The Athanasian Creed

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I'm thankful to see everyone back from our extended break.
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We were on our Christmas break, and now we're back at it studying the doctrine of the Trinity.
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And so far, we have done a lot.
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We have looked at what the doctrine of the Trinity says.
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We have looked at the scriptures that are particularly relevant.
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Certainly, we haven't looked at all of them because that would be impossible.
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But we have looked at several scriptures that are particularly relevant to this subject.
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We've looked at the history of the development of understanding of the doctrine.
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Not the development of the doctrine, because the doctrine is that it has always been the truth.
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But the development of understanding of how it was to be understood, and how it was to be described, and how it was to be articulated.
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We've seen that.
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We've looked at various councils and things like that.
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And where we are moving tonight is to look at the Athanasian Creed.
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But before we do that, I want to share with you a couple of things.
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So I know when I said Athanasian Creed, you all pulled out that handout.
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But really, what I'd like for you to do is pull out the first handout I gave you.
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And you'll notice that it is big, bold letters and big words.
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I printed this for a lecture that I'm going to be giving on Saturday.
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And I just thought I would like to share it with you all.
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Because it really, it puts into a very short, simple diagram what we have talked about for the last two months, or however long it has been.
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And over the break, I did have an interesting thing happen.
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It was actually on the night that I found out about what had happened with the Hoffman family.
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I was outside making phone calls that evening.
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Had just called Jack, and I was calling a few other people.
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And I'm standing out in my front yard, because I never make calls in the house, because when you have a one-year-old, you gotta step outside.
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So I stepped outside.
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I'm in Star Wars pajama pants and a white t-shirt, no shoes.
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Just to paint the picture, because this is gonna be relevant in a moment.
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It is very dark.
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It's wintertime, so it must have been at least seven in the evening.
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So dark street lights are on.
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And I see coming down my road two young men, black pants, short sleeve, white t-shirt, tie, and a name badge.
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And I said, I know what that is.
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So they were walking, and I'm on the phone.
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And I said, I gotta call you back.
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And I hung up the phone real quick, and I shoved it down in my pocket.
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And I walked out there, and I said, can I ask you boys a question? And they were stunned.
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I imagine nobody comes up to them.
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They make it their mission to go to people.
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I went to them.
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And I walked out, I said, can I ask you a question? And they were Star Wars jammies.
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I actually think they were afraid.
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This giant man in a beard with a t-shirt, no stains.
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But probably, I just looked like, if I would have had a can of drink in my hand, I would have been everything they've trained for.
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But, yeah, and a shotgun, yeah, a shotgun.
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And I walked out there, and I stopped, and I said, boys, can I ask you a question? And they were boys.
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I mean, they looked like younger than Cody.
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They were just fresh-faced, right out of Utah.
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I mean, sorry.
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I mean, and I said, I said, I said, I need you to answer a question for me.
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If you were walking by, and you saw me laying down here on my front lawn, and I was dying, I only have two minutes to live, and you have two minutes to tell me how I can go to heaven, go.
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And they just sort of looked at me like I was crazy.
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They looked at each other like, what have we gotten into? And they said, that's hard.
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I said, I know, your two minutes is running out, go.
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Give me something.
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And obviously, it was sort of knocked them back on their heels a little bit.
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I said, the reason why you don't have anything to say is because you don't have the gospel.
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I said, you can't give the gospel to a dying person because you don't have it.
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I said, but I do want to talk to you about what you believe, because I want to share with you some things that you need to understand.
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And one of the first things that I mentioned to them, because they started talking about how after you die, you get a second chance.
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That was their answer.
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I said, where in the Bible does it say you get a second chance? He says, well, in the Bible it says every knee shall bow.
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I said, yes, it does say every knee shall bow.
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Some are bowing in obedience and submission.
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Some are bowing in fear and knowing that they're about to be judged for their sins.
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I said, every knee shall bow.
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That doesn't mean everybody's saved.
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I said, you're reading into that passage something that it doesn't say.
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I said, but let me ask you this.
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I said, you do believe.
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I said, you're Mormons, and you believe that God was once a man who lived on another planet that surrounds a star called Kolob, that he, because of his adherence to Mormon teachings, became a god himself, and through celestial marriage, was able to give birth to all of the beings that we now call human beings who will, through their obedience to Mormon teachings, become gods, right? And they looked at each other and said, yeah.
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And I said, how do you square that with Isaiah 43.10 that says, before me there was no God formed, and after me there will be no God formed.
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There is only one God.
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And that's how I began the conversation.
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Not trying to seem like I was smarter than them, but I was trying to let them know, because at one point he was trying to go into this whole we're the same thing.
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I said, no we're not.
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You believe in a God who was once a man, and is now a God because of his works.
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You believe that I can become a God as long as I do the works.
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You not only believe in a works-based religion, but you believe in a God who was once a man.
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That is not true.
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At the end, they asked if I would pray with them, and I said no.
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I said, I'll pray for you.
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I said, but I will not pray with you because you are praying to a false God.
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They said, thank you, and they left.
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But anyhow, I just wanted to share that story because understanding what you believe is very important.
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Because if I didn't understand what I believe, those two guys probably could have talked me into circles and tied me in knots with what they were saying.
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It also didn't hurt that I knew what they believed, too.
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But knowing what I believe, because at one point I said, you boys don't believe in the Trinity, do you? And they said, no.
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I said, you can't understand John 1, 1 through 3 without the Trinity.
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I said, but you try, but you can't do it.
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So I mean, this is all important stuff, and this is why I'm trying to say this is practical stuff.
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When you get into the Athanasian Creed tonight, your head's gonna spin a little.
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Mine spins, and I've been studying this thing for years.
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The Athanasian Creed is one of the most profound documents in the history of the Christian church in trying to explain two things, the triune nature of God and the dual nature of Christ.
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Because when we say God is one essence in three persons, we say Christ is one person with two natures.
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He has a divine nature and a human nature.
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And the Athanasian Creed seeks to express both of those truths in a single page.
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It's a lot to take in.
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So before we get there, let's just go back over what is the Trinity? What have we learned so far? And if we get confused in reading the Creed, maybe we can go back to this and say, okay, let's not forget the simplicity.
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Because there is a simple way for this to make sense to us.
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What is the Trinity? We must keep in mind, as I say here, Trinitarianism depends upon making proper distinctions.
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You have to be able to make distinctions to understand the Trinity.
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The primary distinction that must be made is you must be able to make a distinction between being and person.
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If you can't make a distinction between being and person, then you will not understand the doctrine of the Trinity.
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And that's where most people get off the train.
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Because most people either aren't willing to make the distinction or they're unable to make the distinction.
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So the classic formula as we know, there are three foundational principles of Trinitarianism.
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One, God is one in essence.
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Two, God is three in person.
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Three, the three persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and distinct.
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So if you look at the square box that I printed, I tried to encapsulate that idea in a graphic.
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I know it's all words, there's no pictures.
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But if you look at the top, you'll see I put the word God next to it.
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I put the name of God as it's written in English letters, which would be Yahweh.
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Or sometimes if you pronounce it with the Hebrew that hard, Yahweh.
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It's a little harder to say without getting something on you.
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But you have God, Yahweh, and then the four letters of the Hebrew, which is Yod-Heh-Vod-Heh.
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That's the right here.
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It actually reads right to left.
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If you're reading the Hebrew, most people look at the first one, it looks sort of like an N that's not connected.
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But that's actually the last letter.
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If you go all the way to the right, it looks like an apostrophe.
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That's the first letter, that's the Yod.
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Okay, and so you have those four letters.
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That is called the Tetragrammaton.
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Tetra meaning four, grammaton meaning letter.
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So tetragrammaton, the four letter name that is God's name.
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When you're reading your Bible, and you open up the Old Testament, and you're reading in English, and you come to the word Lord, and it is all capitalized, that is that word in Hebrew.
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Now, if you see the word Lord, where it's capital L, lowercase O-R-D, that is a different word, Adonai, Lord.
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And in fact, the word Jehovah is a Germanic change of the word Yahweh and Adonai combined.
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That's how you get the O, where Yahweh doesn't have an O sound, but Adonai does.
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And when you put them together, it becomes Yahovah, or Jehovah when it's turned into German, because the Hebrew doesn't have a J sound, J-J-J-J.
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Neither does the Greek.
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Jesus wasn't ever called Jesus.
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He was called Yeshua in Hebrew, or Yesu in Greek, as they wouldn't have had a J-J sound.
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That sound is Germanic, and wouldn't have been around for several centuries.
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So anyway, this is God.
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God is Yahweh.
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Yahweh is one in essence, and you'll notice I put under that the word substance.
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If I don't know if you remember this before the break, but I said whatever it is that makes up God, He is one of those.
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The stuff, Osea in the Greek.
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God is something.
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He's not nothing.
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He's insubstantial in regard to how we think of substance, because when we think of substance, we think of something you can touch or feel.
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God is insubstantial or unsubstantial in that way, in that He doesn't have a substance that's touchable as we think of substance, but there is something that is God.
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God is not a nothing.
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He's a something, and Jesus tells us what that something is.
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God is spirit.
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Those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, right? So God is spirit, and that spirit that is God is one, but God is three in person.
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And the classical term that was used by theologians, particularly in the early centuries, was subsistence.
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Substance is what God is.
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Subsistence is who God is.
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He is three subsistences, three persons.
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And this is why they would say the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all God, but that the Father is not the Son, because they are both persons, and they interrelate to one another.
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Remember we read Scripture where the Father spoke to the Son, and the Son spoke to the Father.
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And it wasn't like, you ever see those plays where the guy has two masks, and he holds one mask up, and he pretends that he's one guy, and then he takes that mask off, and he puts another mask on, and he pretends he's that guy.
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And maybe he might have a third mask over here, and he pretends he's that person.
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And you know what I'm talking about, right? Like, that's not, God isn't just pretending to be Jesus, and pretending to be the Father, and pretending to be the Spirit.
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That's called modalism.
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That's saying that there's one person who's pretending or in modes of being for our benefit.
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That's not what the Bible teaches.
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The Bible teaches that the Father and the Son have a relationship.
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And you don't have a relationship without there being a distinction.
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The Bible says that Jesus prayed to the Father.
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John 16 says, I'll pray to the Father, and He'll send you another comforter.
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Jesus prayed to the Father.
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And I've heard people say, well, if Jesus was God, why did He pray? Well, because He wasn't an atheist.
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That makes sense, right? And why would He pray if He was God? Because He was also man.
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And He spoke to God as the second person of the Trinity speaking to the Father.
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There's really no contradiction.
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If you believe the Trinity, there's no contradiction in the Scripture at all.
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A contradiction occurs, going down the list.
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A contradiction occurs when you say that something is and is not at the same time and in the same relationship.
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I'll give you an example of a contradiction.
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A contradiction would be a married bachelor.
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Because if he's married, he's not a bachelor.
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And if he's a bachelor, he's not married, right? So if we said God is one in essence and God is three in essence, we would be making a contradiction.
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Because He can't be one in essence and three in essence.
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If we said God was one in person and three in person, we'd be making a contradiction.
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The distinction between essence and person must be maintained to eliminate the possibility of the contradiction.
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We know that that which God is one of, and there's that which God is three of.
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Simple.
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Profound.
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Too much for our menial minds, but certainly not a contradiction.
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That's the key to all this.
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Because God, you know, I've heard people say there's nothing God can't do.
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And I know the Bible says nothing is impossible with God.
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But God does not exercise the ridiculous, nor does He go outside of the bounds of that which is logical.
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He is logic in and of Himself.
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He has created this world logically.
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And so for us to say that God breaks the boundaries of truth and breaks the boundaries of that which contradicts itself would be to do violence to the nature of God, would be to speak ill of God, is to say that He is without any sense.
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And we don't do that.
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Now, below the box it mentions this.
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And I just want to remind you of these things.
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I know we've talked about them.
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The distinction between the ontological and economic trinity must also be maintained to eliminate the possibility of confusion.
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Now, I know that probably some of what I've said tonight has not eliminated the possibility of confusion.
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But the ontological trinity is that God is one in essence and three in person.
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The economic trinity is that each person works a unique role in redemption.
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The Father did not die on the cross.
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That is huge because there are people who believe that.
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Patrapassionism is a false teaching that basically says God Himself, the Father, was dying on the cross.
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It's not true, but there are people who believe it.
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There's a whole big, long word.
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Patrapassionism has its own distinction.
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So that again is where we have to step back and say, okay, the trinity says, and let me mention this to you because there are people that talk about Jesus living in their heart.
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According to the trinity, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and the Holy Spirit lives in our heart.
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Now, He is called the Spirit of Christ in Romans 8 and a few other places.
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So if you mean the Spirit of Christ is within me, that's one thing.
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But to say that Jesus has come down from His place as our mediator and resides in us, that is not what the Bible teaches.
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And so we have to be, again, what's the role of the Spirit? Jesus said, if I go away, I will send you another comforter who will walk with you.
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The role of the Spirit is to be the one who indwells.
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And that's why I don't like the phrase, won't you just ask Jesus into your heart? Because it's not a biblical phrase.
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Now, I understand that people have been, you know, they're not bad people who use that phrase, but I don't like it.
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Only because it's not clearly articulating what we're saying.
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We call upon Christ to provide our forgiveness because of His work on the cross and that the Spirit would come and live in us, you know, when we repent and believe.
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That's our call.
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And so this idea of we're going to pray Jesus into our heart, that's a modern sort of colloquial phrase, but it's not biblical.
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You won't find anywhere where the Apostle Paul went into Ephesus or Corinth or something and said, okay, everybody, bow your head.
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And we're going to pray and ask Jesus into our heart.
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He never did it, not once.
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Again, we say the Father elects, the Son redeems, the Spirit regenerates.
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And I love this verse, and I just threw it on here.
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All the Father gives me will come to me.
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Even in our salvation, Jesus makes a distinction between Him and the Father.
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The Father is the one who elects, the Son is the one who redeems, the Spirit is the one who regenerates.
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The Father gives me those who I'm going to save.
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And the Spirit does the work of applying what I did to their hearts.
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So we all have a role.
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But yet, it's not separate, it's just distinct.
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The Father does what He does, the Spirit does what He does, and the Son does what He does.
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Confusion in this area can lead to misrepresenting the individual work of each person in the Trinity.
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As I've said, you've got people who believe the Father died on the cross and things like that.
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Well, now let's move to the Athanasian Creed.
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Everybody bring some BC powder.
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I laugh, but this is a very powerful document.
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First thing I've got to mention before we even start, Athanasius did not write this.
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It's based on what Athanasius taught.
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And Athanasius, if you don't remember, was one of the bishops at the Council of Nicaea.
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After the Council of Nicaea, Athanasius ended up being one of the few who continued to stand for the truth, even though much of the world started to follow Arius.
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Even Constantine's son began to follow Arius.
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Constantine, according to some sources, even had a variation in his opinion on what Nicaea had determined.
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But Athanasius stood firm.
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In fact, there's a phrase in Latin, Athanasius Contramundum.
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Athanasius Contramundum means Athanasius against the world.
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If I must stand against the world, I will.
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And he articulated the most profound understanding of what we mean when we say Trinity, and it became known as the Athanasian Creed.
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And I love it.
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I don't know a lot of churches that use it in their regular liturgies because it's quite long and somewhat thought-provoking, but it is a good creed.
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It starts with these words.
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Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.
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Now remember, Catholic there does not mean Roman Catholic.
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This would not have even entered into the minds of the first few centuries of the church that it would reference Rome.
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Catholic means what? You may remember? Universal.
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The universal faith, meaning the faith of the truth of God.
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The universal faith that's held among all believers.
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This is it regarding the nature of God.
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And it goes on to say which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
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So they're pretty serious about this one.
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Because he said first, he said it is necessary that you believe this, and second, that unless you believe this wholly and undefiled, meaning you don't get to skip out on any of it, then you shall perish everlastingly.
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My sermon Sunday, I don't mean to change the subject, but I just want to mention, my sermon Sunday is called Deficient Theology.
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Paul went into Ephesus and there was 12 guys there who didn't know about Jesus, they knew about John the Baptist.
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And Paul starts talking to them and finally tells them about Jesus and they get baptized.
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But the point of the message that I'm going to give is, there's a lot of people running around out there that have a deficient theology.
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They might know something about God, they might know something about the Bible, but they don't know what it means to be saved.
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They don't know about the work of Christ.
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And really, that's what this is saying.
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There are some things you've got to believe.
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There are some things you've got to know and believe.
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And I mean, the Bible is clear about this.
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There are certain things that if we don't believe them, we will not be saved.
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And this is just saying this is part of it.
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It says, and the Catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
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It's brilliant, it really is.
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It goes on, for there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.
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But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one, the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.
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Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.
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The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated.
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The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.
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The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal.
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And yet, there are not three eternals, but one eternal.
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As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.
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Everybody together? Following along? Okay.
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So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, the Holy Ghost almighty.
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And yet, they are not three allmighties, but one almighty.
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So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God.
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And yet there are not three Gods, but one God.
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So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord.
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And yet not three Lords, but one Lord.
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For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every person by himself to be both God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the Catholic religion to say there be three gods or three lords.
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The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten.
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The Son is of the Father alone, not made nor created but begotten.
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The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, neither made nor created nor begotten but proceeding.
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So there is one Father, not three Fathers, one Son, not three Sons, one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.
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And in this Trinity, none is a for or after other.
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None is greater and less than other.
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But the whole three persons are co-eternal, together, and co-equal.
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So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the unity in Trinity and the Trinity in unity is to be worshipped.
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He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.
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We'll stop there, you'll notice I put a little line because the next section deals with the nature of Christ.
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But just sort of taking a moment to let our mind sort of adjust, because it says a lot.
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And it goes through great detail to say what it's saying and not saying.
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And that is important.
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One of the things that often times churches are not good at is saying what they don't believe.
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What do I mean? Well, if you read a church's statement of faith, it'll often say things like, you know, we believe the Bible is God's word, infallible, inerrant, something like that.
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The next statement will say something like we believe that God is a Trinity, one in essence, three in person, right? You kind of go down the list.
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But if you find a really solid statement of faith, like some of the confessions that came out of the Reformation, it will say thus we affirm and thus we deny.
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We believe that God is one in essence and three in person.
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We do not believe that these three persons are three gods.
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We do not believe that this one nature is divided among the three persons.
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You see, it's being clear.
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It's seeking to say not only do we believe this, but we don't believe that.
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Because that happens sometimes.
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I know a lot of churches, their statement of faith is only like four lines.
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We love God.
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We love Jesus.
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We love people.
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We love you.
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Come, come, come.
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And that's fine if you don't stand for anything.
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Because what happens is you end up with a whole mess of people that are all worshiping different gods because they've not defined anything.
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They've not defined who it is they're worshiping.
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They're not defining what it is.
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And I do believe this.
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One of the great quotes of the ancient church was in essentials unity, finish it, in essentials unity, come on, you know this, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.
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That was a quote that was actually attributed to Augustine.
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I don't know if he really said it.
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But the idea is this, in those things which are essential we should be united, in those things which are non-essential we should have liberty, and in everything we should have charity, or the old word for love.
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So in everything we should have charity or love.
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And that's an important thing.
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But one of the issues that I take with that statement, because of course I'm going to have an issue with it.
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I have an issue with everything.
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No, one of the issues that I take with that statement, even though I believe it's good, that's actually the quote that's used by FIRE, Fellowship of Independent Reform.
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We're part of that.
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And that's on their website, in essentials unity, non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.
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I believe in the quote, but here's where I kind of get off the train, is I ask the question, what's essential? Because if I gave you guys a piece of paper, if I took out 20 pieces of paper, walked around and gave one to Dale, one to Mike, one to Paul, and I said write down the 20 things that you consider are essential, do we know they're all going to be the same? You know, years ago I had a youth group.
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I was a youth leader here for five years before becoming the pastor.
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And I took them to a youth camp, and while at the camp I gave them a list of doctrines.
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It was probably four pages long, and it was not big type either.
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It was like, hell is a real place that's eternal for those who don't believe in Christ.
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I mean, simple, not difficult, but difficult in the sense that they weren't easy doctrines.
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And it was a list of them, and I said, here, go through and put down essential or non-essential.
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Does a person have to believe this to be saved? And then, after they did, that was the afternoon exercise.
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I said, okay youth, go do this.
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We didn't have a youth camp like other people.
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Our youth camps are really weird.
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But I said, do this, and then tonight, after dinner, we're going to sit down and we're going to go through each one.
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And we're going to talk about each one.
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And it was a very deep and profound discussion, because we'd get to certain things, and we would say, this is certainly true, but is it essential to be saved? It's certainly accurate, but what if someone denied it? Would they be denying the faith? See, that's the heart of all this, because the early church believed if you denied who God was, if you denied the deity of Christ, the deity of the Holy Spirit, the personality of the three persons, and the unity of the nature, that you were denying something that meant that it would imperil your soul.
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I don't know where you are on that, but I tend to still believe that.
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I think there are people who are ignorant, who don't know.
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That's going to be one of the things I talk about this Saturday.
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I'm going to talk about the four dangers that I think land today in churches.
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And the first one is just ignorance.
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People just don't know.
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And it's the pastor's job, the elder's job, to make sure people do know.
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But I think that there's the other danger, it's the second one, it's the people who are intentionally wrong.
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They see this and they say, I don't believe it.
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Because all this is doing is articulating what the Bible says.
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Does the Bible teach that God is one in essence? Absolutely.
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Does the Bible call the Father God? Yes.
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Does the Bible call Jesus God? Yes.
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Does the Bible call the Holy Spirit God? Yes.
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But are there three gods? No.
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So we have to understand this this way.
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There's really no other way.
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There's no way of getting around it.
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And so if we believe the Bible, this is where we end up.
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You know, have you ever read the Jehovah Witness Bible? If you go and find one, if you happen to be at Chamblins, which I know is Richard's favorite little hole in the wall, where they have books on top of books, you go to Chamblins or you go to another place that has old books for sale, you might happen upon a New World Translation.
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That's what it's called.
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And it can confuse you because it sounds like any other.
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I mean, there's a lot of Bibles.
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The New International Version, the New American Standard Version, the New English Version.
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So New World Translation just sounds like just another one.
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The New World Translation was translated by the Jehovah Witnesses for their particular belief system.
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And they added words into the text to support their position, such as, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
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Or rather, the Word was with God and the Word was God.
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They added the indefinite article, and the Word was a God.
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In Colossians, where it says all things were created through Him, talking about Jesus, they put other.
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So it says all other things were created through Him.
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So it has to say Jesus was the first created being, and then everything else was created by Him.
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So they've made the point.
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We deny this.
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And we're going to deny it to the point that we're going to even twist the Scripture to make it agree.
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And that's profound.
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That's scary stuff.
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So anyhow, this is what the church believes historically.
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And if you go to any of the other confessions, if you go to the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is the foundation of Presbyterianism and Anglicanism, if you go to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is based on the Westminster, if you go to the 1644 Confession, if you go to any of these confessions that came out of the Reformation, in regard to the Trinity, they all say essentially the same thing.
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God is one in essence and three in persons.
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These three persons are distinct but not divided.
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And they are not three parts of one God, but these three persons are the one God.
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And then it goes on to talk about Christ.
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And for the sake of time, I'm not going to read it all to you, but I will encourage you to take and read it.
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It references Christ's dual nature.
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And I like that it mentions that because oftentimes that's another confusing thing.
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I remember one time a Jehovah's Witness lady in a Hardee's.
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And I don't know why Hardee's let her set up in there, but I went into Hardee's to have breakfast and there was a Jehovah's Witness table just set up and she's handing out stuff.
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Maybe she knew the owner, I don't know.
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The owner may have been her, I don't know.
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But I walked by and saw her, so I took a pad of paper out and I wrote down a few scripture verses and I walked over and I said, Ma'am, I'd like for you to read these verses regarding the nature of God.
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I didn't have a whole lot of time to talk with her.
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And she said, well, read this verse.
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And it was, I forget, I think it's in Thessalonians where it says the head of every man is Christ and the head of Christ is God.
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And that was her argument against the Trinity.
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Now how would you answer that? Somebody said, well, what about this verse? It says the head of Christ is God.
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If God is Christ, then God can't have a head.
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And if Jesus is God, then God is not His head.
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The second half of this creed addresses that.
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Because Jesus Christ is fully God, but also fully man.
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And in His humanity, there was a submission and a humility.
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Wherein He said, I'm praying to my Father.
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And He talked about His God as His Father because of His humanity.
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The second person of the Trinity has always been God.
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But the second person of the Trinity has not always been man.
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He became flesh at Bethlehem.
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And in doing so, Philippians tells us He emptied Himself.
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It doesn't mean He quit being God.
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But He did humble Himself.
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And that is why in His humanity certain things are said of Him that one would say, but wait a minute, why would God? Because He's also man.
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And this text, this latter half of the creed helps explain what we mean when we say that.
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So, exactly.
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And He had to be man to do what He did.
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To represent God to man, He must be God.
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And He did.
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But to represent man to God, He must be man.
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And that's why He is called prophet and priest.
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Next week we're going to start drawing to a close.
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I'm going to move to the last lesson.
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How many weeks it's going to take, I don't know, but we'll see.
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But the last lesson in this series is how should our understanding of the Trinity affect our worship? Because when we...
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And this is something I'm going to say Saturday.
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To love God is to love the Trinity.
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Not the doctrine.
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But to love God as He is.
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So how should this affect how we worship Him? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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I pray that this has been encouraging to Your people and will be used by them to draw closer to You.
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In Christ's name, amen.