WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:06.480 We're in a course on the doctrine of the Trinity, and I'll pray for us as we get started. 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:11.980 And I've got two prayers tonight, one at the beginning and one at the end, and both are written by folks 00:00:11.980 --> 00:00:17.460 ! during the time of the Reformation, and both have highlights of praying to God the Father, Son, and 00:00:17.460 --> 00:00:23.080 Spirit, the Triune God. And so I'll lead us in this prayer, and this one comes from a man named Martin 00:00:23.080 --> 00:00:28.400 Macronius, who was a pastor in London from the Netherlands. So let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, 00:00:28.399 --> 00:00:34.939 whose law is perfect, converting the soul, assure testimony, giving wisdom to the unlearned, 00:00:35.179 --> 00:00:40.219 and enlightening the eyes, we humbly implore you, through your boundless goodness, to enlighten our 00:00:40.219 --> 00:00:45.959 blind intellect by the Holy Spirit, so that we may truly understand and profess your law and live 00:00:45.959 --> 00:00:51.519 according to it. Since it has pleased you, most merciful Father, to reveal the mysteries of your 00:00:51.519 --> 00:00:57.219 will only to the little ones, and since you look to Him alone, who is of a humble and contrite spirit, 00:00:57.219 --> 00:01:03.700 who has reverence for your word, grant us then a humble spirit. Keep us from all fleshly wisdom, 00:01:04.219 --> 00:01:09.879 which is enmity against you. Bring to the right way those who stray from the truth, so that we all may 00:01:09.879 --> 00:01:17.019 unanimously serve you in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives. We ask this from you, 00:01:17.079 --> 00:01:23.200 most merciful Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, and through the power of 00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:28.840 the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right, we are working our way through this series on the doctrine of the 00:01:28.840 --> 00:01:37.000 Trinity, and last time we were together a few weeks back, we said that delighting in God is not the 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:43.240 icing on the top of the Christian life, but the main course of the Christian life, that delighting 00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:48.260 in the Trinity is the very thing we were made for. So God made us and put us into the Garden of Eden, 00:01:48.260 --> 00:01:53.740 and the word Eden actually means delight. We were put in a space of delight to delight in God, 00:01:54.300 --> 00:02:01.000 and so last time we talked about the word affection being the word that our forefathers used to talk 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:08.140 about how to relate to God, to have affection for God, affection for the triune God, and we said that 00:02:08.140 --> 00:02:14.920 that's not the word emotion, which is different. Emotion is a word, emotion, that doesn't really arise 00:02:14.919 --> 00:02:22.659 in the English language until the 18th century, and it said the word affection is something deeper than 00:02:22.659 --> 00:02:29.779 that, bigger than that, and affection is a state of mind, a conviction, where you settle to what you 00:02:29.779 --> 00:02:36.219 believe and then allow your heart to be driven more and more in affection toward what you believe, 00:02:36.319 --> 00:02:43.259 and so affection for God is using the whole of yourself, the whole person, to long for God more 00:02:43.259 --> 00:02:47.419 and more over time, and so it really begins with the intellect. It begins with truth. It begins with 00:02:47.419 --> 00:02:52.280 knowing God more and more and thinking about God more and more, and so one of the things I finished 00:02:52.280 --> 00:02:58.039 with last time is knowing God more clearly is the fuel for delighting in Him more deeply. 00:02:58.719 --> 00:03:04.180 So you were made to delight in the Trinity, and knowing God more and knowing more about God is actually 00:03:04.180 --> 00:03:10.120 fuel for delighting in Him more and more. It raises your affections over time for God, and so 00:03:10.120 --> 00:03:16.640 we enter tonight a little bit more into building the doctrine of the Trinity, and the question before 00:03:16.640 --> 00:03:21.960 us is, does the Bible actually teach the Trinity, and why does that matter? So you might come tonight 00:03:21.960 --> 00:03:27.780 and think, I'm fairly settled on the idea that the Bible does teach the Trinity, but it's actually 00:03:27.780 --> 00:03:32.580 really important to ask this question because a lot of people are not settled, and so there's an 00:03:32.580 --> 00:03:37.580 apologetic element of our reflection on this, but also it's important to us to actually look through 00:03:37.580 --> 00:03:43.440 the Bible, and one of the things I'd invite you to do tonight is think about how does what we believe, 00:03:43.520 --> 00:03:49.960 our theology, what we say about God actually take shape. So what do the theologians do when they look 00:03:49.960 --> 00:03:55.120 at the Bible and try to draw truths from the Bible? And all of us here, every believer is a theologian, 00:03:55.180 --> 00:03:59.380 and so this is a work that all of us are called to be a part of, and so that's the work that we're 00:03:59.380 --> 00:04:05.620 trying to get up to tonight. So let me see if I can get a bit of participation tonight, and that's to 00:04:05.620 --> 00:04:15.099 ask the question, who are some of the cults or alternative religions or anyone in the contemporary 00:04:15.099 --> 00:04:22.500 culture, any type of group that says the Bible does not teach the doctrine of the Trinity? And if you 00:04:22.500 --> 00:04:28.639 could name one, maybe a word or two about what they what they say otherwise about it. Unitarians. Okay, 00:04:28.639 --> 00:04:36.120 Unitarians, which say? They say the Trinity does not come from the Bible. Okay, exactly. The Trinity does 00:04:36.120 --> 00:04:42.899 not come from the Bible. Yeah, nailed it. Hamish, I think you said one as well. Jehovah's Witnesses. 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:50.680 Yeah, in any sense of what they think about the Trinity? They don't. No, you're right. Yeah, 00:04:50.680 --> 00:04:58.079 right. Yeah. Yeah, Jesus is a creature for, yeah, the firstborn of creation and actually made by God, 00:04:58.100 --> 00:05:06.060 a creature, yeah. Anybody else? Maybe one more? Mormons. Yeah, absolutely, and Mormons are effectively 00:05:06.060 --> 00:05:12.040 tritheists. They believe that the Son and the Spirit were also created but then elevated into the divine 00:05:12.040 --> 00:05:20.720 life and made gods, right? So, they're tritheists. So, those are a few great examples. So, just next 00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:26.340 slide here, if I can get this to work. Oh, sorry. I'm still learning this new system we have here, so 00:05:26.340 --> 00:05:33.900 bear with me. There we go. Yeah, so a few examples. Some were mentioned. Jehovah's Witnesses say that the 00:05:33.900 --> 00:05:39.879 Father alone is God and the Son is a creature and the Spirit is a force who was also created. Or the Mormons, 00:05:39.879 --> 00:05:45.560 the Latter-day Saints, there's many gods, but the three principal deities, Father, Son, and Spirit, 00:05:45.740 --> 00:05:51.819 two of them are also creatures that were invited into the divine life. Or Islam, Islam says that God 00:05:51.819 --> 00:05:59.159 is one, Allah is one, and has no son. So, in Islam, God is monadic, we might say. So, radically, 00:05:59.759 --> 00:06:06.120 a radical unity that can never be thought of in tri-personality like we in Christianity say. 00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:11.780 Or in pop culture, some of the things that you might see is that the Emperor Constantine invented the doctrine 00:06:11.780 --> 00:06:18.540 of the Trinity when he called the Council of Nicaea in 325. Or even some Roman Catholic apologist 00:06:18.540 --> 00:06:24.899 today, right now as we speak, are saying things like the Bible does not actually teach the doctrine 00:06:24.899 --> 00:06:31.160 of the Trinity. Now, why would a Roman Catholic apologist, defender of Rome, say something like the Bible 00:06:31.160 --> 00:06:37.420 doesn't get you there? Why? Because they want to uphold the magisterium of the church, the Pope. 00:06:37.620 --> 00:06:43.120 And so, it's actually the church that brings you to a place of believing in the Trinity, not primarily 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:47.000 the Bible. So, one of the things to say tonight is, can we actually go to the Bible and defend the 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:53.760 doctrine of the Trinity and believe in our God who is triune? And the way that works is there's no 00:06:53.760 --> 00:07:00.360 singular final proof text in the Bible, though there are some that come pretty close to declaring the 00:07:00.360 --> 00:07:06.639 doctrine of the Trinity as we declare it today. But the way that we come to our beliefs as Christians 00:07:06.639 --> 00:07:12.080 is we look across the whole Bible, Genesis to Revelation, the whole canon of Scripture, 00:07:12.379 --> 00:07:18.040 and then derive from that collectively what we are to believe about God. And so, the Westminster 00:07:18.040 --> 00:07:25.620 Confession of Faith has this great line in chapter 1.6 that the things we believe about God come to us 00:07:25.620 --> 00:07:30.300 through the Bible and then by good and necessary consequences. And what they mean by that is 00:07:30.300 --> 00:07:35.860 basically, when you read the Bible carefully, you can ask the question, what must be true if what the 00:07:35.860 --> 00:07:40.680 Bible says is true is true? And that's what comes about by good and necessary consequence. And so, 00:07:40.840 --> 00:07:46.160 the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in essence, three in person, 00:07:46.399 --> 00:07:51.500 is something that we come to by necessary consequence of all that we see across the Bible. 00:07:51.500 --> 00:07:58.579 So, here's what you need to have a biblical doctrine of the Trinity. So, if we're going to say the Bible 00:07:58.579 --> 00:08:02.899 actually teaches the Trinity, these first three things are the things we would have to look for. 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:09.860 Number one, that there is one God. Number two, that the Father, Son, and Spirit are each fully God. 00:08:10.240 --> 00:08:15.959 And number three, that the Father, Son, and Spirit are not the same. So, the distinctiveness of the 00:08:15.959 --> 00:08:21.919 Christian doctrine of God is that the Father, Son, and Spirit are the one God, and the Father, Son, and 00:08:21.919 --> 00:08:26.219 Spirit are not the same as each other. They're distinct. So, one of the ways this gets talked 00:08:26.219 --> 00:08:31.479 about is the fourth thing there. The persons of God, Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct, 00:08:31.819 --> 00:08:37.340 but they're undivided. The Father, Son, and the Spirit are God, and yet there's a distinction of 00:08:37.340 --> 00:08:43.579 persons. Now, if you say, I don't quite know what that means, and that's what we talked about last time 00:08:43.580 --> 00:08:49.139 we were together, that's okay. You're not really supposed to, in a sense, because there's no way 00:08:49.139 --> 00:08:56.940 to get your arms all the way around that idea. So, comprehension is a word that comes from another 00:08:56.940 --> 00:09:01.139 language that means to give something a hug and get your arms all the way around that thing. 00:09:01.500 --> 00:09:06.259 That's to comprehend. And you can't comprehend the doctrine of the Trinity because you can't comprehend 00:09:06.259 --> 00:09:13.400 God. God is not a creature like us. He's not a subject of mathematics and number. He's not a subject 00:09:13.399 --> 00:09:19.079 of space and time, and so that means that there's no comprehension of the Godhead. There's only an 00:09:19.079 --> 00:09:24.939 attempt by us to listen to what God has said about Himself in human speech and try to do our best 00:09:24.939 --> 00:09:30.519 at describing Him faithfully as He's taught us. So, we can say that we speak of God truly, 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:37.299 but not comprehensively. And so, that's what we have when we talk about the triune God. So, I've got a few 00:09:37.299 --> 00:09:41.579 passages for you. You're very welcome to turn in the Bible to them if you'd like. We'll move through 00:09:41.580 --> 00:09:47.700 them fairly quickly so that we don't use up too much of our time. But in them, what we're trying 00:09:47.700 --> 00:09:53.300 to do is say, well, does the Bible actually teach those three things that we just listed on the 00:09:53.300 --> 00:10:00.480 previous slide? So, the first is famous Deuteronomy 6, what's often called the Shema. It's called the 00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:07.400 Shema because in Hebrew, hear, O Israel, is the Hebrew word Shema. So, this is the Shema. And it says, 00:10:07.399 --> 00:10:14.279 hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And just note a couple things that the word Lord 00:10:14.279 --> 00:10:21.980 there is Yahweh. It's the revelation of the divine name in Exodus chapter 3. And remember that Yahweh 00:10:21.980 --> 00:10:31.919 means I am. And I am is just the to be verb. It's just God says, I am, I be, I exist. Whatever being is, 00:10:31.919 --> 00:10:38.079 is what God is. God is necessary being. We're not necessary, but God is necessary being. And so, 00:10:38.159 --> 00:10:46.799 the necessary being that is God, who's also our God, the God of Israel, is one. So, there's a grand 00:10:46.799 --> 00:10:52.120 statement before Moses kicks off into this covenantal speech in Deuteronomy. And he says, 00:10:52.259 --> 00:10:57.819 hear, O Israel, the first thing you got to know is the Lord Yahweh that revealed himself at Sinai is 00:10:57.820 --> 00:11:04.120 one. Now, what does that mean, one? And it's quite simple, actually, I think, here. And that's that 00:11:04.120 --> 00:11:10.520 these were people who were former slaves in Egypt. And in Egypt, they were forced at times to worship 00:11:10.520 --> 00:11:16.320 a pantheon of gods, polytheists. And in Egypt, they are polytheists. And so, what is this saying? 00:11:16.379 --> 00:11:21.240 This saying, the God you worship, the God who brought you through the waters of the Red Sea, 00:11:21.240 --> 00:11:29.080 is not a pantheon, is not many gods, but one God, one and one only. So, this is a denial 00:11:29.080 --> 00:11:35.980 of any sense of a multiplicity of gods. There is but one God, and you're to love Him with all your 00:11:35.980 --> 00:11:41.519 heart, soul, mind, and strength. So, we learn there that God is one. That's one of the great claims of 00:11:41.519 --> 00:11:47.100 the Bible, that we are monotheists, that God is one. But then you flip over to the New Testament, 00:11:47.100 --> 00:11:54.620 and you have this astounding passage that we've all read many times but can never really be exhausted, 00:11:55.060 --> 00:12:01.040 and it's John 1, 1-3. And what does it say? It says, in the beginning, and what is that connecting 00:12:01.040 --> 00:12:09.480 us to there? Genesis 1, right? And associating whatever it's going to say next with the God 00:12:09.480 --> 00:12:16.279 who created the world. That's why that first clause is there. And it calls the Son of God, 00:12:16.279 --> 00:12:23.779 Word, Logos, and says, in the beginning from Genesis 1 was the Word. And those two B verbs that 00:12:23.779 --> 00:12:29.899 are all over this passage, it's connecting the Word, the Logos, who is the Son of God, 00:12:30.179 --> 00:12:38.240 with the idea of Yahweh who just is. He was, the Son was, just like Yahweh is, in the beginning. 00:12:38.620 --> 00:12:44.459 And He was there, He was the Creator. And we get this incredible distinction here. The Word was 00:12:44.460 --> 00:12:52.400 with God. So maybe just a slight, another request for a little bit of participation. If John tells us 00:12:52.400 --> 00:12:59.639 here, the Word was with God, so the Word is the Son, who do you think in the three persons of the 00:12:59.639 --> 00:13:06.300 Trinity the Word God is standing in there for? The Word, the Son, was with God. Who is God there? 00:13:06.299 --> 00:13:14.159 Any? Sorry? The Father. Yeah, absolutely. So it's, John is saying, the Son in the beginning was with the 00:13:14.159 --> 00:13:19.359 Father. That's the way God is often used in the New Testament, simply as a stand-in for the Father. 00:13:20.099 --> 00:13:27.219 And the Word not only was there with the Father, but was God. So now all of a sudden, you see this 00:13:27.220 --> 00:13:36.639 striking thing John does. He says, the Son who was with the Father, God, is God. And remember that 00:13:36.639 --> 00:13:40.460 thing we said in the slides, that to establish the doctrine of the Trinity, you have to say, 00:13:40.920 --> 00:13:47.960 there's one God, and the one God is Father, Son, and Spirit, three persons, distinct, yet also one. 00:13:48.320 --> 00:13:54.320 And there, in those two clauses, that's really what John says, that the Word was with God, 00:13:54.320 --> 00:13:59.780 the Father, and yet was God at the same time. And as humans, we say, well, how could that be? But 00:13:59.780 --> 00:14:04.640 that's the profoundness and the mystery of the God that we worship, of the doctrine of the Trinity. 00:14:05.480 --> 00:14:10.379 And then, by the way, this is where the Jehovah's Witnesses ground their whole theology. 00:14:10.940 --> 00:14:22.960 They say that right here, there's no V in Greek, and they mistakenly read the text to need to include 00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:28.860 the little letter. Sorry, sometimes this is not working for me. A. So they write in the Jehovah's 00:14:28.860 --> 00:14:36.040 Witness translation, the Word was a God. And that means that they say that the Son was one of many 00:14:36.040 --> 00:14:41.580 deities that was created by the Father, and that's the great heresy that was committed, 00:14:42.100 --> 00:14:48.620 that has thrown the entire Jehovah's Witness community off track. So there's a striking evidence 00:14:48.620 --> 00:14:55.240 of the Son being both God, yet a distinct person in the Bible. But then you come to the Shema again, 00:14:55.899 --> 00:15:01.720 because it's restated in the New Testament. This is so significant that, remember Deuteronomy 6, 4? 00:15:02.080 --> 00:15:10.580 But then here in 1 Corinthians 8, 6, notice, yet for us there is one God. And you say, well, that's 00:15:10.580 --> 00:15:15.580 what the Shema said. That's what a Jewish believer of the New Testament is going to say. I remember that 00:15:15.580 --> 00:15:21.220 from Deuteronomy 6. But then how does it define, how does Paul define the one God? The Father, 00:15:21.940 --> 00:15:29.360 from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things and 00:15:29.360 --> 00:15:35.300 through whom we exist. And so in the New Testament, the writers start to explain the oneness of God 00:15:35.300 --> 00:15:40.780 in a multiplicity of persons. They do this very naturally, picking up on Old Testament passages. 00:15:40.779 --> 00:15:49.319 Just a few more. This is another striking example. In the Old Testament, we're told that every knee 00:15:49.319 --> 00:15:57.019 shall bow and every tongue swear allegiance to God alone in the eschaton, in the time of the end of 00:15:57.019 --> 00:16:02.000 the world. But then in the New Testament and Philippians 2, what do we learn? Who is that God 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:07.279 that we're to bow the knee to? And we learn that we're going to bow the knee to Jesus. Every tongue 00:16:07.279 --> 00:16:13.039 in heaven and on earth, every knee bow, every tongue confess. And so that's picking up on the 00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:19.699 one God of Isaiah 45, and Jesus is being attributed as that one God of Isaiah 45 here. 00:16:20.579 --> 00:16:26.759 So we've seen already that there is one God, and that the New Testament associates the Son, 00:16:27.100 --> 00:16:34.059 Jesus Christ, as God. So there's the Father, and there's the Son, and there's a unity yet a distinction 00:16:34.059 --> 00:16:39.059 at the same time. And then just one passage on the Holy Spirit. There's hundreds we could go to, 00:16:39.519 --> 00:16:45.859 but I think this is an interesting one. And it's this moment in Acts 5 when Ananias and Sapphira 00:16:45.859 --> 00:16:51.859 commit a great sin against the church and against God by hiding money. And look at what it says. 00:16:51.859 --> 00:16:56.899 Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? 00:16:56.899 --> 00:17:04.139 To keep back for yourself part of the proceeds. And then just jump down a little bit. And after it 00:17:04.139 --> 00:17:08.720 was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? 00:17:09.059 --> 00:17:16.900 You have not lied to man, but to God. And here it's the Holy Spirit that is the subject 00:17:16.900 --> 00:17:24.099 that's then referenced later as God. So the Holy Spirit is called God multiple times in different 00:17:24.099 --> 00:17:29.759 places in the New Testament. And this is just one of the examples. Okay, so to jump back to the Old 00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:36.299 Testament, in Exodus 3, we've got this incredible moment. And this is how we read the whole Bible 00:17:36.299 --> 00:17:40.799 all together and then go back and read the Old Testament. And we could do this with lots of 00:17:40.799 --> 00:17:48.519 different passages. But this is the burning bush story in Exodus chapter 3. And the angel of the Lord, 00:17:48.519 --> 00:17:57.759 the angel of Yahweh, who first gives his name there in the story, appears to Moses in a flame of fire 00:17:57.759 --> 00:18:03.779 out of the midst of a bush. Now, if you've ever seen depictions of the burning bush story, 00:18:04.660 --> 00:18:10.980 Exodus chapter 3, oftentimes what do you see? You just see a bush of some kind, a thicket, 00:18:11.220 --> 00:18:17.059 and there's fire, and there's Moses. But that's not exactly what the text tells us. 00:18:17.059 --> 00:18:27.159 What does it say? It says that from within the flaming bush came the angel of Yahweh out of it to speak 00:18:27.159 --> 00:18:34.139 in a form, in a physical form. And so who did Moses encounter? He actually encountered 00:18:34.139 --> 00:18:41.539 the angel of the Lord. And if you were to read on, it's the angel of the Lord who actually gives the 00:18:41.539 --> 00:18:48.299 divine name. So who is it that speaks to Moses? It wasn't just some voice from heaven coming down 00:18:48.299 --> 00:18:56.379 Charleston Heston style. No, it was actually the angel of the Lord saying, I am who I am. Yahweh is 00:18:56.379 --> 00:19:02.579 my name. Now that is so significant because the Christians of all the centuries have understood 00:19:02.579 --> 00:19:09.059 by reading the New Testament that the angel of the Lord is the Son of God. The Son of God 00:19:09.059 --> 00:19:16.339 condescended before His incarnation. So the very Son who condescended in the Old Testament as the angel 00:19:16.339 --> 00:19:23.899 of Yahweh would condescend again as a human being in the New Testament in Jesus Christ. Here, the fire 00:19:23.899 --> 00:19:28.980 from heaven that even comes down onto the top of the mountain is regarded by so many of the Christians 00:19:28.980 --> 00:19:37.940 of our history as the Holy Spirit. Where do we see fire come down again in the New Testament as the Holy 00:19:37.940 --> 00:19:47.420 Spirit? The day of Pentecost, which is a redoing of Exodus chapter 3. And so here we've got the fire, 00:19:47.539 --> 00:19:53.259 the Holy Spirit, and out of the presence of the Holy Spirit, the glory cloud who is the Holy Spirit, 00:19:53.259 --> 00:19:59.240 comes the Son of God. And the Son of God speaks the name of God, the Father Yahweh, who is God, 00:19:59.319 --> 00:20:04.460 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so we have this incredible moment back in Exodus chapter 3. 00:20:05.319 --> 00:20:12.680 And so lastly, we highlighted this as a theme for this whole course last time. Matthew 28, 00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:18.500 the Great Commission, summarizes it. This is probably the closest thing we have to a one-stop shop proof 00:20:18.500 --> 00:20:23.759 text for the doctrine of the Trinity, because we're told to go and make disciples and baptize them. 00:20:24.099 --> 00:20:31.200 And remember, if you were here last time, in the one singular name. So there's just a singular name, 00:20:31.259 --> 00:20:37.119 not a plural names, but a singular name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. So you see that 00:20:37.119 --> 00:20:44.519 how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct, but they are all the one name, God, 00:20:44.519 --> 00:20:50.379 at the same time. So the theologians of the past are taking that information and saying, 00:20:50.779 --> 00:20:59.220 well, then how do we speak about our God? And what they said is this, we say our God is one in essence, 00:20:59.359 --> 00:21:06.460 one in being, and three in person, undivided in unity, yet at the same time distinct in person. 00:21:06.700 --> 00:21:11.579 How can it be? And the confession we have is because that's who God is. That's who God is, 00:21:11.579 --> 00:21:18.299 and that's who God has revealed himself to be from the very beginning, and that we see in full 00:21:18.299 --> 00:21:25.099 revelation when we come to places like Matthew 28 in the New Testament. Okay, now let's wrap up 00:21:25.099 --> 00:21:32.619 with some application. To be able to say that our God is the triune God, we need all three of these. 00:21:32.879 --> 00:21:38.619 There is one God. I think we saw that. The Father, Son, and the Spirit are each fully God. We just had 00:21:38.619 --> 00:21:43.979 little samples of dozens and dozens of passages in the New Testament that teach that, and the Father, 00:21:44.099 --> 00:21:48.439 Son, and Spirit are not the same. There is a distinction in the Godhead. The persons of God 00:21:48.439 --> 00:21:54.500 are distinct, but undivided. So if you were to take any of those away, you would lose the Christian 00:21:54.500 --> 00:22:01.239 doctrine of God. And so it's so important that we uphold all of those statements about the God we 00:22:01.239 --> 00:22:07.399 worship. So let me draw this to application by taking you to the last passage we'll look at, 00:22:07.400 --> 00:22:13.460 and that's Galatians chapter 4. Just like we said last time, where does the doctrine of the Trinity 00:22:13.460 --> 00:22:22.620 really come home to us or hit us and stir our affections and drive our hearts more, I think, 00:22:22.700 --> 00:22:28.900 towards thinking of God as he is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? And it comes to us through a passage 00:22:28.900 --> 00:22:36.080 like this. When the fullness of time came, the middle of history, God the Father sent forth the Son, 00:22:36.079 --> 00:22:42.460 Jesus Christ, born of Mary, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law so that we 00:22:42.460 --> 00:22:48.240 might receive adoption as sons and daughters. And because you are sons and daughters, God has sent 00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:53.419 the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, into your heart so you could say, Abba, Father. You see where the doctrine 00:22:53.419 --> 00:22:58.599 of the Trinity really comes home to us? It's in the gospel. It's that when you become a Christian, 00:22:58.599 --> 00:23:06.199 you start to realize more and more that the triune God is present with you because the Spirit is present 00:23:06.199 --> 00:23:11.679 with you. And if the Spirit is present with you, that means the Spirit has united you to the Son, 00:23:11.980 --> 00:23:19.079 Jesus Christ, fully, finally, and forever, legally. And that means that you now have access to God the 00:23:19.079 --> 00:23:25.240 Father forever and that your prayers matter. And so you can cry out, Abba, Father, and God listens. 00:23:25.240 --> 00:23:32.079 And so, in other words, to say, the more you enter into the gospel, the more you have to enter into 00:23:32.079 --> 00:23:38.759 the fact that your God is triune and have affection for the triune God and grow in saying, 00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:44.620 the Father, Son, and Spirit, I am to meditate on and think about how much it matters that my God 00:23:44.620 --> 00:23:51.200 is three in one and not simply monadic or something else. No. And so it's in the gospel where we really 00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:56.799 encounter this. So I love a little bit of a mess up there at the bottom, but I love this quote from 00:23:56.799 --> 00:24:02.240 Herman Bavinck that could maybe be something that you could take away tonight and think, 00:24:02.620 --> 00:24:08.860 how does the triunity of God affect the way I think about everything? So that's a question I'd love for 00:24:08.860 --> 00:24:14.039 you to ponder over the course of this semester. And Bavinck says this, the Christian mind remains 00:24:14.039 --> 00:24:21.740 unsatisfied until all of existence is referred back to the triune God and until the confession 00:24:21.740 --> 00:24:28.440 of God's Trinity functions as the center of our thought and life. So does the confession of God 00:24:28.440 --> 00:24:33.720 as triune function for you centrally in your life? And so there are ways of talking about, and we'll have 00:24:33.720 --> 00:24:37.879 to do this another time, of how it matters so much that God is triune for the way you think about your 00:24:37.879 --> 00:24:41.639 work life, the way you think about your family life, the way you think about relationships, the way you 00:24:41.640 --> 00:24:48.000 think about the church, all of it, the Christian doctrine of the truth of God's triunity has to 00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:54.060 function at the center of our thought and life. So I'll finish with just an example of that. How does 00:24:54.060 --> 00:25:02.060 the Trinity matter for you as you relate to the gospel? Well, every one of us have these basic desires. 00:25:02.620 --> 00:25:09.740 We want to be loved. And so you might ask, am I loved? Am I lovable? Does anyone love me? 00:25:09.740 --> 00:25:13.859 And the gospel says that God the Father loves you. 00:25:15.599 --> 00:25:24.099 And so God the Father, in His love for you, sent God the Son for you. And then you can say, but what do I do 00:25:24.099 --> 00:25:31.420 with my guilt and my shame? And you can say, well, because God the Father loves me, God the Father sent God 00:25:31.420 --> 00:25:44.320 the Son to give grace and pour grace upon my life. And then you say, but today I don't feel that way. I feel 00:25:44.320 --> 00:25:50.200 rather alone. And you can say, but because God the Father loves me, that He sent God the Son to give 00:25:50.200 --> 00:25:55.759 grace and pour grace upon my life. I can say today, no matter how I feel, that it is a fact that I'm not 00:25:55.759 --> 00:26:02.059 alone. The presence of God is with me by the presence of the Holy Spirit. So now, today, right 00:26:02.059 --> 00:26:09.259 now, you commune with the triune God who is the one God because the Holy Spirit is with you. So that's 00:26:09.259 --> 00:26:15.200 a statement of your identity. And then we could say a statement of your mission. So what does the Trinity 00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:20.500 say to our self-centered hearts, my self-centered heart, to be sure? Well, it says something like this, 00:26:20.500 --> 00:26:26.759 because God delights in God, the Father, Son, and Spirit delight and love one another forever. 00:26:27.740 --> 00:26:34.680 You, we saw last time from John 15 and 17, you actually have been invited by being united to Jesus 00:26:34.680 --> 00:26:41.640 through the Spirit to delight in God and glorify Him forever. So you've been invited to delight in God 00:26:41.640 --> 00:26:47.900 in a creaturely way like God delights in Himself. And so the doctrine of the Trinity actually draws you 00:26:47.900 --> 00:26:53.040 out of yourself in an age where we are always being beckoned to turn back in on ourselves, 00:26:53.580 --> 00:26:57.540 hold our phones in front of our faces, and curl over in front of them. The doctrine of the Trinity 00:26:57.540 --> 00:27:02.400 invites you to get out of yourself and say, my mission is actually to delight in the Trinity 00:27:02.400 --> 00:27:07.519 and then turn and love people like God has loved me, the Father, Son, and Spirit have loved me. 00:27:07.780 --> 00:27:13.200 So these are very simple gospel applications, but they are true because God is triune. 00:27:13.200 --> 00:27:21.180 So I just wanted to take, we have three minutes left, I just want to take one or two minutes to 00:27:21.180 --> 00:27:27.460 ask a question that was brought up last time at the end by somebody after, can we pray to the Father, 00:27:27.580 --> 00:27:32.779 Son, and the Holy Spirit? And the answer is yes, we can. So I don't have time now to walk through 00:27:32.779 --> 00:27:40.019 these passages, but I've just noted a few passages there of moments in the Bible where the Father is 00:27:40.019 --> 00:27:45.960 prayed to specifically. Of course, Matthew 6 is the Lord's Prayer. Or the Son is addressed in prayer in 00:27:45.960 --> 00:27:52.079 Acts 7, 1 Corinthians 1, Revelation 22. Now in Acts 5 and 2 Corinthians 13, it's not as much that the 00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:58.680 Spirit is addressed in prayer, but that the Spirit is worshiped. And so what the Christian theologians 00:27:58.680 --> 00:28:04.339 have said is when you address the Father, you speak and pray to the one God, Father, Son, and Spirit. 00:28:04.680 --> 00:28:09.500 When you address the Son, you speak and pray to the Father, Son, and Spirit. And when you pray to the 00:28:09.500 --> 00:28:16.259 Spirit, you speak and pray to the Father, Son, and Spirit, because our God is one God with one mind, 00:28:16.339 --> 00:28:22.160 one consciousness. And that means that you absolutely can pray to the Spirit, to the Father, to the Son. 00:28:22.900 --> 00:28:29.180 But of course, it's our normal pattern to pray to the Father by the advocacy of the Spirit through the 00:28:29.180 --> 00:28:34.779 mediation of the Son. And so I'll say this as the last word. Why do we say at the end of our prayers, 00:28:34.779 --> 00:28:42.619 I pray in the name of Jesus, right? In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. And that's not a 00:28:42.619 --> 00:28:47.200 magical formula that we attach to the end of our prayers or anything like that. What are we saying 00:28:47.200 --> 00:28:55.460 when we say we pray in the name of Jesus? We are saying, I recognize to the one God in my prayer 00:28:55.460 --> 00:29:01.700 that I cannot approach you on the basis of my own merits. That's what you're saying. So when you say, 00:29:01.700 --> 00:29:09.519 I pray in the name of Jesus, you're saying, I pray to you and can be heard because I stand within him, 00:29:09.720 --> 00:29:15.360 united to him. I approach you on the basis of his merit, not my merit. If I was left to me, 00:29:15.500 --> 00:29:20.759 I couldn't approach you. You wouldn't hear my prayers. I couldn't enter into your presence, but 00:29:20.759 --> 00:29:27.539 I approach you in the name of Jesus because he has given me full access to you. And so that's why we say 00:29:27.539 --> 00:29:33.539 that when we pray. All right, so I'm going to close now. I want to invite you to something, and that's 00:29:33.539 --> 00:29:39.500 as we work through this course, we only have three more times in it, but to invite you to actually 00:29:39.500 --> 00:29:43.960 meditate on the doctrine of the Trinity in your prayer life. And as you work through the Bible, 00:29:44.220 --> 00:29:49.420 and this is something that we see Christians doing throughout the centuries is having time to really 00:29:49.420 --> 00:29:55.039 meditate on the triunity of God. And so I'll close our time tonight with a prayer also from the 00:29:55.039 --> 00:30:01.440 Reformation that I think highlights this from a German man named Johann Habermann, just some guy 00:30:01.440 --> 00:30:06.740 really. He wrote a book of prayers, and so a lot of his prayers are famous, but we don't know anything 00:30:06.740 --> 00:30:11.319 about them. I don't think so. But here's one of his prayers, and I'll pray it for us and pray it to the 00:30:11.319 --> 00:30:19.500 Father, Son, and Spirit. Your glorious majesty, O God, surround us. The blessed Trinity protect us, 00:30:19.500 --> 00:30:26.859 and the eternal Godhead preserve us. Your unlimited mercy support us. Your loving kindness encompass us. 00:30:27.160 --> 00:30:34.519 Your favor make us to rejoice. The eternal truth of God be our delight. The saving knowledge of Christ 00:30:34.519 --> 00:30:40.519 strengthen us. The all-prevailing grace of God be sufficient for us, and may the grace of God the 00:30:40.519 --> 00:30:46.799 Father lead us. The wisdom of God the Son be our consolation, and the power of the Holy Spirit enlighten us. 00:30:46.799 --> 00:30:55.319 Our Lord and Creator stand by us. Our Redeemer save us. Our Comforter dwell with us forever and ever. Amen.