The Trinity, Part 1

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Special 3-part in-depth study of the Trinity

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The Trinity, Part 2: The Trinity in Church History

The Trinity, Part 2: The Trinity in Church History

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Father God, we are privileged to open your Word because the truth of the
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Trinity is so foundational to our faith. We know, Lord, that you are one
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God, you are sovereign over all, and yet there are three persons, the Father, Son, and the
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Holy Spirit, and the mystery of this. We can be privileged to open your Scripture and be with Pastor Jeff as he shows us in Scripture this truth that is so foundational.
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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Our commission as Christians is to go into all the world and preach the good news to all creatures.
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In Matthew it's recorded as go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But notice it doesn't say names in Matthew 28 and 19, it says in the name, singular, of the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is a reference to the Trinity. As we go to carry out our mission, some men and women will believe the good news and be born again.
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Others will reject, and so you'll see a shifting in the world between sheep and goats.
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Those ultimately who will come to faith will be saved, and those who reject will be lost.
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As we're in the world preaching the gospel, not all men have faith. But there's a second danger.
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Besides outright opposition from those who would oppose us, there is a more subtle form of opposition to the true gospel in the preaching of Jesus Christ.
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And that is what Jesus refers to in Matthew 7 as wolves in sheep's clothing.
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Wolves in sheep's clothing. These are people who will say that they believe in Jesus, and yet they're worshiping a different Jesus.
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Or they're liars who don't worship God at all. They're deceivers in that way.
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There are two things that every cult has in common.
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Every group that's claiming to be Christian, that's actually not. There are two things that they have in common.
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Number one is they will always put some kind of work in the way of salvation.
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They will introduce, they will add to the gospel some form of works. This is what Paul addresses in the book of Galatians.
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Galatians says, if anybody comes preaching another gospel other than the one that we brought you, let him be accursed.
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And then he repeats that. He says, even if it's an angel from heaven, or he himself, if Paul himself changes his mind and preaches a different gospel, let him be accursed.
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Well, as you continue to read the book of Galatians, what is the different gospel that he's addressing?
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In Galatia, there were some Jewish background Christians, people who are claiming to be
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Christians, but they were saying that it was necessary that someone become a
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Jew first in order to get saved. And the sign of that was circumcision. They had to be circumcised in order to become a
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Christian. And Paul is very strong in his language against that. And that's the point of Galatians is to say, don't add anything.
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So if in Galatia, they added circumcision as a way to be saved, what are some things that people add today?
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It might be the sacraments. Somebody might say, you have to go to mass and you have to take the
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Eucharist to maintain your justification. Or if you have sinned, because we all fall short, we all sin, you have to go to a priest and receive penances that you then do.
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And you can maintain your justification by the sacraments. That's of course, the Roman Catholic system. Other cults will bring in different kinds of works that a person has to do.
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Now, I wouldn't say that Roman Catholic Church is a cult, but I think it's false as a religion.
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So there's... Temple tax. What's that? They have a temple tax. They have a temple tax.
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Interesting. Yeah. For attendance. Not a temple tax, but you're expected, you're expected how to provide for the church, you're expected to provide for the church, or you get a visit from Monsignor.
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Right. Yeah. And I think one of the dangers of the Roman Catholic Church would be doing the ordinances or whatever is ordained for them to do.
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Leaves a person with this sense, oh, I'm secure. I'm good because I've checked the boxes. And yet if a person hasn't been born again, then they have not yet seen the kingdom of God.
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Okay. But I don't usually classify the Roman Catholic Church as a cult because they're right on the very person of God, namely the
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Trinity. So the second thing besides adding works is always to demote
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Christ to something less than fully God, to demote
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Christ, a downgrade. So a Jehovah's Witness will say that Jesus is a created angel, maybe
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Michael the archangel, or Mormons will say he's a procreation of a heavenly mother. And there's this ongoing progression of, of God's, but there's always a demotion of Jesus.
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And what you'll find in that is an outright denial of the Trinity because the
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Trinity is the teaching that God exists as father, son, and Holy Spirit, and that the son is equal with the father as is the spirit.
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So the equality of the persons of the Trinity, every cult will deny the
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Trinity. And so there are wolves in sheep's clothing.
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They will come to you naming the name of Christ, but preaching a different Jesus, one who is not the triune
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God. So this morning, and for the next two weeks after this, we're going to be studying in depth the doctrine of the
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Trinity. And I've broken it up into three parts. Today, we have the starting point, which is the revelation of the
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Trinity. It's revealed by God. This is
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God's self -revelation. And so we're going to look in the scripture and see the doctrine of the
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Trinity revealed by God himself. Next week, we're going to look at better understanding the
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Trinity from the councils. So church history, because there were debates and people looking together into the scripture to try to figure out what was true and what was error.
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But that didn't define the Trinity. God had done that from the word, but church history helped us understand it better.
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And when there were these errors like Arianism, which is early Jehovah's Witness theology, when that came into the church, it needed to be refuted.
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And so you have the council of Nicaea, 325, and then Constantinople. And then other questions came up and there were more councils that addressed those things.
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So we're going to do that. First starting point. If I were to ask you to turn in your
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Bible to the passage where God himself explains the
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Trinity and lays out the Trinity as a doctrine, where would you go?
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Where is the Trinity revealed and explained in a section of scripture?
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Probably in Romans somewhere. Probably in Romans. Something you have written down already,
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Hebrews? Hebrews, that's where we're going to get. But we're going to start gathering that from this first point.
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Genesis 1? You've got hints of it there. Probably the clearest place that you would find it is 1
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John 5, 7. Trouble is, 1 John 5, 7 was a late interpolation into the text.
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The earliest manuscripts of the text did not have the King James version of 1
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John 5, 7. So my big point to begin with here is there is no passage of scripture, no didactic section that explains and lays out the doctrine of the
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Trinity. And so my question is why would that be the case? If you have my notes, here's the main idea today.
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Where are the notes? The notes are on the back table if you want to run back and get them. Or I also put them in the pastorgram on Thursdays.
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You can always get the notes. I don't get that. You don't get that? No. Alright, we've got to get you signed up for it.
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So you're saying the Trinity is in heaven. Let me say it this way.
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The Trinity is revealed between the
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Old and New Testament in the historical appearances of the
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Son and then the Holy Spirit so that when the
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New Testament speaks, it speaks from the starting point of the Trinity already having been revealed.
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That's kind of interesting if you think about it. When is the first book of the New Testament written? There's some debate as to which it is.
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But it's about 45 AD. That's the earliest we could say. Maybe Galatians was that early.
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And one of the Gospels could be dated that early. Maybe Mark. But we're not sure.
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There's certainly nothing earlier than that. So if the
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Trinity is not revealed beginning in 45 AD, when is it revealed? Answer.
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Hebrews 1, verses 1 -3. Listen to the language of the
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Apostle here. In the past, God spoke to us through the prophets at various times and in various ways.
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But in these last days, He has spoken to us in the
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Son who is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being.
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Upholding the universe by the power of His word. That first verse of Hebrews tells us something very important.
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In the past, God spoke through prophets. But in these last days, He has spoken, more literally, in Chios.
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In Son. In Son. Meaning in the revelation of the
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Son. When the eternal second member of the Trinity took on human flesh, conceived in the womb of Mary, and entered into the world, the light came into the world.
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Do you see this? The revelation of the Trinity is not in the writing of the New Testament, which starts from this earlier starting point.
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It is in the actual appearance of God Himself in flesh.
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That's the revelation of the Trinity. And then Jesus, before He ascends, before He dies,
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He's in the upper room. And in the Upper Room Discourse, John 13 -17, He will tell
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His disciples, It's better for you that I go to the Father, because if I go, I will send you another helper.
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The paraclete. The helper. Who will be with you and will be in you. And so,
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Jesus then ascends. And on Pentecost Sunday, recorded in Acts 2, 50 days after the resurrection, 50 days,
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Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes. The third member of the
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Trinity appears. And it is a drastic change in the history of the world. Like tongues of fire resting over the believers, and then entering inside of them.
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And then the manifestation of spiritual gifts that imply now that He has taken residence inside the believers, inside the church.
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So, here's my big point. The Trinity was revealed when the second member of the
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Trinity appeared on planet Earth. And the third member of the Trinity likewise came to the church.
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That's the revelation of the Trinity. So here's why you have no didactic section explaining.
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When the New Testament is given, didactic means teaching. No section of Scripture that addresses the
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Trinity as such. It doesn't do that, because what it does is it starts from the revelation of the
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Trinity. It's already, the Trinity has been revealed in Son and in the other helper that the
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Son gave, the Holy Spirit. So let's look at a couple passages where, John, you used the right word.
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It's implied, and you can't miss it. But if you understand that it's been revealed between the
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Testaments, in the coming of the second and third member, the Father being known in heaven as God, nobody debates that, but that the
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Son is God and the Spirit is God, now you have three members in the one
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God. So it's revealed in the person of Christ and in the Spirit. So let's read a few passages. So we'll just kind of go around the room.
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Raise your hand if you'd rather I not call on you. Otherwise, I will. Okay, won't call, won't call.
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All right. So I'll just randomly call on people. Ivan, could you read for me Ephesians 2 .18?
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Ephesians 2 .18 says, For through him we both have access to one Spirit, to the
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Father. Right. Paul is teaching in Ephesians chapter two as John taught last week and then again today into the recording.
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We didn't get the camera working last week, so John, and I love this about my brother, he came in here and taught it again to the camera so that we can have it online and keep our series complete, which is awesome dedication to the word.
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No feedback, just me. That must have been awkward. Empty room and a camera. He told me that there were 600 people in that little box.
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That's right. So in Ephesians chapter two, verse 18,
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Paul is talking about unity in the body of Christ, that Jew and Gentile are brought together as one. Right.
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The revelation of the church. But he speaks as a Trinitarian. He's not revealing the
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Trinity in a didactic teaching on Trinity. He's speaking like this. For through him,
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Christ, we both, Jew and Gentile, have access in one
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Spirit to the Father. In one verse,
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Ephesians 2 .18, we have each member of the Trinity referenced.
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So there's a Trinitarian verse right there that proves the Trinity. It's not teaching the Trinity, but it starts from that point that there is a
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Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit. And each of them appear in one verse. Now notice the book of Ephesians, we've already established, if you go back and look at that study,
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Ephesians chapter one, verses three to 14, is entirely Trinitarian. It moves from salvation being the predestined work of the
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Father which is then accomplished in the Son, Ephesians 1 .7,
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and then applied to the believer by the Spirit. Regeneration and the sealing of the
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Spirit, Ephesians 1 .13 and 14. So Ephesians is Trinitarian in its explanation of salvation.
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There's perfect harmony between the members of the Trinity. The very ones that the Father predestined and elected unto salvation are the ones for whom the
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Son dies and atones for their sin. And then the Spirit applies that work in real time.
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As we live on earth and we go about our days, through having heard the gospel, we are marked in Him with the seal, the promised
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Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of all who are
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God's possession. Ephesians 1 .13 and 14. But do you see the Trinitarian nature of it?
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Father, Son, Spirit, that's how Paul teaches. And then references them all in 2 .18. Yeah, Rich.
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How about when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the Spirit came down from heaven and said,
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Go and a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved Son. And he went, Well, please. Very good. That's also
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Trinitarian. That's entirely Trinitarian, yes. Yeah, and that's the recording of the historical moment when he was baptized.
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A lot can be said about that. It disproves modalism, which we'll get into the third week.
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The third week we'll be refuting the lies and the heresies that have come against the Trinity.
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So we'll save that for there. But there are three distinct persons that you can't just collapse into one person.
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There are three persons of the Trinity. And that's displayed in the baptism of Jesus. Let's read another
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Trinitarian verse that captures all members of the Trinity in one verse.
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Barb, would you mind? Second Corinthians 3 .14. Thirteen or three?
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What did I say? Second Corinthians 13 .14. The last verse of Second Corinthians.
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The last grace. I'm sorry. I'm looking at him. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the
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Holy Spirit be with you all. It's a Trinitarian benediction. Yeah.
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And he closes the entire book with it, kind of sealing the deal, appealing to each member of the Trinity in blessing over the believer.
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Okay, First Corinthians 12 .4 -6. Carol? Okay.
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Thank you. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of service, but the same
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Lord. And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.
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Awesome. When you see God referred to or referenced without indicating which member of the
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Trinity, it generally refers to the Father. So here you have the same
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Spirit, the same Lord, the same God. And that's a
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Trinitarian reference showing that each member of the Trinity is active in the life of the believer in the church, dispensing the spiritual gifts in that passage.
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So here's the big idea. Point one, there are numerous passages and we could list many like this that speak of the
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Trinity as settled fact. The New Testament author is just operating from that understanding.
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The passage might not be about the Trinity in terms of explaining it, but it clearly presupposes or implies or works from that starting point.
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Why would he do that? Because God had chosen to reveal the Son in the person of Christ.
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So it was the coming of the Son of God that changed the world and that revealed that God now has dwelt among men in the second person of the
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Trinity. And then the third person of the Trinity and the revelation of God is in Son, in Huyos.
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Okay. So then you have these references. All right. Well then, how do we understand the
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Trinity? And this is actually the hardest section of all. Okay. Point two.
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There are three undeniable revelations that necessitate a
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Trinitarian understanding that distinguishes, listen, the being or essence of God, that is, what
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God is, in essence, in being, his attributes of omniscience and omnipotence, omnipresence, the very definition of what he is, from the persons of God, namely the who of God, so that we must say, listen, the
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Father is not the Son. The Son is not the
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Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. The Spirit is not the Son. Each member of the
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Trinity as persons are distinguished from one another and you cannot collapse them and say that one is the other.
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The Father did not die on the cross. Patropassionism is a heresy.
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It was the second member of the Trinity who died on the cross. Now, that doesn't mean that we cannot say that Jesus is
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God. Watch this. The what of God, who he is as a being in his essence is true of all three persons.
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Each member can rightly be called God. It is correct to say the Father is
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God. The Son is God. The Spirit is God. So the persons of God, and this is the distinction that's very hard to grasp.
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It probably takes more than just one class. You can continue to read. And when we get into the councils, they begin to parse this out.
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But here's the big idea that you can't miss and be a Trinitarian. There is only one being or essence of God.
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One God. There are three persons, key word, persons in the
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Godhead. And that distinction is the crucial piece of the puzzle. So would it be right for me to say, along with the
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Mormons, that there are three gods? No. That would be what's called pantheism.
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Tritheism. Three gods. We do not have three gods. We have one
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God in essence. His deity in all the attributes of God.
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This is one God, one being. Not three separate beings. But there is personhood within God, and that personhood is what is three, not one.
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Does that help? Absolutely. A little bit. So let's establish this in another direction.
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Here's what was helpful to me in seminary. What we know from Scripture are three easy statements that cannot be denied that together necessitate a
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Trinitarian understanding. If you hold these three short sentences together, you have the
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Trinity. You may not have the full understanding that Augustine had, right, one of the great theologians, but you have the
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Trinity, and you are safe from every cult because every cult has to deny one of these three short sentences, and we'll establish them from Scripture.
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So who would like to read that hasn't? Carol, would you mind reading Deuteronomy 6 -4?
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And then I'll say the first sentence. Okay. Hear, O Israel, the
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Lord our God, the Lord is one. Anybody know what that's called? The she -mon.
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Very good. Which comes from here in Hebrew. This was repeated by every
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Jewish person every day. It's how you opened your day. Hear, O Israel, the
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Lord our God, the Lord is one. Now, as we come into the
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New Testament, we cannot just discard that statement. And here's the statement.
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There is only one God. We can never deny that fact.
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If you ever do, then you've gone off the rails into some heresy.
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So Mormonism says, well, there's three gods. Jesus is just a different god than the Father. That is heretical because it denies the most fundamental statement of Israel.
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Yes? But doesn't Jesus say he is God? So where did they get that from? What, doesn't he say that he is
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God? Yeah, they're distinguishing him. I'm saying he's a separate god.
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He's a separate god, right. That's how they're claiming, yeah. Three separate gods. I think it's appropriate to try to relate this at all, but a thing just came into my brain from long studies ago.
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Is it sort of like we are one body and yet in psychology they say we have an id, an ego, and a super ego.
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Like we have three different essences or something. So there's the essences of the human composition.
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That's one analogy. Name some other analogies to Trinitarianism that you've heard. Water. Water, vapor, and ice.
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What else? What did St. Patrick use in Ireland? Snakes. The three clovers.
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The three leaf clover on the one plant. Any other analogies to the
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Trinity that you've heard? If we can explain it, isn't he kind of like a not great god?
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This is a wonderful point. Beautiful. Here's the usefulness of analogies. Demonstrating that there's nothing in creation of like kind to God.
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In other words, analogies by definition will always fall short of what we're actually saying.
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If you try to say that God is like water and ice and vapor, you will inevitably begin to view
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God as the modalists do, the oneness theologians, T .D. Jakes, Geno Jennings in Philadelphia, a number of oneness
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Pentecostals who only see God as existing in different modes at different times.
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In the Old Testament, he exists as father and then he comes and takes the mode. This is where they get the idea of modalism.
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He takes the mode or the form of a man and then he comes again in a different mode as the
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Holy Spirit. This is why what Rich said was so important. At the baptism, you have the father speaking from heaven while the son, and they're praying, communicating one with another.
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So there's distinction between them and the Spirit descends like a dove to show that they are three at the same time.
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So modalism fails. We're like the human being. We're body, soul, and spirit. We're trichotomous beings.
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Yeah, you can break. Okay, here's my point though. Listen to this. You can break up anything into a trichotomy and try to divide it, but you'll never reach the essence of how
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God is three and one at the same time. Every analogy will fall short.
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You will end up at some heresy if you press it too far. Now, is it helpful in teaching Sunday school to make some analogies that things can be three and one as Barb mentioned?
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That might be a useful tool, but only if you point out that these analogies fall short of the thing itself.
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Yeah, Bob. As a chemist, one of the more powerful analogies
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I have is matter itself. Atoms contain neutrons, and positrons, and electrons.
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One is neutral, one is positive, and the other is negative in charge.
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Try breaking that apart and see what happens. Wow. Yeah, so there you go.
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That's a beautiful analogy. What you can do with that is you can underscore the inseparability of the
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Godhead. Right? Which Jesus will say, remember in John 5, he says, I can do nothing without my
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Father. You can't divide. If you've seen the Father, you've seen me. He'll say it later in John.
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So, you can illustrate that point with an analogy, but if you try to draw that as an example of the thing itself, of Trinity itself, you'll start to fall into some kind of heresy.
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So, it's an analogy to make a point, but you can't press it. There's nothing in creation like the
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Creator. He's utterly unique, and I'm okay with that. Because here are the three statements.
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Number one, and you cannot deny this, there's only one God. Here's the second thing.
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There are three who are God. Three persons.
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In the revelation of the Son, who is distinct from the Father, he prays to the Father and communicates with the
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Father. In the revelation of the Son, you now have abinity.
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And in the revelation of the third, you now have a Trinity. Trinity simply means tri -unity. Three in this oneness, in this unity.
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You cannot deny the statement that there are three who are God. So, if you have that statement, well, how do we know that?
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John 1 .1, if you'd like to read that for me. Rich? In the beginning was the
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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
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Yeah. And the very next verse says, he was with God in the beginning. So, you have a personal pronoun identifying the
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Word, not as just a concept, as in Lagos logic. No, this is speaking of the Word as a he, personal pronoun, with God.
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So, there's distinction between he and God, and yet at the same time, the Word was
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God. So, the Word in John 1 .1, obviously referring to Jesus, in the beginning, before time.
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Obviously, that's a reference to Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning, God created. So, in the beginning, you have a distinction between father and son.
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So, right there, you have to say, there is, there are three who are
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God. And then the last statement, if you can grasp this as well, you'll fight off any heresy.
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Each one is equally God. So, John, can you read for me
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John 5 .18? Why don't you go to it?
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We can just see the context there. The last point would be making himself equal with God.
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That's the part I want you to catch, but let's read the whole question first. Was John right to assess it this way?
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Were the Jews right to understand that that's what he was saying? Clearly. Does he refute that claim?
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In fact, he receives that and doubles down, as I preached on Sunday, in the passage that comes following that.
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All of these things indicate that he is not a lesser being, like a God, a created
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God, as if that's even a thing, right? Definitionally, God is not created. But each member of the
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Trinity is equal. So, these are the three statements that, if you memorize these, you uphold the
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Trinity by the Word of God. There is only one
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God. There are three who are God. And each one is equally
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God. Those three biblical statements, irrefutable, leave you with the
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Trinity. There is no other option. Now, understanding the
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Trinity, getting to, like, a full mental grasp of God, even as a doctrine, is impossible.
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I, as a created being, can never have a full grasp of the infinite, eternal
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One who made the universe. My job is to believe what He's revealed about Himself. And this is where Deuteronomy 29, 29 comes in.
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You don't have to look it up, but you can just listen. The secret things belong to the
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Lord our God. But those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words written in this law.
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We may never grasp the deepest things of God, but we'll be forever learning, forever growing in that.
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But what's revealed, we must hold on to. And if you do that, if you hold on to the revelation of God about Himself, there's only one
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God, the Shema of Israel. Remember, as we studied the book of Isaiah, chapters 40 to 48, were called the trial of false gods.
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And in each case, God holds Himself up as the eternally existing one, was never formed, there was never any before Him, or will there be after Him.
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He is the one God. If you hold that revelation with the revelation of the Son, that He came and declared
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Himself to be God. John 8, 58, before Abraham was born, I am.
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And all the I am statements of Jesus, the claim to deity, He's claiming to be God, and then the
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Spirit likewise. How do we know, by the way, that the Spirit is God? And not just a force like, you know,
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Star Wars or something like that. You can grieve the Spirit. He has emotions.
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He's He, He leads. In the story of Acts chapter 5, there's an important passage.
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We won't take too much time here, but just listen. In the story of Ananias and Sapphira, they come in and they lie to the
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Holy Spirit, the text tells us. And then Peter, the very next thing he says, you didn't lie to men, you lied to God, which identifies the
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Holy Spirit to whom they just lied as God. And there's many other exciting proofs like that too.
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Drew's done a great job teaching that at the apologetic study. Wasn't he the one working on that, Ivan? Yeah. Yeah, in the person of God, the deity of Christ and of the
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Holy Spirit. So the second big point, the first big point, let's review. The first one is that there's no didactic section of Scripture explaining the
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Trinity, but it's coming from the perspective as Trinity as a settled fact. And so it just casually offhand refers to each member of the
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Trinity as God. I mean, think about Matthew 28, 19, which I started with. Remember that passage?
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Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Substitute any created non -deity for any member of those into whom were baptized.
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And think of the blasphemy that that would be. Baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and of the Son and Michael, the archangel. Don't you recoil at that to say, wait a minute, no.
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He's not equated in the name of God. So what is this implying?
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That the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are rightly worshiped as God.
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The name of God given to us in Jesus is the revelation of the
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Trinity. Does that make sense? So just right there is a Trinitarian passage. You're just agreeing.
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Amen. All right. So lastly, we have this revelation throughout in Scripture.
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Is it a novelty of the New Testament? Meaning, did the
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New Testament come along and contradict the Shema of Israel or the trial of false gods of Isaiah 40 to 48?
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Wouldn't it be awesome if this is true of God, that there were references to the
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Trinity, although somewhat veiled, even in the Old Testament. Let's spend a little bit of time looking at the veiled references to the
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Trinity in the Old Testament. That's part three. This is important because if God was revealing himself, even in the
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Old Testament, we would expect to see something of his Trinitarian nature. Something of it.
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It's not fully revealed, but it's foreshadowed or foretold. It was B .B. Warfield who gave an analogy to the
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Old Testament view of the Trinity. He said, in the Old Testament, all of the furniture is already in the room.
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It's just that there's not as much light in the room to really make out what's there.
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Does it make sense? In the New Testament, you're just adding light to what was already there.
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So now when you look back on the Old Testament, you can say, oh yeah, the furniture was there. Let me just give a few examples.
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I know I only have about five minutes, so I'm just going to hit these and go quick. Genesis 126. Then God said, let us, using the plural, make man in our plural image.
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How could the one God use a plurality in making a statement like that?
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Well, if there are three persons, there can be communication within the one deity, the one essence or being of God, that the
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Father can speak to the Son, which is, in fact, what we have taught in the
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New Testament as the Son was there and the world was made through Him.
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Colossians 1, 15 to 20, and all things were made through Chios, through the
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Son. Amen? Next, Genesis 18, verses 1 through 19, 24.
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I want to encourage you to read that passage when you have some time, but I want to tell it now just in brief.
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In the story of Genesis 18, verses 18, 1 to 19, 24, you have the
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Lord, the Lord, catch that, appearing to Abraham at Mamre.
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And the story goes on to tell what that looked like. Three men appear to Abraham.
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It looks like three men to him. Of course, that is a pre -incarnate version of the Son along with two angels.
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Once there's this interaction and the angels leave, how many angels go to Sodom?
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Two. What happened to the third? That's the question.
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He's somehow different than the other two, which are angels. He is called the
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Lord. And as you follow that passage along, well, what happened to the third? You see a reference in Genesis 19, 24, we're told, when finally judgment falls.
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Now, who is it that judges the world? God. But the language, and notice the context that we already have.
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The Lord has appeared to Abraham. Then it says, listen, And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.
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Then 19, 24, Then the Lord, same word, rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the
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Lord out of heaven. The Lord rained from the
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Lord sulfur and fire out of heaven. Whenever you see the judgment of God fall, you see the
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Lord present, whether it's the Lord who goes with Israel, whether it's the
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Lord bringing judgment in the days of Noah. Here you have the Lord raining fire from the
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Lord. What can you make of the Lord raining fire from the Lord? Well, it is the
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Father through the instrumentality of the Son judging
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Sodom and Gomorrah. There are two Lords referenced there, but it's only the one
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Lord. Two persons, one being, one essence. That's why chapter 19, verse 24 says not just the
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Lord rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah out of heaven, but the Lord rained fire from the Lord out of heaven.
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Make sense? All right. And then we know, of course, what's it called? Isaiah 6, 8?
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Holy, holy, holy? The trisagion.
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The threefold holy of God. So when Isaiah sees God in earlier
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Isaiah 6, he sees the angels crying, holy, holy, holy.
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Father, Son, and Spirit. And that's always the repetition of the angels. Holy, holy, holy.
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But notice in chapter 6, verse 8, I heard a voice of the Lord saying, whom shall
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I send and who will go for us? Us, plural.
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And then in Isaiah 48, 16, as we studied Isaiah, we spent more time on this, but I'll just reference it again.
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Isaiah is speaking prophetically, but he begins to speak the word of the Lord, and he speaks for God as a prophet of God, and he says this in Isaiah 48, 16.
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Draw near to me, hear this. From the beginning, I have not spoken in secret.
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From the time it came to be, I have been there. This is God speaking, but look at the conclusion of the verse.
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And now the Lord has sent me and His Spirit. And now the
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Lord God, Father, has sent me, Jesus, who's speaking prophetically through Isaiah the prophet and His Spirit.
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You have a Trinitarian reference right there in Isaiah 48, verse 16. And with two minutes left,
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I close with my favorite one. The Pharisees and the
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Sadducees came to Jesus in Matthew chapter 22, and they tried to confuse
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Him and trap Him with difficult questions. And everything that they asked,
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He answered. Boom, boom, boom, to the point where at the end of Matthew chapter 22, it says they didn't dare to ask
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Him another question. So He turned and asked them a question.
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He asked them about Psalm 110, which is one of my all -time favorite
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Bible passages because the Pharisees couldn't answer, and there's still no answer today unless it's referring to Jesus, the
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Son of God. The passage says, the Lord said to my
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Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. And Psalm 110, verse one, becomes the most quoted verse in the
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New Testament. It's quoted again and again throughout Hebrews, and it's a cornerstone of our faith.
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But Jesus Himself raises it in Matthew 22, and He says, the
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Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.
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And He asked them a question. He says, very simply, if then David calls Him Lord, how is
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He His Son? And what did the
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Pharisees say? Nothing. What answer can you give to that?
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If He is David's Lord, if David is praying to the Lord, how is
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He David's Son? The Lord said to my
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Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. David's Son would sit on David's throne.
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The Messiah would be the Son of David and come from David. If He's coming from the seat of David, how does
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He precede His own Father? How is He His Son if He's the Son of David? He'd be both the source.
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How can He be both the fruit and the root? That's the question. And the only answer, how can
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He be both the fruit and the root? He was God, the Son of God, before He came into the world through the seat of the woman,
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Mary, a descendant of David by the flesh, by human flesh, born under the law, born to the
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Virgin Mary. And so He comes into the world to be the Son of Man, the
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Messiah, the promised Messiah of Daniel 7, 13, 14. Does it make sense? So He was always the
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Son of God, eternally existing God, and therefore David can rightly call Him that name that no one else could be called,
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Lord. Referring to Psalm 110, that's how you can call Him Lord, because He's God.
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And so He's always been God. He came into the world and took on flesh. And so there's the revelation of the
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Trinity in the person of the Son of God. Isn't that beautiful? So the
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Old Testament promised it in shadows. It's only when you get to the New Testament revelation that you see the full light of this explained in the
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Son. John, would you close us in prayer? Father God, we are in our, just our little minds, are unable of comprehending the magnitude of this truth, but we accept it because You've taught it.
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We've accepted it because You revealed it. We accept it because there is no other truth that is so eternal.
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You are God. There is only one God. There are three who are God, and each one is equally
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God. We profess that. We confess that. And we say thank You, Lord, for even giving
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Your Spirit so that these truths can make sense to us. We thank You in Jesus' name.