Simply Trinity (part 23)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father, thank you for this time this morning. Thank you for this change in weather, for the reminder that you are sovereign over all things, that whatever transpires, whether it be rain or sleet or snow or sunshine and warmth, you are still sovereign.

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And we thank you and praise you. Father, we thank you that every day your grace is new to us, your sovereign grace.

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And Father, as we look to this difficult topic of the

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Trinity, I pray that you would bless us, strengthen us, help us to remember the things that we've learned, cause us to think about these things and to be mindful, even as we read your word about the import of them and how you have taught men throughout the centuries.

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And you still are teaching us today through your word and by your spirit. And we praise you and thank you in Jesus name.

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Amen. Well, does anybody not have a quiz? Just in case we've been doing this review quiz and we have a few new folks.

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Anybody else need one? Brian, I have some. And you know what?

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Here you go. I also want to give

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Dallas one of these, just a special, a double blessing as it were. Double consubstantiality handout, because everybody needs one of these.

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Well, you don't really need one, but you know. Okay, so we left off on number 20.

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So we're going to start with 21. That makes sense. Nice, easy. I like to make them easy, true or false.

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Number 21, the scene surrounding the baptism of Jesus refutes the doctrine of the

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Trinity. Let me just paint that picture for you for a moment. We have

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Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and the

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Father's voice saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. So you have the

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Father in heaven, Jesus on the earth, and you have the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. That refutes the doctrine of the

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Trinity, correct? Yeah, it's false. But when

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I was a non -Trinitarian Mormon, that's what we used to say. That obviously refutes the doctrine of the

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Trinity. That's not true, but it seemed true to us and to my buddy the

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Jehovah Witness on the bus when we used to joust with the Trinitarians there.

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Okay, let's see what Barrett says. He says, unlike all the nations around us, nations that believe in many gods.

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Oh, this is from Zipporah, the fictional

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Hebrew female that he created here. He says, unlike all the nations around us, nations that believe in many gods, we believe in one

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God. So how can John be right? When the heavens opened, the divine voice itself pronounced its blessing on one who is, in the words of Isaiah, the

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Lord. Are there two lords now? And not just two, but three, for John said a dove descended on Jesus.

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Some say this is the Spirit. John swore it must be. Well, let's look at that text,

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Matthew 3, verses 16 and 17.

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When Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, and by the way, there's a good tip for baptism, right?

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Don't lollygag in the water. Get up immediately. Okay, that has nothing to do with it. He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were open to him, and he saw the

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Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved

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Son, with whom I am well pleased. So again, Father in heaven, Holy Spirit descending,

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Jesus there. Does that disprove the Trinity? No. Even if we take

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Zipporah's voice and we say, well, you know what? Here's the point. The point is,

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God is in heaven. God in the flesh is being baptized, and God the

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Spirit is descending like a dove. Does that disprove the Trinity? Absolutely not.

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God the Father is located in heaven, true or false? True.

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Is that the only place God the Father is? No. He's everywhere.

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God the Holy Spirit can take the form of a dove and descend, and that's all he is.

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Well, no, it was true up until you said, and that's all he is. We need to remind ourselves that each person of the

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Trinity is omnipresent, omniscient. They're everywhere. They know everything.

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There is one God and three persons, and they all share the same essence, same attributes, etc.

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Okay, number 22. Because there were no systemic theologies in the early church, some

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Christians did not believe in the Trinity. How can you say false?

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Okay, because if any part of the question is false, then the whole question is false.

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So because there were no systemic, why did I put systemic instead of systematic?

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I don't know, but I'm fired. Some Christians said, can you be a

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Christian and not believe in the Trinity? Let's get down to basics.

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Can you be a Christian and not believe in the Trinity? I see a head shake.

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That's almost like a no. I heard Josh say no. Why not, Josh? Okay, how can you disagree with the nature of God and then say, well,

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I believe in that God? It's a good point, but let me ask you this.

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From the moment you believed, were you instantly a systematic theologian who understood the Trinity? Mark was, but most of us are not.

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So if I say to you, I think this person might be saved, and you go up and you say, can you explain the

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Trinity to me? And the person says, no, I cannot. Does that mean right away you say, no, that person's not saved?

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I see that hand. That's really a good point.

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This woman has a future. She might marry a pastor someday.

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Pretty sharp theologian in her own right. It's the difference between understanding it and denying it.

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Let's attempt to wax eloquent about that a little bit. If I teach you, if you're sitting in this class today, and you walk out and say, you know what,

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I deny the Trinity. One of two things is true.

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Either I've done a really poor job explaining the Trinity, or you're not a believer. On the other hand, if you've heard the gospel, and here's the thing, just a little side thing.

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How many times do you hear the gospel before you get saved? And I dare say that probably none of us really know.

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Why? Because we got little stoppers in our ears.

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And the gospel is preached to us, do we hear it? No, it's just so much background noise.

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Maybe you do, maybe you evaluate, maybe you reject it until one day the Holy Spirit afflicts you, conflicts you, whatever, causes you to be born again.

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But for the most part, I think, especially for me, I would have literally no idea. I can think of a few times I heard the gospel before I believed, but I don't know how many times.

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I probably heard it hundreds of times before that. But I think the key is exactly what

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Janet said, which is this. If I understand the Trinity, if I understand the

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Trinitarian teaching, and then I deny it, well then there's vast reason to think that that person is not a

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Christian, because they're fundamentally, as Josh said, rejecting the nature of who

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God is. Okay, 23, true or false, what the

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Trinity does in time reflects the eternal relations of the Trinity. What the

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Trinity does in time, in other words, how the triune God acts in creation, reflects the eternal relations of the

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Trinity. True.

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Barrett says this, the gospel tells us something about who this triune

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God is in and of himself, apart from creation and salvation.

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The deeper we go into the mystery of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the more we discover that the mission of the

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Son in salvation history, the fact that he is sent by the Father, reflects his eternal origin from the

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Father in eternity. This pattern applies to the whole Trinity, the

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Father sending the Son, the Father and Son giving the Spirit. These missions are not arbitrary, but reflect something intrinsic about God's triunity.

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The Father sends his Son into the world because it is the Son who is eternally begotten or generated. And likewise, the

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Father and the Son give the Spirit who descends to the world because the Father and the

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Son eternally breathe out or spirate the Spirits apart from the world. So what we see in scripture, like if we went to Ephesians chapter one, before the world began,

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God the Father chose some to be in Christ. Why? So that they could be washed, cleaned, perfect.

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And the Holy Spirit in time is their seal, meaning he causes them to be born again.

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He dwells in them. He stays with them until the day of redemption. These things are reflections of their eternal relationship, this relationship of the

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Trinity that before the world began, before anything existed, this relationship of the

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Trinity that existed. Thoughts, questions, concerns, comments, heresies? We would hear heresies.

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Okay. I'd just like to throw out the opportunity for somebody to say, you know what, I'd like to try a fresh heresy this morning.

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Number 24, true or false, the New Testament corrects the teaching of the Old Testament so that we can understand the

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Trinity. I just like the question though.

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Now, I'm going to unfire myself just based on that question alone. I really like that one. The New Testament corrects the teaching of the

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Old Testament so that we can understand the Trinity. That's false. Barrett says, rather than thinking, as many skeptics do, that the

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Trinity is an invention, the New Testament correcting the monotheism of the Old Testament, we should instead think that this is the

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New Testament is the coming of the Trinity into full view, lit up and radiant and effulgence of triune revelation right before our eyes.

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Warfield said, the mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament, but the mystery of the

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Trinity underlies the Old Testament revelation, and here and there almost comes into view.

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In other words, he says, there are glimpses of the Trinity in the Old Testament, and I think that's important, and I pointed out as I've taught through Acts, when

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Peter is typically in the early stages of Acts, the preacher, and when he's preaching the gospel, when he presents

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Jesus Christ as the Son of God, in fact, just thinking about when they healed the man outside the temple and then went in to the temple,

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John and Peter did, he didn't have to explain to this

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Jewish audience that Jesus was God, and God the

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Father was God, and that he didn't have to reconcile those two things, and why do you suppose that is?

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Keeping in mind they had a Jewish audience who would say, hero Israel, the Lord our God is one, right?

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The Shema, Deuteronomy 6 .4. Why wouldn't they have to reconcile? How can you present this new

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God, Jonathan? It wasn't new. It was kind of, if we can put it this way, they heard it and they said to themselves, this isn't a violation of Deuteronomy 6 .4,

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those who believed, this is basically the fulfillment of it. Now we understand the true nature of God, that he's

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Father, Son, and Spirit, Jonathan. Yeah, they had an oral tradition too, I mean, you know, the teaching of scripture,

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I mean, just think, I mean, it's hard for us to imagine a time, you know, before the internet, but there was such a time.

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It's hard for us to imagine a time before television, but there was such a time. It's hard for us to imagine a time before radio, or newspaper, or books, but that time existed, and what do you suppose they did for, you know, entertainment?

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You know, we might think, well, I know exactly what they did, they ran around town looking for the latest gossip, or maybe they tried out all the new coffee shops, or maybe they sat around and listened as grandpa said, you know, you know, not me, but my grandfather walked and talked in the garden with God.

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What do you mean he walked with him? Isn't God just a spirit? Well, he took on a body, or he had the appearance of having a body, and so all these things, as they talked about him, or even as they would talk maybe about Samson, and how the

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Holy Spirit rushed upon him, and all these things may have seemed a little mysterious in the Old Testament, because there was no cohesive framework for it, and then, you know,

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Peter, John, others, Philip, come along and explain the gospel, explain who

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Jesus is, and the pieces, like in a jigsaw puzzle, since we've been, our house has been filled with jigsaw puzzles lately, you know, they had the outer frame of this puzzle, and then as the apostles started teaching about this triune

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God, about why Jesus is deity, the pieces all started to snap into place, and they understood it.

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So, thank you for that illustration, Ms. Cooley. She's like, you're welcome.

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All right, number 25. What are some of the ways the Old Testament presents the

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Trinity? Some of the ways the Old Testament presents the

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Trinity? In other words, if we're really studying the Old Testament, are there hints, and we've already said that there are, what would be some of the hints of the

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Trinity in the Old Testament? Okay, definitely a Christophany there. I think there are a multitude of Christophanies, in the

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Christophany being a pre -incarnate appearance of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, where there's a person there who is suddenly talked about as if he's

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God, because he is God. Even when Samson's parents are visited by the angel of the

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Lord, and they eventually figure out this is God, and you know, the things that go on there, yeah. Okay, so I have in there the angel of the

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Lord. I mean, we could add, you know, various Christophanies. Yes. Other ideas?

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Jonathan? Okay. Yep, the

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Lord said to my Lord. Okay, so the plural form,

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Elohim, you know, some of the things that he lists here, distinction between names

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Elohim and Yahweh, and wisdom personified in Job 28, 12 to 27 of Proverbs 8, words of God also personified, ascribed divine attributes, the spirit of God, God speaks of himself in the plural, multiple divine names or persons named, three persons named, those kind of things.

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So, in other words, again, you know, I think if we just, I think the jigsaw puzzle idea is good, because, you know, they would have different pieces, maybe separated by color.

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And then, you know, somebody comes along and says, well, this is how you put the puzzle together. And it made sense. Other thoughts?

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Yes, Mark. Okay. The suffering servants, that whole section of Isaiah from 42 to 61,

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I think it is. Okay, good. Number 26. What is the difference between the ontological trinity and the economic trinity?

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This is something we talked about quite a bit. I don't think we can stress it quite enough. What does it mean? What's ontological trinity versus economic trinity?

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Ontological is being. Okay. Who God is in his essence.

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And then economic trinity is how he acts. Okay. So, who he is and what he does.

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He says, let's distinguish between the imminent or ontological trinity and the economic trinity.

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The imminent trinity or ontological trinity refers to who our God is in eternity apart from the created order.

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Sometimes the imminent trinity is also called the ontological trinity. That's why I said that.

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Remember, ontology refers to the study of being. In this case, God's being, that is his essence or nature.

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To refer to the imminent trinity, then, is to refer to who the triune God is internally according to himself and in and of himself apart from creation.

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The economic trinity, however, refers to how this triune God acts toward the created order.

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Economic describes the triune God's external operations in creation, providence, and redemption.

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So again, if we think about, if we just generally said this, there's some overlap.

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But if we typically think about it this way, the Father chooses, the Son does what? We could say redeems, right?

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And then the Holy Spirit seals. He does a lot of things, right?

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I mean, we could argue about who sanctifies because I think there's plenty of room for that.

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And like I said, there is some overlap. But I think, yeah, it's fair to say the Holy Spirit sanctifies, the

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Holy Spirit causes us to be born again, those kind of things. He gives as example, because it is the

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Father who, oh, well, actually that's the next question, but it's very similar to this one.

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We dare not think who this triune God is in and of himself can be reduced to his external actions in history, actions that may be even temporary.

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If we do, we may impose human limitations or characteristics on God himself.

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In other words, they don't neatly just fit into specific roles.

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There is some overlap, but let's go to 27 because I think this will help too. Understanding who

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God is helps us to understand what he does. Understanding who

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God is helps us to understand what he does. Okay.

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Understanding what God does helps us understand who he is. I'm not really sure how that's different, but go ahead and explain it.

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Okay. Okay.

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So I learned some things about who God is by general revelation, but I need specific revelation to tell me more about him, to distinguish between the persons.

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I think there's a lot of truth in that. So I do retract my false. Okay. It is true.

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The false is retracted. Barrett says there may be wisdom in using a far more specific vocabulary like relations and missions.

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Remember the imminent Trinity or the ontological Trinity, who God is in and of himself. He's the one

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God who is distinguished as three persons by the eternal relations of origin alone.

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And again, what's the eternal relations of origin? The father is unbegotten.

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The son is. If the father is unbegotten, the son is eternally begotten and the

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Holy spirit is eternally spirated. Okay. These eternal relations of origin and these relations alone explain the internal and eternal ordering or processions of the

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Trinity. So we have paternity. The father alone is father, right? Filiation.

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The son is only the son and spiration. The spirit is the spirit.

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He's unique, but they also explain the external and temporal relations of the

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Trinity. For example, it is because the father begets his son in eternity that it is fitting for the father to send his son to become incarnate in history.

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Now there was some debate in my email. You know, someone said, well, couldn't the father have sent the son and the son acquiesced to the sending?

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Well, absolutely. But that's not the point of the email, which was the email was against ESS, the eternal subordination of the son, which basically says that before anything else existed, there was a hierarchy in the

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Trinity. And we've talked about the problems with the hierarchy view of the Trinity. That is to say, if you ultimately believe that the father has full authority and the son and the spirit are functionally subordinate and must kind of obey the father, then what do you have?

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Do you have a Trinity or do you have a society of three different gods?

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And I think the answer is the latter one, where there's a structure and an order to it.

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Begetting and spirating are eternal and internal, occurring within the triune

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God before all ages. And this is important, and I won't spend too much time on it, but just think about this.

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When did the son become the son? He's always been the son.

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And so for us, that's a conundrum. I'm not here to bash

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John MacArthur. I'm just here to relate something. For years, some of you will know this, some of you won't.

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For years, he held onto a view called incarnational sonship. You ever heard of it?

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It's the view where the son, Jesus, became the son when he was born.

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Before that, he was God, but he was not the son. And for years, the fundamentalists were after him because that was bad teaching.

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And so I remember one Sunday morning, because we were at Grace Community Church then, and I didn't really know too much about this, but I remember listening one

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Sunday morning. I believe John was in, I want to say

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Luke, and all of a sudden he said, open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter one.

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And so we go to Hebrews chapter one, and he talks about how Jesus is eternally the son, and he went on and everything like that.

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And so I wrote my pastor that afternoon when we got home, and I said, did

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John just change his view? And he said, I don't know, I'll have to get back to you.

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And then he wrote back, and he said, yes, in fact, he did. He no longer believes in incarnational sonship.

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And I go, okay, good to know. But that's the idea, because it is hard for us to wrap our heads around the idea of eternal sonship, because we think to ourselves in human terms, when does our son become our son?

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Well, at the most, we would say when what? He is conceived, right?

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And for a lot of people, they'd say, well, it's the moment of birth or whatever. I mean, before that, we might have a relationship with him, but it doesn't really feel like a son, but whatever.

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That's kind of beyond the scope of it. We want to impose our understanding of sonship on him, and that's not correct.

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He's eternally begotten. He says here, well, actually, we can go to the next quiz question, 28, true or false?

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Yes, I see that hand. Yeah, we could definitely have those moments. I can give you another one, because although I would say, and I'm not, again,

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I'm not here to knock John, I think, I mean, once you have 75, 90 years of ministry,

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I don't know what it is. It's a lot of years. But, you know, there was another one. He was, and these moments kind of stick in your mind, because you just think, wow, you know, 2

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Corinthians 5, verses 14 to 17. And I remember this one, because I heard it live, and then

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I went and borrowed the tape. You used to have to borrow tapes. I went to the book, the tape shack and borrowed the tape and all that, and 2

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Corinthians 5, verses 14 to 17, tape number three, so it was sermon number three in the series. And John changed his view on the atonement, you know, talking about change.

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And he went from sufficient for all, meaning Christ's death could have saved everyone, and efficient only for the elect, meaning it had sufficient, what's the word

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I'm looking for? Well, you could say potency, but value, I guess, you know, to save every person who'd ever been born.

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You know, if there were people on every planet in the galaxy, there was enough in Christ's death to save everyone, because he's infinite, he's

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God. He said, but it was efficient only for the ones that the

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Father chose. But when he got 2 Corinthians 5, what's the verse?

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Yeah, 14 to 17 of 2 Corinthians 5, let's just kind of go there. And he said, this is obviously

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Paul writing, and he says, yeah,

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I'm sure it's 2 Corinthians 5, verses 14 to 17. And when you hear it, you'll go, okay,

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I don't even know what John's on here. But he says,

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Paul says, if I can see the problem with this is the numbers are just a little bit, there it is, for the love of God controls us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all.

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So there you go, wait a minute, you're thinking, Jesus died for everybody. And this is why he chose that verse.

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Therefore, all have died, and he died for all, again, you know, this universal aspect of things, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake, died and was raised.

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And so what he did was, he said, well, wait a minute, if he died for all, there's a problem.

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Because why, if he died for the sins of everyone who was ever born, then why aren't they all saved?

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And the answer, he says, is here, that those who live, in other words, those who have spiritual eternal life, might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake, died and was raised.

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And there's the key, who for their sake, died and was raised. Well, if he died for their sake, if he died to save them, and was raised, then why aren't they saved?

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And the ultimate reason is because what?

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What's that? He didn't die for them. It probably is the

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John Owen thing. And maybe John MacArthur was reading John Owen and said, you know what, John Owen's right, and I'm wrong, because John Owen is usually right.

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So anyway, all that to say that people can change their views, and when you're in ministry as long as John has been, hopefully you're more in the direction of getting things right as time goes on.

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And I think he, in those instances, certainly is. Okay, so where was

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I before I rudely interrupted myself? Number 28, true or false, there was never a time when the

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Father did not have his word. And that's true.

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And you know, it's in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. And so when is in the beginning, and we tend to think that in the beginning means time, in the beginning of time.

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Well, is that correct? There's a timelessness to John 1, and he talks about that here,

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Barrett does. Before all ages, there was God and nothing else. Before the cosmos existed, there was

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God and him alone. Except alone may sound as if he were lonely. He was not.

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For in the beginning, says John, was the word. John's way of returning, or of referring to the

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Son. Co -eternal, this word was with God. Co -equal, this word was

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God. It's hard to more closely identify the word with God than this.

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He was co -equal with God as the one who was God himself. Never was there a time when the

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Father was without his word. Well, why would that be? Why was there never a time when the

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Father was without the word or the Son? Okay, because then

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Jesus wouldn't be eternal, and the Father would not be eternally a father.

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Says, never was there a time when the Father did not beget his word.

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It's that eternal begetting. It's that thing that boggles our mind, because when we think of begetting, we think of in time.

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It's a one -time deal, and he's, you know, Steve was begotten of Dean, and you know, etc, etc.

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If there were a time, then in no way could John say the word, the

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Son, was both with God and was God. In John's mind, the word, the

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Son, is both distinct from God, the Father. The word was with God, and one with God himself, the word was

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God. So there's no way to divide that up. There was never a time when the

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Father did not have the Son, and the Son was not being begotten of the

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Father. Questions, concerns, comments, heresies? I'm always looking for, you know, random heresies that we can write down and go, that's new, that's new.

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I think that's really excellent. You know, the way

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I like to talk about it is, you know, our problem with time is that we think of it, of course, because we're in time, we think of it as all -consuming.

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You know, there was a point where it began, there may be a point where it ends, and we exist in that continuum there.

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But like you said, God is outside of that, and it's hard for us to, you know, just even wrap our heads around that, and so the way

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I like to explain it is this, that for God, you know, if the Bible says that, um, what is it about time, that to God a thousand years is as a day, and a day is as a thousand years, or what, is that close?

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What does that mean? What it means is, time is ultimately irrelevant to God.

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God is so beyond time, because time is what? It's a creation. So the way we, if we, if we think about it rightly, time is more of a destination or a place, and that's, again, that's hard for us to accept, but it basically, if we understand this, you know, is

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God learning as time goes on? That's a heresy, and that's not a new one, it's a rather old one.

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But that would be the God, say, of Mormonism or of open theism, which we don't need to explain right now.

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But, God's just like us, like that pagan song that came out 30 years ago. What if God was one of us?

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Bad news, because he's, he's going to be like Allah, you know, capricious.

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He's going to be like Steve, and we're all in big trouble. Instead, we have a God who, this is time, and he, it's all laid out in front of him, and it's all going on simultaneously.

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So, when I say time is irrelevant to God, because it doesn't really, it's only relevant to him as it regards us, or as Jesus, the

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God -man, when he comes into creation, he actually steps into time and goes into the timeline, and at the same time is outside of the timeline.

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You know, there's, there's the mystery of Jesus Christ. How is it that he enters into the world and yet remains outside of it?

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Because he's both God and man, Charlie. No, we, we, we can't really grasp it.

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You know, I was just thinking as you were talking, because my mind wanders, but I was thinking about the hymn that says, and time shall be no more.

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And I'm like, hmm, I don't know, right? I mean, because we know that we won't have days and nights anymore, and because Christ, Christ will be our light in heaven.

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But it's kind of mind -boggling to just, you know, think about, and you know, at a place where the law of thermo, what did you say?

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Yeah, whatever that is, second law of thermo, you know, the fact that things just tend to deteriorate.

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You know, my shoulders, my knees, my back, everything else won't happen anymore.

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You know, how glorious is that, right? But the, these things, this, this kind of eternality to God is mind -boggling.

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You know, I used to say to the kids, they'd say, you'll never, or you always, and what would

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I say to the kids? I'd go, you know, when they were kids, I'd say, never is a long time, and always is a long time, right?

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So is eternity. It's a very long time. It's an unimaginable amount of time, because it really is.

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But our thoughts, you know, if Luther said to Erasmus, he said, your thoughts of God are too human.

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And I think that's, that's what we all fall into, right? We want God to be more like us, so we imagine him to be more like us.

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That God is experiencing things the way that we are. Not really, no.

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Which is one of the reasons, what? That we can have confidence in him, because it's not like, it, just imagine, and we'll probably have to close here, but just imagine a

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God who experiences time the way that we do, and that's all he does, right? So he'd be like, he could have his arm around me during my trials and say, boy,

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Steve, I hope we get through this. The good news is, if we just think about Romans 8 .28,

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and what it really tells us, is that God has all of time laid out, and he, he's watching

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Steve, but he's going, you know, I plan this all out. I know how this goes.

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I know this is for your good, even if you don't feel like that right now. Even if it doesn't seem good to you, he doesn't have to go, oh,

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Steve, you know, we'll get through this together. He could say, Steve, trust me, everything

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I do is for my glory and for your good.

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I've said it, and I will do it. You know, Tony, I like that, and whoever wrote this question, I'm going to promote him.

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Well, I think we probably need to close, but any last questions?

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Okay, let's pray. Father in heaven, what a comfort it is to think about you, about a

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God who has always existed, will always exist, has ordained and purposed and planned everything, and just says to us, his creatures, trust me.

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Not only do I know what I'm doing, I know what I have planned. I know what I've done. My character is such that I cannot lie.

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I will not lie. I will never fail. That is a God who we can serve and trust and honor and obey and praise.

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Father, teach us to just bathe in the truths of scripture and rejoice in all that you have revealed to us about yourself.

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Father, we look forward to a time where there is no time, where we will just learn more and more and more about you and praise you all the more.