existence, but it's not personal.

Uh, we are finite, limited beings. We are human beings. We share a category of being.

We're all humans. But we are differentiated by our personhood. A person who, uh, who's being is shared by two persons.

Well, we have special padded rooms for those folks, uh, and hopefully some medications and things like that.

That's not a natural, uh, natural state of affairs, uh, or maybe an exorcist or something like that.

But, uh, God's being, being, our being is finite, limited, temporally, uh, temporally limited, uh, spatially limited.

We exist here and now God's being is not limited by those categories and is, is, is infinite and biblically is revealed and shared by three divine persons.

Not one third. It's not that the, the, the father's one third and the son's one third and the spirit's the bottom third.

No, it's that, that, that would be an inappropriate way of, of, of looking at it. Uh, that one infinite being is shared perfectly and completely by three divine persons.

Now, obviously the term person, you have to be very careful. Our tendency is to go from bottom up.

And so we take words that we have associated in certain ways, uh, with physical bodies and our creatureliness and we tend to project them upward onto God.

That's where a lot of the problems come in. And in the early years of Christian history, uh, that's where a lot of the conflicts came from is, is there were concerns about using certain words that might have inappropriate connotations.

Um, very understandable. What we're talking about is, is when we're talking about a divine person, the father can speak to the son.

The son can speak of the father, speak to the father in the second person, as we're going to see in verse five.

Uh, the father and the son can speak of the Holy Spirit. Uh, there is the utilization of personal pronouns and yet, and this is one of the most important things for me, the one divine name

Yahweh is used of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit. The one, the one word that is used in the very being of God is applied to each one of the divine persons, but they are clearly differentiated from one another.

Now, is there an analogy in, uh, in creation that will, uh, accurately describe the doctrine of the

Trinity? By necessity, no. Why? Because if there's anything in the, in the creation that would be directly analogous to God, then he's not unique.

Uh, the same thing with the incarnation. There is only one incarnate person and every, uh, attempted analogy to the incarnation, uh, ultimately fails because of the uniqueness of the incarnation.

And the same thing is true with regards to the doctrine of the Trinity. Now, you can try to illustrate an aspect, maybe, uh, when you're trying to explain something, but any analogy from creation is going to fall apart at some point.

It is a doctrine of revelation. Uh, I believe it is a doctrine revealed between the

Old and the New Testaments. What do I mean by that? The fundamental revelation of the doctrine of the

Trinity is the incarnation of the son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And temporally, that took place between the writing of the last word of Malachi and the first word of Matthew, or Mark, or whatever you think the first, uh, book of the

New Testament was. It took place by God's redemptive act in, uh, in history, in the incarnation and the outpouring of the

Holy Spirit. That, to me, is the ultimate evidence of the doctrine of the Trinity. The New Testament, then, becomes the record of what

God has done in that revelation. Yes, sir? We haven't even gotten to the other, uh, we've only gotten to two of the three.

I'll get to the third one in a second. If what you're referring to, uh, is the fact that in Isaiah 9,

Jesus is prophetically described as El Gabor, the mighty God, and then, in most of our

English translations, the Hebrew phrase, Abi -Ad, is translated as, eternal father.

And, so, the oneness person, and some Muslims, Muslims are using this to, uh, create the idea of inconsistency or contradiction in the

Bible. We'll say, see, you say he's not the father, the Bible says he's the father, etc., etc., as if the revelation of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the relationship between them is the substance of the

Old Testament revelation, rather than the New Testament revelation. That's why I say the revelation of the Trinity comes in between the

Testaments, not in it. The term, not in the Old Testament, the father is the creator.

The term father, normally, uh, God is called the father of Israel. He is the one who brought Israel forth.

He's the one that made Israel. Uh, it means originator, creator, and Abi -Ad, uh,

I think, is referring to father or originator of eternity or time, which would be a direct, uh, parallel to Colossians chapter 1, for by him were all things made, whether heaven or earth, visible or invisible, prince of values, powers of means, lords, all things created.

By him, before him, he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Uh, I think that's what you've got there.

Just as the next phrase is what? Sar Shalom, prince of peace. And where does

Shalom come in? Shalom comes in Romans 5 .1, therefore I have been justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That Shalom, that peace, comes from the fact that his work will eventually mean the reconciliation of all things.

Uh, everything is going to be in its right relationship to God, uh, either in salvation or in judgment or wherever else, uh, it, it might be.

So, the, the wrong assumption is to take relationships that are revealed specifically in the

New Testament, read them back into the Old Testament to create some type of a contradiction, rather than going, alright, here is a prophetic look forward at what the

Messiah is going to be, what would be the consistent way of understanding this application, rather than looking for an inconsistent way.

Represents who? I'm still missing what all of them is.

The descriptions or people? Oh, yeah, of course. There's nothing, there's nothing in that text about the, the coming of, of, of the description, uh, in, in Isaiah 9 is specifically about, uh, the, the

Messiah and the nature of the Messiah. There's, oh, yes. Oh, okay.

Yes, yes. Well, yes, exactly. I mean, we saw in, in John 14 and 16, I'm going to send you another comforter, uh, who is, who is of the same kind, not different than me, uh, but, but that's, that's asking

Isaiah 9 to describe something that Isaiah 9 is not describing. Right, right, right.

So just to, just to make sure I wasn't planning on going here this morning, but hey, uh, uh, just to make sure you understand, uh, in response to Brother Callahan's question, um, the distinctions and the appropriate recognition of the difference between being in person absolutely necessary to the formulation of the doctrine of the

Trinity and discussion of it. But when I'm talking about, um, the three foundational doctrines, these, the doctrines that, uh, make up the revelational portion, uh, of the

Trinity and every denial of the Trinity will deny at least one of these foundational doctrines.

Some people deny functionally all three, uh, Jehovah's witnesses. I, I, I would say really get close to doing that in some ways, but at least two, uh, and what's vitally important for you to be able to do is when you're talking with someone to be able to identify which of these biblical doctrines is this person denying?

Because then you can go right into the text of scripture rather than, um, what frequently happens is, uh, you end up in a long discussion with somebody about the

Council of Nicaea or something like that. Well, you know, uh, there, there can be places for doing that.

Uh, if, if you happen to have been doing a lot of reading on the Council of Nicaea or something like that, but for most of us, especially given that the conversations we're going to have are not the type that can be extended over months of, of time.

Uh, we want to be able to get to a more, uh, appropriate place fairly quickly. And so, uh, we've identified two of the three, uh, doctrines so far.

The first one was monotheism. In fact, there's only one true God. The second was existence of three divine persons, that the father is not the son.

The son is not the spirit. The spirit is not the father. That is one of the weak areas for most evangelicals.

That's why, uh, there's a, a controversy right now in the Southern Baptist Convention, because for the pastors conference, the

Southern Baptist Convention in June of 2014, uh, they have contracted with Phillips, Craig, and Dean, uh, to be the singing group there.

Well, what's wrong with that? They're a very talented singing group. Yes, they are. There's only one problem. They come from oneness churches.

Um, now they all say they're not in oneness churches anymore, but the last I saw, uh,

Randy Phillips was still very strongly oneness, saying that Constantine forced the

Trinity on the church. All this is, this is only 2009. And the other two were members of churches were in their statement of faith.

When it comes to that issue, they go, we don't know. We don't know if God's triune or if God's just one person.

That's just a mystery. We don't know. Uh, I, I think that's, that's almost worse than taking the other side, uh, going, uh,

God hasn't really told us, you know, that sounds real good today, but that's, um, not exactly what, uh, so, and the real problem is they have signed a statement.

And I'm going to, I'm going to talk about this in the vinyl line this week. Uh, I'm going to post it on my website. They signed a statement. First of all, uh, attacking everyone who has posted, uh, hurtful things about them on the internet in years past, do a search for Phillips, Craig and Dean and Trinity and Google.

Almost everything in the first page is me or people on my blog.

So I'm a terrible, horrible person. Why? Because I've been asking questions that they've refused to answer.

Now you can expose the one that's Pentecostal in a second. If you just ask the question, did the son as a divine person exist eternally in that relationship with the father before his incarnation in Bethlehem?

Simple. It's easy, but no one seems to want to ask that question of the folks in Phillips, Craig and Dean, which just drives me nuts.

But anyway, so it's become an issue because to be honest with you, I would say a large,

I would say a majority of evangelicals are modalists. They don't know what that means, but functionally that's what they are because they've never thought it through.

So, uh, monotheism exists in three divine persons. Third foundational doctrine you go to in the

Bible is what, what?

There you go. Thank you. I saw the hand there, Josh. It's okay. You know, I, I, we're good.

We're good. Um, the, uh, personality and equality of the divine persons.

And I, I put the word personality in there because what's one of the primary, uh, denials of doctrine of Trinity is to deny the

Holy Spirit is a person. Uh, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal active force, which is why in the

New World Translation, they never capitalize the phrase Holy Spirit. They don't use, uh, the definite article.

So they'll say you will be baptized in Holy Spirit, small h, small s. So like water, electricity, something along those lines.

It's not the Holy Spirit. So the personality and equality of the person. So this is obviously where most of us are accustomed to the battle taking place is dealing with the texts that people cite.

Uh, the father's greater than I am. And I can, the son says he can do nothing, uh, but what he sees the father doing,

John chapter five and et cetera, et cetera. And then of course, our response is that demonstrating that Jesus identifies

Jehovah and so on and so forth. So those are the three foundational doctrines. If you take monotheism, the existence of three divine persons and the personality and co equality of those persons, put them together.

You have the doctrine of Trinity. And if you listen to what someone is saying, you can identify, uh, presuppositionally where they are coming from.

Uh, many times they will simply assume Unitarianism without proving it. And then, uh, the, uh, there's a breed of philosophical

Unitarians. Uh, you can see this in, uh,

Sir Anthony Buzzard. Uh, and, uh, they are a pretty aggressive group, uh, out there, uh, both on the internet as well as going into churches, uh, who attacked the very distinction of the brother

Callahan mentioned, uh, said it cannot be maintained. Uh, and they use this as their foundation for a promotion of a form of, uh, of Unitarianism, uh, that will either require, uh, subjecting the sun as a mere creature, a form of Arianism, uh, or, um, some, most oneness folks are not philosophically oriented at all.

Uh, there are few who might go that direction. Uh, but most oneness, especially when it's

Pentecostals, uh, do not tend to be philosophically oriented and hence would not necessarily, they would, they would question using non -biblical language like that.

Uh, but very rarely would, would utilize it in their own. Wow. That was a, uh, uh, that was an interesting, um, uh, circular way of getting around to hopefully, uh, reminding us once again of really, you know,

I'll be honest with you. It has been rightly complained, uh, by many, uh, that most of, uh,

Protestantism in the United States, especially is monotheistic, but not

Trinitarian. Um, and, and I, and I think there's some real, real truth to that.

I mean, I wouldn't have written an entire book on the Trinity, uh, if I didn't think it was somewhat important and remember the title of the book is

The Forgotten Trinity. Uh, so it's, it is something that has always concerned me.

And I have often said that our worship is fundamentally damaged and crippled when we have, uh, inappropriate and improper understandings of the doctrine of the

Trinity in our minds. I think that's really behind where a lot of this, hey, worship is just what makes you feel good type stuff has come from.

Because if you, if you, uh, don't know who your God is, uh, you look back in history and Paganism, uh, not knowing who

God is, that's the very essence of Paganism. You're worshiping the unknown God and, and you, or Gnosticism. You have to go through all these things to find out who

God is, which you never really, really totally find out, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, the, the ignorance of knowing who

God is, that's a part of Paganism. The fundamental part of biblical revelation is that God has made himself known to his people in a special way.

He wants us to know who he is. He's revealed truth about who he is. And that's why the, the

Western attack upon, upon Christianity and its exclusivism is really a

Pagan attack. It's really nothing different than the Romans were doing. Uh, it just, it just wears different garb and uses different language.

The same, it's the same, uh, has the same essence as what, what we've been fighting all along. Of course, most of us don't know church history, and so we don't realize we've been fighting that battle all along.

That's sort of what, what is, what is happening there. But, um, if we don't know who

God is, then we cannot really engage in Christian worship because Christian worship is based upon knowledge.

Uh, this is eternal life, that they may what? You. What does it say in verse three?

Uh, the term is gnosco, from gnosis, knowledge, that they may know you.

Not feel you, or speculate about you, uh, or all the other things that tend to be the essence of most of human religion.

But this is eternal life, they may know you. Uh, there is a, a, the, the revelation of Christian truth is to the entirety of man as created by God.

Uh, it's not just to one aspect. It doesn't just appeal to the mind. It doesn't just appeal to the emotions and the heart.

Uh, we are to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. All of us, not just part of us.

And I would suggest that Christian worship that does not call for that is not really Christian. Um, and, uh, so, um, anyway, so.

Back to the point that I started, uh, uh, 35 minutes ago. And that is, this is eternal life.

And this eternal life requires that we know the Father and the Son. So, uh, that led us into understanding the relationship between the two and why that's, that's consistent within Christian revelation and so on and so forth.

And why it is that that is so offensive, uh, to many in our society who don't have any problem with your saying, if you want to say that this is a way for you to know

God, that's fine. But what you must do. And this is exactly what the

Roman, uh, state was saying to the Christians for over 200 years. When they said, offer that pinch of incense upon the altar and say,

Kaiser Curios, Caesar is Lord. And get your libellus, your, your certificate that says you've sacrificed to the emperor.

What they were saying is, you can say that Jesus is a way to the Father. And you can say that this is a valid way to God.

But what you cannot say is that it is the only valid way. You cannot make that category leap into an exclusive statement.

And that's exactly what we're being told today. Um, that really is what's behind what happened to, uh,

Tony Miano. Some of you know who Tony Miano is. His street preacher, retired LA County Sheriff and goes around the world and does street preaching.

He was arrested in London at Wimbledon last year, uh, but was fairly quickly released and charges dropped.

This time he was arrested in Dundee, Scotland. And, uh, while he's been released, he has to come back in, uh, in April for trial.

And why? Because he mentioned, uh, the need for redemption from sin and that included sexual sin.

And so he is going to be tried for promoting homophobia. Now, what is behind all of that?

When you peel back, it's got lots and lots of layers and very rarely do people get through the layers, but what is behind all of that?

Is the fundamental assertion of our society that there is no such thing as religious truth. There is no objective truth when it comes to ethics and morality.

Uh, and if you dare say these things are true, honest, good, just right, holy, and these things are sinful and dishonest and destroy life and they're unholy and they're ungodly.

Um, you are, um, you're refusing to offer your pinch of incense on the altar. And, uh,

I think that's exactly what's going on there. And, um, already in, in many of the

European countries, uh, it's, it's already pretty much just a given. You just know, uh, there are certain things you can't say in public anymore.

There's certain things you can't say in public anymore. And, uh, we know that that's, uh, heading our direction too.

And that's heading our direction too. Now, we'd be able to continue to say these things, for example, on the internet. I was talking with a very well -known

Christian leader just a couple weeks ago. He said, you know, he said, I think the internet will be one of the last places that we will have freedom.

He says, cause I mean, look at it. It's, it's pretty much the wild west. And when countries try to ban certain things, um, there's always a backdoor.

Um, that may be one of the last places where we, we truly have some level of, of, of freedom is in the internet.

I hope he's right. I hope he's right because everyone, you know, my, my phone's in there. We see all that happening.

I, I don't know. I don't know. Um, the NSA might be listening to everything I'm saying right now through all of your cell phones too.

So, uh, it's, uh, it's a sort of scary thought, but anyhow, I, I really was going to try to get to a verse five today, but, um, uh, maybe we laid some good foundation hopefully, uh, for looking at, uh, at that because I will be here next week.

And so we'll be able to, um, press forward at that point. Okay. All right. Let's close our time with a word of prayer.

Heavenly father, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for the fact that you have revealed yourself, that you want us to know you.

And then knowing you, we have eternal life. We thank you for that. We ask that we would rejoice in it each and every day.

And we rejoice in it. Even now, as we go into worship, as we hear your word opened, as we sing hymns to you, may you be honored and glorified and all that takes place.