Sermon: The Glory of the Three Persons

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Let us maintain that spirit of worship that that song always brings to God's people,

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I think, as we move into our examination of the

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Scriptures today, beginning in Philippians 2. What I wish to do briefly at the beginning is to look at a number of different passages that present to us something that we do not deserve, something that God did not need to grant to us, something that, to be perfectly honest with you, should be, if we were to be asked what our most precious possessions in this life would be, should be one of the very first things that we would think of.

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And I refer to the fact that God, in His great condescension, has chosen to give us mere creatures, rebel creatures, an insight into the very life and relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit in eternity past.

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Now, I think today, unfortunately, in our culture, there is truly an attitude of hubris and arrogance on the part of mankind.

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I think past generations understood the condescension of God and His grace toward us in a greater way.

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We are so individualistic, the idea of royalty, kingship, of being one who is to show deference to someone else, that's not a part of the

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American way, it's really not a part of the Western way of thinking any longer. And as a result, there are times when we look at what the

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Scripture says about God's holiness, and how mankind responds, how

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Isaiah responds when he sees Yahweh sitting upon his throne, and here while the holiest men in all of Israel immediately responds with the recognition of his own unworthiness and sinfulness.

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And many people today are willing to demand of God to answer every single question we would ever place before Him, not recognizing that God was under no pressure, there was nothing that forced

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God to give us the depth of revelation that He gave us.

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And in the same way, He has the freedom to give us

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His revelation as He sees fit, to determine what is going to be revealed to us and what is not.

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And He gets to draw that line, and we do not get to say to Him, we need more.

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And so in the midst of all that, there are a few passages in Scripture where we are literally given an opportunity to think based upon divine revelation, not our speculations, not our philosophies, but based upon divine revelation, we are given the opportunity to listen to the divine persons in interaction with one another.

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We should recognize the privilege that is ours. That should be something that is one of the most important things.

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If we were to say, what are God's blessings in your life? That should be one of the first things we list.

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It almost never is, for almost no one in the Christian faith, I'll be honest.

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What do I refer to? Well, you know Philippians chapter 2. You know what's called the Carmen Christi, the hymn to Christ as to God.

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It's a sermon illustration. It literally is a sermon illustration. Paul is telling the

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Philippians you need to live in unity and harmony with one another, and the way to do that is to not look to making yourself first, but to serve others.

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A congregation filled with servants will be a congregation without church splits.

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And it is in that context that you have, beginning in verse 5, chapter 2,

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Philippians, have this way of thinking in yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus, who although eternally, and if you want more on this,

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I wrote an article for the CRI journal years ago. I gave my own translation and stuff, but I'll just sort of throw a few things in.

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Who although eternally existing in the very form of God, did not regard, please notice that term, regard.

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That is an action of the mind. That is considering something. Did not regard equality with God, the equality which he had with God, a thing to be grasped or held on to, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, by being made in the likeness of men.

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Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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Now, there's so much here, and it is important, and I'm rejoicing inwardly right now.

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I'm reading actually from the LSB, and when it says, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likes of men,

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I argued for that in my article long ago. I'm hoping someone read it, because that is how he emptied himself.

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He didn't divest himself of his deity. He didn't cease being God. This was the humiliation of the incarnation entering into human existence, and so the kenosis, the term that's used there, this emptying, this being made of no reputation, is accomplished by taking on, by the addition of, a perfect human nature.

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That is, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.

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Now, I'd love to expand upon that, but that's not what our sermon's about today. Instead, please note that here, the

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Son, Christ Jesus, distinguished from God the

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Father, because you will see when it uses the term

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God here in verse 11, to the glory of God the Father. God the

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Son, existing eternally in the morphe tu theu, the form of God.

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That same term be used when it says being made in the form of a slave.

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The morphe of a slave, the morphe of God. He eternally existed in the form of God, had equality with God the

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Father, but he did not regard that equality with God the

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Father as a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself through reflexive pronoun. We all remember how much we loved taking

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English in junior high school. Remember all that? Some of you are going, no, we don't do that anymore.

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Reflexive pronoun. He emptied himself. He was not emptied.

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This was not something acting upon him from outside of himself. This is voluntary, and it's the act of a divine person in bringing about the incarnation that we celebrate.

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Some of you celebrate starting in like three weeks, which is really weird. You don't know what

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I'm talking about. You know Christmas? And some of you, you all keep doing that contest and keep getting earlier and earlier, and you're just going to keep your trees up all year long.

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This is the action of the Son before the incarnation. Now, by the way, just in passing, if you have friends, co -workers, people in your neighborhood who are a part of Oneness Pentecostalism, the

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Jesus Only Movement, this is one of the key texts that we need to use to explain to the

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Oneness folks that the Son as a divine person existed and was active prior to the incarnation itself, because they deny that God exists in three persons.

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This is one of the most important texts to make them aware of and to explain to them. But these are things that the

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Son does. The Father did not empty himself, and when you think about it for just a moment, it was the

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Son who was aware of his equality with the

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Father, but he did not regard that equality that he had as a divine person with the

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Father as something to be held on to at all costs, but he was the one that was willing to enter into the humiliation of the incarnation.

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The Father did not become incarnate. The Spirit did not become incarnate.

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Now, what we have to do when we look at Scripture, sola

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Scriptura, tota Scriptura. Scripture is the sole and fallible rule of faith.

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We must believe all of Scripture, and therefore we must recognize there is only one true

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God. We recognize that there is only one

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God, Yahweh, that the New Testament writers identify the Father as Yahweh.

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They identify the Son as Yahweh. In fact, Paul does that right in this text. Do you know that?

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Notice in verse 11 that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the

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Father. Why is that? Because at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.

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You go back to Isaiah 45. Who's that about? Yahweh. It's about every knee bowing to Yahweh.

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He will not share his glory with any other. And so the

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New Testament writers identify the Father is Yahweh, the Son is Yahweh, the Spirit of the

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Lord is simply Spirit of Yahweh. So we only have one God, and we have no disharmony and disunity amongst the divine persons.

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What the Son does in Philippians chapter 2, He does in perfect harmony and unity with the overarching purpose and will of God the

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Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. There is no argument.

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There is not one divine person wanting to do this, another divine person wanting to do that. No. Perfect harmony in all things.

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And yet, only the Son could give consideration to his equality with the

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Father. The Spirit can't do that. He's equal with the Father as well, but he's not the

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Son. The Father can't do that because that would be the reverse. Only the Son can give consideration to, can regard, his relationship to the

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Father. Only the Son can do that. And it was only the Son who emptied himself.

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Now was the Father involved in the incarnation? Of course. Spirit? Of course. But in the exact same way?

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Of course not. Because it's not the Father who becomes incarnate. It's not the

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Spirit that becomes incarnate. It's the Son. And so we see something of the relationship because God the

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Father, after the humbling of the Son, being found appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient at the point of death.

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Even the cross death is the literal rendering. Therefore, God the

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Father also highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.

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So at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven on earth and under the earth and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord. What would that mean in context?

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Yahweh. To the glory of God the Father. And so we don't have competing deities.

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We don't have competing gods. The divine persons are in perfect and full harmony with one another.

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And yet they are clearly distinguished from one another by what they do and by their interaction with one another.

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This is biblical revelation. If you want to see more, turn with me to Ephesians.

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Ephesians chapter 1. We all know it. Grace to you and peace from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Standard greeting, but it does make a distinction.

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

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Use your finger, fingers. Okay, use your hand because that's where the fingers are located.

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Use your fingers to count in Christ, in Him, in the

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Beloved. Every reference to being in Christ. So, blessed be the

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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which

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He graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved. I'll admit, when

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I grew up, I was a little confused about this verse because my dad,

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I don't know where he got it from, but it was just, I guess, the way they spoke back in the ancient days. You know,

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Luke thinks I'm about 578, so my dad must have been really, really old. But my dad, when he would address a congregation, he was a preacher, would address the

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Beloved. And so, it was a plural. Oh Beloved, it's good to see you today.

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So, I wasn't exactly sure what was going on this verse until I learned enough Greek to realize it's singular, in the

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Beloved One, in verse six. In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions, according to the riches of His grace, which

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He caused to abound to us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which

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He purposed in Him for an administration of the fullness of times, that is, the summing of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth, in Him.

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In Him, we also have been made, and have also been made in inheritance, have been predestined, according to the purpose of Him who works all things, according to the counsel of His will, to the end that we were the first to have hoped in Christ, would be to the praise of His glory.

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In Him, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed, oh, in Him, with the

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Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us the pledge of our inheritance and the redemption of God's own possession, the praise of His glory. There's 11 times.

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So, Christ is absolutely central to this discussion.

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But who was the subject that started the whole sentence off? God the Father. Blessed be the

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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ.

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So, everything the Father has done, He's done in what way? In Christ, in a very exclusive way.

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There can be no room whatsoever in any kind of New Testament Christianity for some kind of pluralism, where this grace of God is found outside of Christ.

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That's not biblical teaching. But at the same time, we have a clear distinction being made between God the

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Father as the source of every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and then the conduit, the means, the place in which this spiritual blessing is found is in Christ, and therefore, for anyone who is in Him, all these things, adoption, everything else is to be found, all to the glory of His grace.

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So, in verse 6 says, to the praise, the glory of His grace, which He graciously bestowed on us in the

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Beloved. Well, the key text we use to answer all the big questions, what is the ultimate answer when the doctor calls and says you have cancer?

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What is the ultimate question when the phone rings and a loved one has been taken suddenly?

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It's to the praise of His glorious grace, the glory of His grace. It's the ultimate answer.

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And who is the direct antecedent of His grace? The Father. The Father. Now, when we do the benediction, very often

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I will do the brief benediction from 2 Corinthians, the grace of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Well, is it the

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Father's grace, or is it the Son's grace? Yes. Yes.

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But we are given, in Scripture, specific revelation that helps us to understand the relationship of the divine persons in their accomplishment and in their interaction.

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And it's a beautiful thing, because you have the Father and the Son all the way down to verse 13, in Him you also have to listen to the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the

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Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us a pledge of our inheritance of the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of His glory.

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And at some points, honestly, the challenge is, who's the His? Is it the

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Father? Is it the Son? This is a Trinitarian gospel, there is no question about that.

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But that doesn't mean that we cannot see and are not given sufficient information to enter into the beauty of the revelation that has been given to us in Scripture, that Father, Son, and Spirit are involved in specific ways in bringing about our redemption.

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When we contemplate the Trinity, we are not left with some kind of mere, vague idea.

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I don't want that for you, because I think the vast majority of evangelicals, that's what they grow up with.

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And it's especially important for us, by the way, if we're talking to Mormons, if we're talking to Jehovah's Witnesses, if we're talking to Muslims, and we say it's important for them to know our

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God, they all know what the objections are, they all know what the issues are, and it's up to us to be crystal clear in what we are presenting to them.

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And if we aren't crystal clear about what we believe, we're not going to be able to be clear in explaining it to them.

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That's vitally important. That's vitally important. When I first started meeting with Mormon missionaries, long, long ago, and I started, in fact, it was

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Brigham Young's son that I first, no, no, that's not true. Though I'm sure a couple of them

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I met were definitely relatives, the way that the Mormons do things. But when I first started asking questions of the leaders in my church,

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Southern Baptist Church, on the doctrine of the Trinity, I simply have to report to you that most of what

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I got back, I know today was heretical. I mean, literally heretical, not just a little bit off, it was almost all modalism.

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It was, well, water can be liquid and gas and a solid, and I hope we all recognize that that's, yeah,

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I know it's really popular. It's like a three -leaf clover. No, it's not. These are all really, really, really bad illustrations, and a couple of you are sitting there going, um, really?

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Didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. I was given modalism.

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I was given stuff out of, you know, John 14. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. That means

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Jesus is the Father. No, He's not. No, He's not. He's the perfect revelation of the

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Father. That's why if you've seen Him, you've seen the Father. But He's not the Father. It's not the Father who became incarnate. I really have for years and years and years and years and years been banging the drum that most evangelicals, when we sing something like holy, holy, holy, or we sing the doxology, that if you were really to press us, we'd go, yeah,

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Trinity, it's great, it's wonderful. Don't ask me anything more than that. Don't ask me about the relationship of the divine persons.

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Don't, I, no. And it shouldn't be that way, and it's pretty much not that way here.

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We have emphasized these things for a long, long time, but that's the way it is in most of evangelicalism.

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And so we want, when we look at Scripture as the members of this church, we want to be able to see the depth of the revelation that's been given to us and the beauty of the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

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I think of the text in Corinthians, where Paul tells us that the

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Spirit gives the gifts, what, as He pleases, as He wills.

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But think about that for just one minute. There has to be perfect divine unity between Father, Son, and Spirit for that to be true.

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Because if God the Father has, works all things after the counsel of His will,

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Ephesians 1, if this is the body of Christ, then if God the

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Father has a plan for the church to accomplish something, then the gifts have to be given to the church to accomplish whatever

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God has predestined to take place. So Spirit has to work in perfect harmony with the intention of the

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Father, the intention of the Son, in the granting of the gifts, and yet He gives them as He wills.

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So perfect harmony, no disunity, no disruption, and yet who is it that we pray for to come and be a part of what we're doing right now?

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Spirit of God. And when Jesus tells the disciples,

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I'm going away, but I'm not going to leave you as orphans.

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I will come to you. How? By the Spirit. In fact, He says, my Father and I will make our abode with you.

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How? By the Spirit. So the Spirit must be fully divine, and it's the

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Spirit's role to indwell and empower and direct God's people. That is the role that He has taken.

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He was not forced to do that. The Father did not say to the

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Spirit, this is what you will do. Perfect unity, perfect harmony, and yet clearly the

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Spirit's relationship to us is different because of the role that He has taken.

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And this helps us to distinguish between the divine persons, but it also, and this is the part that I think is really, sadly, in our day, as I'll say toward the end, under attack in our day.

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What it also tells us is that there is a rich, meaningful, loving relationship that exists between the

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Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Some of you know one of Augustine's arguments, and I'll be honest with you,

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I, you know, when I read Augustine years and years and years ago on this subject,

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I was like, I don't know. But one of the arguments that is made is that if you are a

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Unitarian, that is, you only have one divine person, such as Islam, you can't assert that God is actually love until God creates, because there is no one to love.

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There is nothing to love until creation takes place. And I got the argument.

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You know, some people have then taken some of those arguments and gone, you know, well, actually, you know, when the

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Father loves the Son, the result of that love is the Spirit. And I'm like, yeah, no, I don't think so. That's, that, no.

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But it was fascinating. A number of years ago, I was teaching a seminary class, and I have a

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Muslim friend from Australia. Some of you, in fact, it's still my favorite debate that I've had with a

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Muslim, was a debate with this young man at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

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Oh, my goodness. Coming up on 12 years ago now. And I guess he's not as much of a young man as he was back then.

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And he would Skype in to my class and answer questions from my, from my students.

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And given he was in Sydney, he would normally have to do this at like three o 'clock in the morning. And he raised that argument.

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And he said, you know, for a long time, I just sort of mocked and ridiculed that argument until I stopped and thought about it and really thought about it.

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And he says, I'll have to admit, I'm not sure we have a good answer for that. If you've not dealt with Muslims before, let me tell you something.

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That's highly unusual. Highly unusual for a Muslim to engage in our arguments enough to understand what it is we're saying and to want to respond to it.

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That's one of the things I really like about that particular individual. But it's true that when we understand the doctrine of the

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Trinity and that these divine persons are eternal, God didn't morph into this.

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God wasn't Unitarian and became Trinitarian. Father, Son, and Spirit have eternally been in perfect, harmonious, glorious, and loving relationship with one another.

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Can you imagine? Well, we can't. But for just a moment, can you imagine the content and nature of the communication that takes place between Father, Son, and Spirit?

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I mean, we are just given little glimpses. I hope you're thinking about other places. Mount of Transfiguration.

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This is my beloved Son. Hear Him. It's the Son on the mount, not the Father. The Father speaking of the baptism.

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Father speaks from heaven, the Son being baptized. Spirit comes down in the form of a dove. How about Romans 4 and 5?

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Oh, the vision of the worship in heaven purposefully playing off of Isaiah 6 and the vision that Isaiah saw of Yahweh sitting upon his throne that John 12 41 tells us is

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Jesus. And so in Revelation 4 and 5, you have

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God sitting upon the throne. And then what happens? The book.

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No one's found worthy to open the book. And John begins to weep. Then he's told, stop weeping.

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The lion of the tribe of Judah is overcome. He's been found worthy. And he looks.

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And the lion's a lamb standing as if slain there in the presence of the

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Father. Redemption accomplished. A lamb with the signs of slaughter still upon his body.

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At the end of Revelation chapter 5, what happens? Everything in creation.

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In the heavens, on earth, and under the earth, every created thing worships

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He who sits on the throne and the lamb.

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And in fact, in the next chapter, you have that, what is to me probably the most stunning phraseology in all of Scripture.

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When God's judgment begins to fall and men cry out for the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them, to hide them from the wrath of He who sits upon the throne and from the wrath of the lamb.

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The wrath of the lamb? We have those pictures of Jesus and he's carrying the little fluffy lamb in his arms.

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And if that lamb gets angry, who cares? It's just a lamb.

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But all the mighty of the earth cry out for the mountains to hide them from the wrath of this lamb.

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Because He has provided for salvation, but now the time has come for judgment.

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And He stands as the judge. But you see the relationship?

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If we cannot see that there is a reason why the Father in Revelation chapter 4 is on the throne, and now the

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Son as the lamb appears. And there is a reference to the seven spirits of God, the full spirits of the spirits there as well.

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But we need to see that there is a reason in the spirit of God's giving us of Scripture for us to be able to see the beautiful interaction that takes place.

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I just mentioned the transfiguration. We're only given a little bit of information about the conversation, remember?

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Will you admit like me, man, I wish I knew what everything they were saying. I don't know if we're going to find out someday.

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But what would it be like? Because Peter, Lord, let's build some tabernacles up here.

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This is good. And I appreciate Luke's comment. Peter did not know what he was saying.

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I get the feeling, I don't know how well Luke knew Peter, but I get the feeling from the research that he did that this was not the first time that Peter did not know what he was saying.

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And I'm glad God can use people who talk more than they probably should.

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But I would love to know, to have listened in on the conversation.

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God the Father, Jesus the Messiah, Moses and Elijah, and they're having themselves a conversation.

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That's conversation I want to know about. But again, Jesus's glory shows that glory has been veiled.

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Jesus didn't walk around glowing the streets of Jerusalem. That would have impacted the way that the triune

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God had determined that the Messiah was going to minister amongst the people. So now on the

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Mount of Transfiguration, that veil is lifted, the glory is seen.

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Father, Son, Moses and Elijah, two men who by the way were brought up without death into the presence of God.

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Some people say, well they represent the law and the prophets. Maybe, maybe it's just because they were translated.

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There's different ways of understanding it, but the point is the conversation was about what he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.

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But the Father is taking a different role. The Son is taking a different role than the

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Father. And we see their interaction and we cannot sacrifice it.

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We cannot get rid of it. And we dare not trade it in for a shallow philosophical substitute.

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What I'm saying is, to you today, is we must be a people of the book.

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Now, I don't know when Jeff first started quoting from the

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Forgotten Trinity, but something tells me it was pretty much from one of the first services of Apology of Church.

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Would that be fairly accurate, Brother Jeff? I know you're talking with somebody else back there right now, but what was it

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I was saying? Oh, I don't know. But I have a feeling that pretty early on, the

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Forgotten Trinity was being discussed, and one of the things that I said in that book was that I love the

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Trinity. And I want my readers to love the Trinity. But I believe the only way that that can happen is to do what

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I did in that book. And what did I do in that book? I walked through each of the elements of the doctrine of the

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Trinity as they are revealed in Scripture.

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Because you are the sheep of Christ, and the one thing that will ground you and convince you to the day you die is when you know this book teaches what you believe.

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Not some theologian taught what you believe. This book teaches what you believe.

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That's what God's people stand on. That's why the attack of the devil is always against biblicism, against the centrality of Scripture.

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That's why earlier this week when Jeff and I did the discussion with Brandon Robertson, what did it all boil down to?

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He gets to pick and choose what in the Bible he feels good about and might want to believe. That's it.

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He's under the authority of Scripture. He doesn't believe in solo Scripture or total Scripture. He doesn't even believe that the

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Bible is the Word of God. So you just come up with whatever you want, and then pick a verse over there, a verse over there, call it

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Christianity. That's what's happened to so many of the mainline denominations. God's people want to hear

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God's voice in God's Word. And I've seen it, folks. I have seen.

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I'm old enough now to start seeing the generations. And I can see people that when

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I was younger, I taught them, and now they're teaching others. And then they're teaching others.

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And what grounds people? Why are there faithful Christians in China who are remaining faithful under horrific persecution today?

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It's not because their favorite philosopher gave them something to believe. What is

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God's truth? What did Jesus say? Your word is truth. And if you don't think that's

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Scripture, go read the 119th Psalm sometime. Read it a few times. It might take you a while. You'll get the idea eventually.

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And so our understanding and our worship of God and our knowledge of the Trinity and our communication of these things to others must be based upon, first and foremost, what

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Scripture teaches to us. Now, have I been blessed by theologians of the past?

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Of course I have. I very clearly acknowledged my indebtedness in the forgotten

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Trinity to B .B. Warfield. His work in the Trinity was incredible. Now, by the way,

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I don't happen to agree with B .B. Warfield on a number of other issues, but that doesn't matter.

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I was very deeply blessed by the insights he provided into the doctrine of the

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Trinity. It's wonderful, but that's not why I believe in the

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Trinity. Can we learn? Can we be instructed? Can we be blessed by other members of the body?

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Obviously. But when you boil it all down, your foundation has to be in what

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God has given to his church and preserved for his people.

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My prayer for you is that your love of the Word of God will increase, will become deeper, more firm, more steadfast.

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Notice I'm not saying more emotional. That's a wonderful thing. That's a wonderful thing.

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I look back at times in my life. I look back at one particular summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school.

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I was working six to midnight, Monday through Friday, noon to six on Saturdays as a radio announcer. So the days

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I had free. My parents worked, had the house to myself.

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And I remember that summer. Every day, I'd walk up and down the narrow, short little hallway.

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It wasn't a big house. Still up there at 57th Avenue north of Bell. It wasn't a big house, but you know what

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I was doing? I was memorizing God's Word. I was memorizing

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Scripture, and it was wonderful. And was my heart filled with deep emotion for God's Word?

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Yes, but emotions come and go. Commitment can stay rock solid. And my prayer for you, for all of us in this church, the only way we are going to remain united, the only way we are going to remain faithful with what's coming at us is if our feet are firmly planted on the unmoving foundation that God has spoken in His Word.

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He's given us what we need. Now, why am

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I all up in arms about all this? Well, let me give you an example.

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Things be a -changing in our circles, and so I want to, as one of the pastors of this congregation, make sure you're aware of where some of these things are coming from and what they're saying, why we're not going along with certain of these things.

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Some of you are already aware of the controversies and my involvement therein.

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It's not the first controversy I've been involved with in my life for some odd reason, but there is a movement amongst the

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Reformed, a movement called resourcement. It's going back to look at the sources of theology developed in the past, and that's fine.

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I teach church history, you got to do things like that. But what's strange here, what's odd here, is that this is a resourcement that is focusing people upon the metaphysics of Aristotle.

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Now, why would we be concerned about the metaphysics of Aristotle or Plato?

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If you know your Greek philosophy, you know that Aristotle was not exactly the friend of Plato's perspectives, and so there would be major differences between them, but this is

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Greek philosophy. Why would that be coming up amongst our people? Well, because of someone long after Jesus, because obviously

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Plato and Aristotle were long before Jesus, but it's someone long after, someone by the name of Thomas Aquinas.

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Now, Thomas Aquinas, of course, is a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. He was a great intellect.

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No one who studies church history can possibly avoid the impacts that Thomas Aquinas had, but what

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Aquinas did was he attempted to synthesize and bring together what he considered to be the best insights of Aristotle.

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Aristotle's writings had become known in Europe thanks to coming through Islam, being translated and brought in through Islam, and this created a tremendous challenge, and Thomas Aquinas rose to that challenge, and he tried to take the best of this new knowledge and express

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Christianity within that context. Now, one of the major problems with that, of course, is while it may have been great new knowledge back then, no one really believes it anymore.

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Aristotle's fundamental view of how the universe existed and the principles involved, no one really believes that any longer, but Aquinas' theology, especially as found in his

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Summa Theologica, his theology became the theology of the

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Roman Catholic Church. In fact, just a few months ago, Pope Francis spoke at a conference on Thomas in Rome and called everyone, come to Thomas, ask your questions of Thomas, and the tradition is that the

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Council of Trent, which was a counter -reformation council, that is the council that anathematized us and anathematized justification by faith, that at the

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Council of Trent, there were two books placed before the Council during their deliberations, the

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Bible and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, and so you might be going, you said this is amongst

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Reformed Baptists? Yes, and Presbyterians. Every few generations, there's a

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Thomistic infection, and they haven't developed a vaccine, maybe they'll do the mRNA thing on that,

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I don't know, but every few generations, there is a move towards scholasticism, and the result of this has been in many places where only a matter of years ago, you would never have heard discussions of the

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Trinity and the divine persons using phrases like divine simplicity and inseparable operations and all the rest of it, you never would have heard any of that in any of these places.

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Now, it's considered absolutely necessary, and if you don't buy it the way Thomas enunciated it, then you're giving up on the

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Trinity, and it's your fault that, you know, everything is falling apart and everything else. I just want to read to you a couple of paragraphs from a book that came out just recently presenting the doctrine of inseparable operations.

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Now, I'm not going to go, and we don't have time right now to go any more in depth into this, but inseparable operations could be understood biblically as simply saying that God the

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Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit act in perfect unity and harmony in everything that they do.

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That's biblically true, but the way Thomas did it because of his doctrine of divine simplicity, which he did not derive from scripture, but he derived primarily from metaphysical categories drawn from Aristotle.

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The concept of inseparable operations is the idea that everything that God does externally outside the

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Trinity is done equally by each of the divine persons, so you can't actually distinguish between them without coming up with another doctrine of appropriations, but the whole idea is we need to hold on to what

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Thomas taught us, and so you end up literally with this.

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Ready? The notion that a divine person is nothing but the divine essence under a particular relational aspect.

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Now, let me just, let me stop just for a second, then I'll run through the whole thing. A divine person is nothing but the divine essence under a particular relational aspect.

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Think about that. Just in the passages we were just looking at in scripture, is that the depth of the richness of the relationship of Father and Son that we've seen just in the passages we've looked at briefly today?

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Of course not. That's not just some divine essence under a particular relational aspect.

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This is what happens when you take an external philosophical source, you make it your ultimate authority, and squeeze the scripture into it.

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The result is what happens when you squeeze an orange into an orange juicer.

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You don't end up with all the orange left. A bunch of stuff is lost, and what's lost is the richness.

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Folks, there is no philosophical system mankind has ever come up with that's big enough to actually contain the fullness of divine revelation, and when you try to squish it into it, you're going to deform it.

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You're going to deform it. So, the notion the divine person is nothing but the divine essence under a particular relational aspect leads us to the logic of ad extra inseparability.

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If a person is nothing but a relation within the unity of the divine essence, it is inconceivable for two reasons that one such person might have a separate action in the economy.

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Either this person has this operation under its aspect of essence, or under its aspect of relation.

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The first option entails that it would have a different substance, not shared with the other persons. The second option would entail that created realities would enter into its constitution, giving that a person is a subsistent relation.

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For this reason, also, classical Trinitarianism argues that separable operations ad extra compromise the creator -creature distinction.

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The conclusion is that whatever action the persons have in their created world is in virtue of their essence.

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This is not the whole story, however. It was suggested that even though the efficient causality of the persons ad extra is one, the persons nonetheless have a causality.

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As such, we have insisted that the triune causality is not a monadic simplex causality, but rather a differentiated one.

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On this score, the tradition of inseparable operations, especially, listen, especially in its

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Thomistic elaboration, that's Thomas Aquinas, clarifies that the creative and economic works of the

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Trinity is grounded in the processions. It was shown that this causality pertains to the different modes of action of the persons.

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Just as the persons are different modes of existence of the divine substance, so they have different modes within the self -same operation of God.

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It is this differentiated operative modality that enables us to find the persons despite the fact that they act inseparably.

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Let me repeat that. It is this differentiated operative modality that enables us to find the persons despite the fact that they act inseparably.

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In the process, a particular way of conceiving personal action needed to be uprooted against modern personalism, which anchors will in the person, we have sided with the diothelite orthodoxy by grounding will in nature.

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The modern quest for personal identity by detaching will from nature was shown to be a dead end. True personal identity is to be found in the enactment of one's nature.

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The triune persons, too, act on the basis of a common will and power of nature, and yet they enact this will in three irreducible modalities.

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It thus appears that we will be getting closer to their proper identities not by drifting away from the natural will and power of the

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Trinity. The identity of the persons is not revealed by separable acts and wills, but precisely in the unity of the divine will and action, since the persons are nothing but this will and power under a particular relational inflection."

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End quote. Now, one thing

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I can absolutely guarantee you. You can respect all the work this particular individual has done and the people who are promoting this kind of thinking, but there's one thing

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I have discovered. None of them have ever taken this to the street. They've never taken it into a mosque.

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They've never taken it into debate with a oneness person who believes in modalism, because that sounds a lot like modalism.

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They've not gone to the LDS temple. This is all in the academy.

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The problem is the academy ends up leaking into the pews. What you just heard, you might say, well, you know, if we had time to define all the terms, okay,

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I get that, but what you just heard does not even try to do justice to the richness of the biblical revelation of the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit, and I will not sacrifice that beautiful revelation to simply fit into some academic peg or hole.

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And we can't either. Literally, there are people now in our circles teaching that without these concepts, as Thomas enunciated them, you cannot defend the

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Trinity. And I go, so how did they do that before Thomas came along? How did they pull that off?

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We live in a strange day. Now, again, is this the first time this has ever happened? Nope.

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Will this run its course? Yep. What will happen? It'll cause division.

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There will be a number of people who I think will end up not being Reformed Baptist or Reformed at all down the road.

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It'll cause a number of institutions that were originally begun by Christians to promote a biblically -oriented,

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Reformed understanding to wander off into other stuff. That's what's happened over and over and over and over again.

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It's not the first time, and it's happening again. But I want you, as members of this church, because we do take this to the streets, we will be going out to the

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Easter pageant, we are talking to the

01:00:00

Muslims, and that means when this stuff is floating around out there, we may end up running into it.

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And that means we need to be prepared to give an answer for why we stand on this.

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I'm telling you nothing, everyone who's read my book knows this, I am a biblical

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Trinitarian. The Trinity was true and clear long before Thomas Aquinas was born.

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We didn't need him. It doesn't mean that you can't benefit from some of the things he said, though there are a lot of balancing acts you have to do even to make that worthwhile.

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But I'm a biblical Trinitarian, and I'm not going to apologize for that. In our circles, calling someone a biblicist only a few years ago was a compliment.

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Now it's a slam, it's a slur. Amazing how fast it happened, it really is.

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But we're not going down that road. The doctrine of the

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Trinity is true because God has revealed it in his word. One God, three persons, equality of the persons, that's

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Bible. And when you know that in the Bible, you're not going to be moved by the cults or by the philosophies of men away from that solid foundation.

01:01:35

Amen? Let's pray together. Our gracious triune

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God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we do thank you that you have revealed yourself to your people, that through the living scriptures you have given us glimpses, insights, precious insights into what

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Father, Son, and Spirit have done in this world and especially for our redemption. Father, we pray that by your

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Spirit you would root us and ground us deeply in Scripture.

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Lord, that you would convince our hearts and our spirits that you have spoken.

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We know that the world will do everything in its power to attack us and to destroy that faith.

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Father, we ask that by your Spirit you would protect us, and as we go out to speak your truth to the world, we would do so with great confidence because you, by your

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Spirit, have drawn us to your truth. Your word is truth. Thank you,