Pt. 6 LBCF Chapter 2 Of God and the Trinity

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Pt. 7 LBCF Chapter 3 Of Gods Decree

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All right, we're up to chapter 2 of the

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Confession of Faith, and this is of God in the

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Holy Trinity. Now, notice last week we started with chapter 1, which was of the

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Holy Scriptures, and again, who can tell me why does the Confession start with the

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Scriptures and not start here with God in the Holy Trinity? Yeah, because it's only through the

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Scriptures that we can know who God is, so that's why we started with the

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Scriptures first. Chapter 2 has three paragraphs.

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They're good -sized paragraphs, but there is only three paragraphs.

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Paragraph 1, if we're going to do an outline of it, is basically the attributes of God.

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I should probably say this right up front. This is not, in this chapter, this is not an exhaustive systematic theology of theology proper, which is of God.

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What you're going to see as we go through this is this chapter summarizes and expands upon the creeds.

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That's why, if you remember when we started our study in the Confession, we spent four weeks just going through an introduction, and we actually went through a history of creeds, history of confessions, and it was important because to see how the

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Confession is put together and how this is a historic confession that doesn't just go back to 1689 or 1677 when it was written, but the roots of this go all the way back to the

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New Testament and actually go back even further. That's why we started with that Old Testament confession of the

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Shema, the Lord our God is one. The first paragraph is the attributes of God.

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The second paragraph is the relation of God to his creatures. And then the third paragraph is of the triunity of God.

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Now, have I asked how many people have Sam Waldron's exposition of the 1689?

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Okay, if you've read this chapter from Sam Waldron, and by the way, these outlines are right from that book.

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So this is nothing that's novel with me. Sam Waldron has done a marvelous job putting together that book.

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He's the one who came up with this outline. And one of the things that I found interesting in going through his book, doing some research for tonight's lesson, was he spends very little time explaining paragraphs one and two, and he spends most of his time just explaining chapter three.

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Why do you think? Why would that be where he spends all of his time?

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As opposed to the attributes of God, the relation of God to his creatures, he spends most of his time in the triunity of God.

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Yeah, it's unique, and actually because everything else is based upon the triunity.

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We can only have a relationship with God because of his triunity. All right, if you think about it.

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It is the unique essence of our

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God, of being triune, that enables us to have a relationship.

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Because what is the full revelation of God? It's Jesus Christ.

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Hebrews chapter one. And so he spends most of his time there, and one of the reasons he gives is because chapters one and two,

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I mean paragraphs one and two, the attributes of God, systematic theologies are full of those. And so he didn't spend too much time on it.

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This chapter states the orthodox doctrine of God and the Holy Trinity. And again, we see that it goes all the way back to the

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Confessions. It's consistent with all of the historic creeds. All right.

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And I can't emphasize enough the importance, especially for those of us who are reformed, and especially those of us who are reformed

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Baptists, is to see the thread that goes all the way back. That's why I spent so much time on those first four lessons of going through the history, the biblical basis for creeds.

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And what we see is in each of these chapters, and especially this chapter, we see it's consistent with the historic creeds.

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So paragraph one, the attributes of God. First one is the singularity of God.

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Now, I've tried something new. Anthony is going to cringe when I say I'm going to do something new. All right.

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I put in blue and in quotations, the quotation from the

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Confession, so that you can tell what the difference between what's the

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Confession and then what my notes are. OK, so it talks about the singularity of God.

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The Lord our God is but one only living and true God. What does that remind you of?

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Yeah. All right. It means that the Confession is a monotheistic document.

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We are not polytheists, which is something that people will often confuse us.

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And critics will say that, well, you believe in three gods. No. One God.

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And that's what the Confession says. The statement has its roots in the Shema of Israel. The Lord our

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God is but one only living and true God. That one statement has a lot of theology in it.

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OK. Notice it's an exclusive statement only.

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So we believe in one God and there is only one God. All right.

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One of the things I like about Greg Bonson. Well, there's a lot of things

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I like about Greg Bonson. But one of the things I liked about him was when he would debate with an atheist on the existence of God, he would define his debate.

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He says, I am going to defend the fact that there is. The God of the

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Bible. Not just that there is a God. And many

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Christian apologists have gotten themselves in trouble because they debate the existence of God.

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But you have to ask the question, what God, you know, who, what

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God are you, you know, are you trying to prove the existence of or debate the existence of?

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And according to Bonson, and I agree with him completely, the only the only

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God that you can defend the existence of is the God of the

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Bible. Because he's the only one who exists. OK. You can't prove the existence of just a impersonal

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God. That's a fool's errand. All right. And so the confession starts off this very important chapter.

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The Lord our God is but one only living and true God. OK, second attribute, it says that it goes through is the independence of God.

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That means his self -existence or his sat that again, talking about.

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Whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite being and perfection. What does that mean?

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That means that God is independent of anything else. OK, God is uncaused and depending on no other being for his existence.

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God is the first cause of everything else. But he was not caused by anything else.

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OK, follow that. All right. And that that's basically self -existence and the sat.

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That's what it's what it's talking about is, is who he is. And God is completely self -sufficient.

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OK, and in fact, when we get to the Trinity, this is something that's very important.

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All right. Think about it this way. I did. The reference escapes me for a moment.

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But who is man that God has need of them? OK, we need to understand something.

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God does not need any one of us. And one of the reasons that he doesn't need any one of us is because of the unique nature of the

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Trinity. He is complete in and of himself. There is complete love. There is complete harmony, complete unity.

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And because God is so complete, he needs nothing else. He did not need to create us.

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He created us out of his love, mercy and grace. All right. But not out of some need.

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Some very poor theology out there. It says that God took a risk because he needed a relationship with his creatures.

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No. And the scripture is very clear who is man that God has needed him.

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All right. So that's that's the doctrine of the independence of God.

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Third one is the incomprehensibility of God. That means there is no question that there is a mystery.

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You and I will never fully understand God, not even in eternity, because we have finite minds and God is infinite, which is another attribute.

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But whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself. Now, I just want to clarify this.

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This does not mean that you can't know anything about God. It just means you can't know everything.

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What can we know about God? What he has revealed. All we know is by his revelation to us, both natural and special revelation.

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Remember, both natural revelation and special revelation have a have a part to play. But there's a difference, as we looked at last week in chapter one.

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Natural revelation tells us a lot about God. But it will never bring us to salvation.

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That's why you need special revelation. But both the revelations are important. All right.

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And the natural revelation is important because it means that everybody knows there's a

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God. When somebody says, I'm an atheist, you know, my response to that is, no, you're not.

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No, I said, no, you're not an atheist. I said, God doesn't believe in atheists. In fact, a funny, funny story.

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My dentist, who's now recently retired, I used to call him my Jewish atheist dentist. And he was a great guy, good dentist.

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And I went to him for over 40 some odd years. And we got to be very good friends. And he would always engage me in conversation about religion.

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Because he was raised a Jew, but didn't practice Judaism. And so one day he sits me down in his office and he says, tell me exactly what you believe.

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I said, no, I don't really have time. You don't believe. So I sat there and for about 15 minutes

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I gave the man the gospel. All right. When I finished, I got up and I was starting to leave.

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And he says, you know, if I was ever to believe something, he said, I'd probably believe what you believe. And I just turned around and I as I walked out of the office,

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I said, Bob, I said, God doesn't believe in atheists. And I just left him. I did that. I left him on that thought.

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Six months later, I go back to my checkup. I walk through the door and he says, you know what? I've been thinking about what you said. Because he knew in his heart, he knows there's a

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God. So if somebody says, I'm an atheist, I don't believe in God. You say, of course you do.

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Because there's this because God has placed it in that you're creating his image and he's placed that knowledge of you in him.

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Plus, you have all of creation. What you're missing is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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OK, so next attribute, the spirituality of God.

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He is most pure spirit, invisible, without body parts or passions. I think

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I see the antenna going up on our church officers here. And I'll tell you why in just a minute.

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Firstly, God is spirit. All right. And that explains it.

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No body, no parts. All right. And each one of these is important, obviously, because he's a spirit.

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Spirits are invisible. You can't see God. All right. Without body.

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All right. There's some very poor theology out there, especially Allah. Guys like Benny Hinn and some of those guys who teach that each member of the

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Trinity has a body, soul and spirit. No, God has no body. All right.

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No parts. You can't break God up into parts. OK, or passions.

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What does that mean? Well, firstly, it means he's unseen.

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Most pure, invisible, without body parts or passions. God is without body parts or passions.

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Notice the word passions. All right. What's that? OK. OK.

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The meaning of this word was the subject of a great debate a few years ago. All right.

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There's a doctrine that's called the impassibility of God comes right from this word passions.

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All right. What it means is that God does not have emotions like you and I do.

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We have emotions that change. I can look at you in one minute and say, oh, what a great guy, what a great woman that is.

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And five minutes later, I can be looking. You know, we can do that with our husbands and wives.

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Sometimes within a minute. All right. Because we are. Well, that's because we are subject to change and to change very rapidly, depending upon our circumstances.

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God does not have passions that it is not to say that he doesn't have that he doesn't love or that he is does not have anger.

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That's what he does not have it as we do. God has perfections. Not passion.

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God's love is perfect. It's never lacking in anything. I can tell my wife

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I love her. All right. And I've loved her for over fifty five years. But my love is not perfect.

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Just ask my wife. And, you know, there's many times that my love lacks, you know, and there's many times that I'm selfish when

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I when I shouldn't be. All right. Whereas God, when God sets his love upon you, it's perfect.

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In fact, this is important. Do you realize that because of this, this doctrine, what this doctrine teaches us is this.

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When God sets his affection upon you and he saves you. All right. He loves you.

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That love can never wane, but it can never get any better either.

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Think about that. Why can't it get any better? Because if it could get better, then that means was deficient when he first started loving you.

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And it can't. It's not deficient. His love when he sets it upon you is perfect and therefore it will never change.

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You can do the most commit the most heinous sin as a believer. And his love does not diminish for you.

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That's not to say that he might not spank you for your sin.

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But even that will be perfect and out of his love, not out of his wrath, but out of his love for you.

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Whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. He was chapter 12. OK, so does that make sense?

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So there was a great debate. There are some people who say that God is both passable and impassable. And it just got very confusing.

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We are a church that stood by the confession and said, no, God is impassable.

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All right. And if you have ever Malachi. What's the reference

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Malachi, what Malachi three, four. I, the Lord, do not change. Therefore, you are not consumed.

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See, it's a good thing that God doesn't change that he's impassable. Three, six.

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That's what I thought. OK, so that's talking about the spirituality of God.

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Then we have the infinity of God. Oh, and by the way, some of these concepts overlap back and forth.

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It's not a perfect set up on each of these who only have the immortality dwelling in the light, which no man can approach unto, who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite.

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Now, just look at all of those things. Infinite. God has no beginning, no end.

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All right. He's both infinite and eternal. He is outside of time. He has no limits on him.

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We have we have the doctrine of the omnipresence of God. There is no place in the world, in the universe that God is not.

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All right. And then he's eternal, which he stretches. He has no beginning and no end. All right.

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So there is no place, you know, that you can go to get away. Just Psalm 139.

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David makes that very clear. He says even if I descend into the grave, he says you're there. All right.

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And in fact, one of the worst parts about hell, a lot of people think, well, God's not going to be there. No, he's going to be there in his wrath, pouring his wrath out upon people for eternity.

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All right. So there is no place. That's so that's the infinity of God. Immortality is unchanging, immutable and immortal.

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I mean, unending, immutable, unchanging, immense, eternal, incomprehensible.

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Some adjectives, right? He has no physical limits upon him. The next attribute is the sovereignty of God.

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And that's broken down into two parts. Its extent is most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute.

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And we've had quite a few studies on the sovereignty of God, even from the pulpit Sunday mornings, talking about what the sovereignty of just a week or two weeks ago.

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I forget which one it was. I read from Arthur Pink on the sovereignty of God, just so that we understand exactly what that means.

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It means and I like the way Pink sums it up. He says to say that God is sovereign is to say that he is

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God. If God is not sovereign, he's not God. All right.

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So this doctrine is extremely important. All right. Most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute.

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Everything he does, he has. Nobody tells him what to do. Nobody can tell him not to do something.

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Nobody can convince him to do something that he does not want to do. OK. Here's a little trick that philosophy professors in college love to play on Christian students.

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They love to get a naive Christian student into their freshman philosophy 101 class.

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And they'll ask the question, can God create a rock bigger than he can lift? All right.

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Anybody ever heard that question? Can God create a rock bigger than me? What's the answer to that question?

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Because what they'll say is, well, you know, you say that God is all powerful, right? Yeah. But I mean, he can do anything.

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Right. Yes. You know, and God's then can God create a rock bigger than he can lift? And they figure they got you because if you say no days, well, they can't do everything.

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And if you say yes, he's well, then he can't lift the rock. What's the answer? It's a question of defining terms, and this is what we try to teach people all the time.

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Omnipotence, meaning all powerful, does not mean that he can do anything. In fact, the scripture specifies certain things

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God cannot do. He can't lie. He can't sin. Can't die.

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OK. All powerful means he has all power under his control. So can he create a rock bigger than he can lift?

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No, because that would mean that he'd create something that is larger than himself that he didn't control. So no, but that doesn't negate his omnipotence or his sovereignty.

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It proves it. All right. God does what he pleases.

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No one has the authority to question him. He knows the end from the beginning.

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And he always does what is right. As a sovereign God, not only does he know what the end is from the beginning, but everything that he does to accomplish his purpose is right.

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It's holy, most wise, and most free. Again, nobody can back God into a corner and force him to do something.

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Still under sovereignty of God. Now we're looking at its extent. Here we're looking at its rule. Working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will.

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This is setting up the next paragraph, the decree of God.

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All right. Because how does God exercise sovereignty by his decree, by works of creation and by his decree?

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And this means that everything that God does, everything that happens in this world is decreed by God.

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All right. But we'll get to that in the next chapter. But so how does he do this? By working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will.

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Whatever happens, and it's because of this that the Christian can quote

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Romans 8, 28. OK. Romans 8, 28. For we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those that love him and are called according to his purpose.

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That means if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, no matter what happens to you, it's going to work out for your good.

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Now, don't misunderstand what I'm saying. That doesn't mean that only good things happen to you.

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Because evil can happen to happen to a Christian, but God will take even that evil and turn it around for your good.

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That's the promise that he makes. He can only promise that because he's sovereign. OK. Does that make sense?

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OK. God's will can never be thwarted. There's nothing you can do that if God has decreed something's going to happen, it's going to happen.

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There's nothing that you can do that is going to prevent his will from coming about.

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And here, of course, we need to understand what will we're talking about. This is his decreed of will. We're not talking about his revealed will in the scripture, because certainly you can violate

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God's word. We do it every day. His will never changes.

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Again, we're talking about his decreed of will. The things that he has decreed from eternity, from all eternity, that never changes.

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God never changes his mind. All right. His will is always righteous.

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Everything he does is right. Everything he does is good. Why? Because he's sovereign. And that's the character of God.

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Its goal, sovereignty of God, its goal, working all things according to the counsel of his own glory, his own immutable and most righteous will for his own glory.

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This is extremely important because a lot of theology out there and you hear a lot of preachers talk about how everything in this earth is designed to make you happy.

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And there was a book written, Your Best Life Now. I wasn't going to say the name, but I guess everybody knew it anyway.

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When I first saw that, I said, you know, basically what he's saying is that you can have your best life.

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You can have it right now. Boy. Yeah, that's what a disappointment

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I would be. I mean, I'm I'm looking for a mansion in heaven, you know, and no, that's that's ridiculous.

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Everything that God does is for his glory. Because he's the center of all things.

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He's the only one who deserves all glory, lord and honor. Just think of the hymns that we sing, you know, that put this forward from the scriptures.

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All right. So we need to keep that in mind.

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This whole world is designed to give glory to God. That's why he created it.

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That's why we were created. Remember, we were created to be worshipers of him. And then because of the fall, he actually saves us in order that we can worship him.

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That's what Jesus told the woman by the well. God, you know, God actually seeks worshipers, those who worship him in spirit and in truth.

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What's the chief end of man? To glorify God, to enjoy him forever. OK, so it's all.

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And the problem that we're having in this world is that the world is increasingly man centered.

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As opposed to being God centered. And that's why things get flipped upside down all the time.

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So all things work together for the glory of God. His glory is our ultimate priority.

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The chief end of man. Then we have the love of God.

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Most loving, gracious, merciful, long suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.

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This is just a little overview of the love of God. We don't ever want to lose sight of that because God is love.

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You can't talk about love apart from God. If you do, you're not talking about love. You're talking about emotions, you're talking about feelings, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff.

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But you have if you're going to talk about love, you have to. You have to talk about God.

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You have to come back to God. OK. That's why when when

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I do premarital counseling. All right. Before I sit down with the husband, the prospective husband and wife.

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And I always ask him, you know, you know, why? Why do you want to get married? And they usually, you know, they hold hands, look at each other, dreamy eyes, you know, because we're in love.

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And I look at myself, boy, we've got trouble now. What happens when he doesn't make you feel like you're loved?

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What are you going to do then? It's going to happen. All right. Because we have to come back and define love.

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Love is not those romantic feelings that we have. Yeah, it is a romantic side of love. And that that's good.

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I mean, you want that. But you can't your love is not based upon that.

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A husband is supposed to love his wife like how? Like Christ loved the church.

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Not how. You know, the latest movie star loved his co -star.

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All right. That's she loves me. She loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not. God's love is the reason anyone is saved.

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It starts there. All right. And as long as we base our marriages upon this, the relationship of Christ and his church, they will thrive through good times and bad times.

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The justice of God. Oh, let's skip over this one. Nobody wants to hear about this one. The rewarder of them that diligently seek him and with all most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin and who will by no means clear the guilty.

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This is two sides to this. There's a positive side, positively describing the justice of God as those who seek him.

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He's a rewarder. If you are diligently seeking him, God rewards you.

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The scripture, the scripture is a motivational document. It's always talking about if you if you seek me with all my face, if you seek me and, you know, you do all of these things, then what you'll rise up on eagles wings and then you look at all the imagery in the scriptures.

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If you are actively seeking God, he's going to reward you. Why? Because he's a just God. All right.

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But negatively, judgment comes on the guilty. Hating all sin will no will by no means clear the guilty.

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So the only way and this is one of the things that you should be using in your evangelism.

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OK, is people need to know what they're saved from. OK, so if you're if you're evangelizing, you can say, you know,

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God is a just God. Every sin that has ever been committed is going to be paid for perfectly.

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Every single one. The question is, are you going to pay for your sin or is

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Christ going to pay for your sin? Because somebody is paying for it. And praise

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God, if you believe in Jesus Christ. Your sin was paid for on the cross because God is a just God.

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Now we go to paragraph two, the relations of God to his creatures. Firstly, we need to know he is self -sufficient, independent from them.

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God having all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself. Notice that everything he has is in and of himself is alone in and unto himself.

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All sufficient, not standing in need of any creature with he has made or deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto and upon them.

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But he's right as a confession, they sum it up, don't they? In, by, unto and upon them.

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All right. They get the point across. Notice he is self -sufficient from them. Again, there's so much poor theology out there talking about how much

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God needs you. And no, if you have been saved, his love is upon you.

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That is perfect love. He doesn't need you. It's a gracious love. It is by his grace and his grace alone that he saved you.

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All right. And not because of anything that you've done. God is fully sufficient in and of himself.

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His creatures add nothing to his glory. The only thing we are called to do when we are, when we glorify him, is to extol and announce his glory to the world.

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We're not giving him glory, not adding anything to him. We're just calling out what we see in him.

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And that's, that's what our hymn, hymn, hymnosity should be.

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Is that a word? Sometimes I just make them up. You know, if I don't have a word,

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I just make it up and keep on going. But that's, but that's his, our hymns.

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And if you look at most of the hymns that we sing, that's exactly what they are. All glory, lord and honor, you know, to the redeemer king.

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That's what it is. We, we, we extol him, exalt him. And to the world.

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All right. God does not need his creatures. We made that clear. His sovereign dominion over them.

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He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.

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And he has most sovereign dominion over all creatures to do by them, for them or upon them whatsoever he pleases.

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Okay. Notice what this doesn't say. Doesn't say that he has sovereign dominion over all

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Christians. He does. But it's broader than that.

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He has sovereign dominion over all his creatures. All right. The paragraph extends his sovereignty from paragraph one.

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Remember the way the confession is, is, is, is organized. That the first paragraph is kind of like an introductory.

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And then the subsequent paragraphs expand upon it. And that's exactly what this does. All right.

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God's, God's pleasure is always perfect. So he does whatever he pleases, but whatever he pleases is perfect.

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It's always good. It's always righteous. It's always holy. Okay. And notice that it's, it's not just over Christians.

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The person out there who is cursing God, putting his hand up in the air, God has sovereign control over him.

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And, you know, and God is very patient and long -suffering. He actually allows people to blaspheme him without snuffing them out right at the moment.

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And we need to be careful because sometimes, you know, we'll see somebody blaspheming

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God and say, why doesn't God just strike them dead? Well, think about it. Would, is that the way you wanted him to respond to you before you were saved?

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No, God is patient. So we need to pray for those people.

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His absolute knowledge of them in his sight, all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature.

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So as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain. That means

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God isn't waiting for you to do something so he knows how to respond. He knows what you're going to do before you do it.

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And that's all part of his plan. So God is not contingent upon anything.

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We are contingent upon what God does. And that's why the scripture has his weight upon the

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Lord at times. You know, we don't we don't want to be running past running too fast.

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You know, getting ahead of God. You know, that's not a good place to be. This paragraph explains his omniscience.

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You know, he's all knowing. All right. Everything he knows, everything knows the beginning from the end, the end from the beginning.

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He knows what you're going to do. He knows what you're thinking. Right. He knows what you're going to do before you before you do it.

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What is the what is when he gave us the Lord's Prayer, what did he say? Your heavenly father knows what you need before you ask.

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But ask. His omniscient, his omniscience is not contingent upon the creature.

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OK, one of the things that you hear people who try to reject the doctrine of election is that God looks down the corridors of time and he chooses those who he knows will be predisposed to receive him.

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Now, this goes flies right in the face of that. Now, if you're going to come to Christ because he has said his affection upon you, not because of something that's in you, but by his love, his grace, his mercy.

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Romans chapter nine, his utter sanctity before them.

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He is most holy in all his counsels and all his works and in all his commands. This details his holiness.

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All right. Everything he does is holy. Nothing God does is wrong, tainted in any way has or can be questioned because everything he does is perfect and holy.

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One of the big things that comes up all the time, people wonder if God is so righteous and God is so holy.

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Why does why is there sin in the world? Right. You hear that question.

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OK, what's the answer? Because it's going to accomplish some holy purpose. How do we know that?

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Because that's the character of God. If sin was not going to accomplish some holy purpose,

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God would not have allowed it to come into the world. Mystery is intrinsic.

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Intrinsic claims upon them to him is due from angels and men whatsoever. Worship, service or obedience as creatures they owe unto the creator and whatever he is further pleased to require of them.

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In other words, because of his sovereignty over his creatures, whatever he demands is right.

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It's just, it's holy and it is due him. And that's that's why we that's why we gather on Sundays for worship.

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Why? Because he has commanded that he be worshipped in that way. Both. Why do we why do we have family worship?

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Because he is told fathers that they should be having family worship with their with their families. Why do we have

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Bible studies like this? Because he's told the elders of the church to instruct the congregations. OK, notice

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God has claims upon all men as creator. All right. Not just Christians.

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Every man owes God his very life and therefore is obligated to God in certain ways. And the confession details what those are.

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Last chapter. And there's no way we're going to get through this whole thing.

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All right. It's affirmation. And this divine and infant being there are three subsistences, the father, the word or son and Holy Spirit of one substance, power and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided.

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This is probably one of the greatest mysteries that we have in the world today.

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We we can't fully. This is where God is truly incomprehensible. All right.

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But notice what the what the confession says, because this and the reason that Sam Walden spent so much time on this is this is where most of your heresies occur.

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OK, in the persons. Of of the Trinity. All right.

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What I like here and notice they don't this confession doesn't say three persons, although it is proper to say that, but they chose to use the word subsistence is because persons often people referred to think of us as being persons.

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And to try to say that that the Holy Spirit is a person like we are, a person is wrong.

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All right. And so they've chosen to use subsistence is here. Later in the confession, they do talk about the persons of the

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Trinity. So they they're used interchangeably. But subsistence is what they use here.

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Three subsistence, the father, the word or the son and the Holy Spirit. One substance, that's one essence, power and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided.

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Is is God the father? God? Yes. Is God the son? God? Yes.

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Is the Holy Spirit God? Yes. All right. Are they each one third

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God? No. Each one is 100 percent God. All right.

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And to say otherwise is to lapse into heresy. Notice where subsistence is as opposed to persons.

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And each subsistence is fully God. Yet undivided. OK. The distinctions of the three persons.

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The father is none is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. The son is eternally begotten of the father.

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The Holy Spirit proceeding from the father and the son. This is very controversial. OK, what it's saying is the father is not the

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Holy Spirit. He's not the son because he's not forgotten. The Holy the son, the second person of Trinity is eternally begotten.

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It means he's eternally generated, means he always was begotten. This is not talking about the incarnation.

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This is talking about the eternal generation of the second person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit proceeding from the father and son.

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So you have three subsistence is each fully God in every sense of the word, but distinct, but never separated.

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OK, there's no such thing as separating the persons of the Trinity, distinct but not separate.

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And the confession harkens back to the creeds. These were these were doctrines that were hammered out by the creeds of the early church, and they've stood the test of time.

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We're we're looking two thousand plus years now. Going back to the church fathers that these this is the orthodox doctrine of the

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Trinity. The explanation all infinite without beginning, therefore, but one

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God who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations.

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Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to explain this. Because the more I try to explain it, the more confused everybody is going to get.

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All right. Again, remember, I haven't included the proofs, the scripture approves. Why? Because the purpose of this class is not to defend these doctrines, but to just make sure that you understand what the confession says.

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Because, I mean, to explain this, I mean, we would be here for weeks. A mystery, but it is clearly revealed just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it's not true.

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And again, the confession harkens back to the creeds. Its relevance.

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Which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and comfortable dependence on him.

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This is what I mentioned earlier. It is only because of the doctrine of the

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Trinity that you and I have a personal relationship with our creator.

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Because of his unique essence being three in one and each person of that Trinity having something to do with our salvation.

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And we can we'll go through that later on in the confession. When we talk about justification and and salvation, how the salvation is a

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Trinitarian work. It's not just a work of one person of the Trinity, but it's a Trinitarian work.

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OK. It's a triunity of God that allows us to have a relationship with him. And that's it.

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We did make it pretty good. Any questions? Yeah.