Transcription
Good morning, HFC! It's good to be here with you guys this morning. If you want to stand, we're going to just pray together, and then we'll get started with worship through music.
God, thank you for being here today, for your presence. God, I know that for a lot of us, this week has been heavy and difficult. I just think the presence of darkness has felt heavy in a lot of our lives. So God, I ask that in these next moments, you will take center stage, that you will bring light into the darkness, that you will bring truth and joy and restoration where it needs to be. God, that you will break chains, that you will free souls, that you'll bring people to salvation in your name. God, I ask that you make yourself tangible in the way that you are present this morning and keep our eyes fully fixed on you. God, we love you, and it's in your beautiful, saving name that we pray. Amen.
[Music]
"In the morning when I arrive..."
Oh, in the morning when I rise, I'll give me Jesus.
[Music]
"Give me Jesus, give me Jesus..."
Now you can have all this world, just give me Jesus.
[Music]
"When I am alone..."
Oh, when I am alone, oh, when I am alone, just give me Jesus.
[Music]
"Give me Jesus..."
You can have all this world, just give me Jesus.
[Music]
"When I come to die..."
When I come to die, oh Jesus.
[Music]
Just give me Jesus.
[Applause]
"You cannot..."
Give me Jesus. Just give me Jesus.
[Applause]
[Music]
"The storm surrounding me..."
Let it break.
[Music]
"And Jesus, Jesus..."
You make the darkness tremble. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, you will make the darkness tremble.
[Music]
"Jesus, Jesus..."
You make the darkness tremble. Jesus, Jesus, your silence fear.
[Music]
"You make the darkness tremble..."
Jesus, Jesus, your name...
[Music]
"Your name is..."
You make the darkness tremble. Jesus, Jesus.
[Music]
"Your name is a light..."
But the shadows can't deny. Your name cannot be overcome.
[Music]
"Your name is..."
Your name is...
[Music]
"Jesus, Jesus..."
You make the darkness tremble.
[Applause]
"Hallelujah for the Lord God..."
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Holy, holy is He.
[Music]
"Singing a new song..."
To Him who sits on heaven's mercy seat.
[Music]
"Holy, holy, holy..."
Is the Lord God Almighty, who was and isn't and is to come.
[Music]
"With all creation..."
I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you.
[Music]
"Flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder..."
To you the only wise is...
[Music]
"With all creation..."
I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you.
[Music]
"Filled with wonder..."
I struck wonder at the mention of your name, Jesus.
[Music]
"Such a marvelous mystery..."
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord.
[Music]
"With all creation..."
I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you.
[Music]
"Are you Lord God..."
[Applause]
Father God, we bow before you this morning, and Lord, we echo those words from Revelation: You are holy. Father, you are worthy of all praise and blessing and honor and glory to your name. We exalt you for who you are, and we praise you.
We thank you that you're sovereign over every situation and circumstance, Lord, even right now. So no matter what we're going through, no matter what we're wrestling with, Lord, you're sovereign over that.
Remembering your character, that you are good, that you are faithful, and that you are love. Father, your perfect love does cast out fear, so we thank you for that truth.
So we bless your name this morning. We thank you for the blessing and privilege we have to gather together to worship you in spirit and in truth. We pray that you would incline our hearts to your word this morning, that you would sanctify us with your truth, renew our minds. May we grow in the knowledge of Christ, that we might bring you more glory.
In Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated. Thank you, worship team. It's really good.
Good morning! Welcome. My name is Bill Tucker. I serve as an elder here at HFC, and it's great to worship with you here this morning. I apologize that it's a little bit warm; we're working on that. There's a bit of a backlog in repairing the AC, so we're trying to keep it as cool as possible, so just bear with us. Relief is coming!
I just want to let you know that every gift that you make to HFC goes to support the building up of the body of Christ, but it also goes to missions as well. We support international missionaries, and we also support those who go from within the body of HFC to short- and even mid-term mission trips.
Michael Sher, one of our elders here, is actually going to Uganda this coming week, so we prayed over him in the first service. I won't get into the details of what they're going to be doing, just for privacy here, but please be lifting Michael and his family up as they travel to Uganda, that God would work in and through him and their family on the trip they're going to be taking, and soften the hearts of the people in Uganda for the Word of God.
So thank you for doing that. Elena has some announcements for us.
[Applause]
Good morning! How are you guys today? Good! I am Elena, the Connections Director here at HFC. I want to let you know that underneath the seat in front of you there is a connect card. The connect card can be used for a ton of different things.
This week, I received a ton of prayer requests that came in, whether you filled it out here in service and dropped it in the box, or filled it out online, and our prayer teams were super excited to walk through you guys with that. You would trust us with your prayers and your prayer requests, so I ask to continue to do that. Send in your prayer requests, ask your questions, fill out that connect card for anything and everything, and we can get back to you.
Also, you'll find a training camp invite somewhere around your seat as well. I'm sorry, guys, I'm switching it up on you. You can hand those out to invite people to training camp, which is super exciting! Training camp is coming up starting on the 18th. I know we do need a few more team members to help serve during that week, but the invite card is really great to get kids registered if you're bringing your kids or your neighbors' kids or your nieces or your grandkids, whatever it is!
Grab that card or check out the Church Center app. The Church Center app is a really great way to get all of the details of everything that's going on. So if you need to register for something, if you need to check a time or a date, or you need to just double-check what I said up here, all of that information is right on the app.
So get that downloaded on your phone and register and just connect to Heritage Fellowship Church. We also use the YouVersion Bible App on Sunday mornings, and if you've never used it before, this is the morning you want to start using it!
So the YouVersion took a little bit of extra time this week, but there is so much great content and some things that probably might not get said on stage today but that you will want to look up later. So if you open up your Bible app and then click on events, or just kidding, click on more in the bottom right-hand corner, and then click on events, Heritage Fellowship Church comes up. It's a way that you can kind of walk along. Everything that's on the screen is right on your phone. You can take notes and make highlights and all of those fun things, so definitely check that out as well.
This morning, some of the announcements that I do have for you: I already mentioned training camp is coming up; it will be July 18th through the 22nd, and it is our version of VBS where we learn different sports and talk about God, and it's going to be super fun! It is in the evening time. For all those details, again, you can read that card or check the Church Center app.
I also want to let you know that we will be having a next step baptism on July 24th, so if you've been interested in baptism or you just want to learn more about it and see what that means for you, you can sign up for our next step baptism, which will be happening in a couple of weeks.
We also will have our next step membership class on the last Sunday of the month. This is normally a three or four-week class, but this is hyperspeed. We are going to be doing it after second service. You'll stay for lunch, and it'll be about three or four hours where you will get all of the information in one sitting and then be ready to go. So you can sign up for that for July 31st as well.
Last but not least, we received occupancy for our new building this week, right? Yes! So super exciting! And so, with that said, the goal is that we will be meeting there come August 7th.
So they're still putting up sound equipment and different things like that in the sanctuary, but as we prepare for that, we need your help to prepare our sanctuary spiritually as well. So we've been reading the Scriptures in the new sanctuary from Genesis to Revelation. We have now made it to Job, which is super exciting! But we want to continue having those sign-ups so that any time during the week or even on Sunday mornings, you guys can sign up on the Church Center app and read Scripture in the sanctuary and be a part of us preparing that place, which is super fun.
All right, here comes Charlie to give you some great Scriptures on the Trinity!
[Applause]
HFC! I had the privilege of bringing the Word to you this morning. Similar to what Bill shared last week, I was a little late to the conversation, so the topics left were the Trinity or sin. So I chose the Trinity; I thought that would be a better option.
But I'm a little curious—shout-out to Ken if he's watching. That's kind of curious why there's only two Sundays and not three. I was thinking maybe I'm not supposed to talk about the Holy Spirit, I don't know. No, we are going to talk about the Holy Spirit.
But really, I just want to set the table for you guys. So today, what we're going to try to unpack, I'm going to introduce the concept of the Trinity, and then next week, we're actually going to take a deep dive into the three persons of the Trinity.
So you guys ready to dive in? Okay! All kidding aside, the doctrine of the Trinity is the most important doctrine of Christianity, believe it or not. And the reason for that is it defines who God is—His nature— from which all the other doctrines we have go back to that. So it's something that we do need to know, and we need to be aware of.
Two things that we're going to keep in mind, and I'm going to mention this a couple of times throughout the message today, is that you need to know that one: we serve an infinite God. Actually, there are three things you're going to need to know. One, we serve an infinite God; two, we're finite, we're not going to completely understand everything on this side of eternity. Okay? You guys comfortable with that?
Okay, good! The second thing is that God's revelation is progressive. And what this means is that God didn't reveal everything all at the very beginning and just, you know, a nice tidy package for us. He's given us a little bit here and a little bit there; it's progressive. It builds on each other. He's embedded Himself in His Word—that's divinely inspired: 66 books, 40 different authors inspired by the Holy Spirit. He's embedded His nature throughout His Word, Old Testament and New Testament, and the Lord does not change—He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And we need to understand that! The third thing—what is the third thing I wanted to share with you? I'm drawing a blank. Maybe we'll come back to it as we get into the message here.
So might we can get into the slides. I've got a lot of slides for you guys, a lot of content. We're not going to be able to cover it all in depth; some of it we will. But I do encourage you to be like the Bereans. Get on that YouVersion Bible app, look at the Scriptures. There's a lot of content. I think I've got 25 just for the New Testaments.
When we get to the New Testament portion of the message today, 25 section Scriptures for the first part and then 53 when we transition into the last part of the message. So you'll want to look at those things.
I'm going to slide about Isaiah. Okay, so again going along the theme of we're not going to understand everything, Isaiah writes—he's talking about our God, and he says: "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." You know, God's love exceeds our expectation.
Let's go to the next one. First Corinthians chapter 13, Paul is kind of piggybacking on this theme, or he's talking about love. He's talked about spiritual gifts, now he's talking about love, and he concludes by saying: "You know, we see through a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, just as I also have been fully known." You know, what he's trying to say and what we need to capture is again, we're not going to understand everything on this side of eternity. At best, we're going to kind of see through glass darkly. We're going to see the outline of it; we're going to understand some things.
We also need to understand that—and here's the third point! It came to me that the sum of the book is written of Jesus, right? The point of the Bible is to point us to God's redemptive plan, and the centerpiece is Jesus. In the Old Testament, Christ is concealed; in the New Testament, He's revealed.
So if you keep kind of those three things in mind as you study the Scripture, you know, we're not going to understand everything; God's nature is embedded throughout the Word; He's a revelation to us; it's progressive, and it's all about Jesus. You're going to be in good shape in terms of interpreting the Scriptures.
So we don't have God's perspective; we need His help to understand His ways and who He is. So with that being said, I'd like to open us up in prayer, and then we'll jump in.
You guys ready?
Well, Father, your ways are higher than our ways; your thoughts are higher than our thoughts. You know, we only see through a glass darkly here, Lord, and we need your help. We just ask that you give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of you this morning. Help us to grasp who you are—how much you love us.
Lord, we do want to know you more. We give you all the praise in Jesus' name. Amen.
So the Trinity—how many of you guys know the Trinity? Have you ever heard of it? A show of hands?
Okay, most of you. That's good! I was in fifth grade when I first heard about it. Okay? Like typical kid, the video games weren't as pretty as they were back then when I was growing up. But in the video games, and friends; my parents took me to church every Sunday, and one particular Sunday, the teacher normally shared with us, and now it's like, "Hey, I've got some special guests that are going to come share with you guys today, and they're going to talk about something really important, so you guys need to pay attention."
Okay? So in walk two guys; they're elders of the church, and they basically wanted to talk to us about the Trinity. What I got from that was there's one God—three persons: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. You guys aren't really going to understand it now; hopefully, you understand it later. That was the gist of what they had to share with us, and then they left, right?
So needless to say, I was kind of left with a few questions, a little confused. The irony, of course, is that I'm up front as an elder tasked with sharing the Trinity with you guys today, right? Hopefully, I don't confuse you guys!
There are really three questions that I want you guys to be able to answer by the time we're done today.
Okay? The first question is: What is the Trinity? The second is: Where do we see it in the Bible? And the third is: Do you know God? That third one's a little—like man, why is he asking that question? That's a little too personal, but we're going to get there, Lord willing.
Let's take a quiz though! I kind of asked initially if you guys are aware, but I've got a quiz. If you guys were to choose one of the options there on the screen—the screen's behind me—where would you guys put yourselves?
The first option: How many of you guys are unaware? You don't really know anything about the Trinity. Show of hands?
Tom? You know the Trinity?
Okay! How many of you guys are aware, like you've got some understanding about it, but you don't completely understand it? Show of hands?
Okay, maybe a few.
Can I—how many guys would say that you do? You understand the Trinity but might struggle explaining it to somebody?
All right, now we're getting some hands!
Okay, how many of you guys are ready to preach on it?
All right, you don't need me! No, the Trinity—it is a mystery, but it's something, again, we need to know about because it explains who God is.
We've got a graphic—I'm trying to put this—I'm kind of a visual guy, but it's the Trinity shield. It's a variation of it, but as this doctrine was being developed in the early church, that's what they kind of came up with.
As you can see, there are three persons on that: there's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Each person is different, unique, but they make up the Godhead. They make up who God is: three persons, one essence.
A short definition that I thought was pretty good is that the Trinity is that God eternally exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person is fully God, and there is one God.
If we go to our covenant—which is kind of what I'm supposed to be talking about today—the second section is the doctrine of the Trinity. We state that the one true God, creator of all things, is infinitely perfect and eternally exists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
These three persons of the Godhead have precisely the same nature, attributes, perfections, and are worthy of precisely the same homage, confidence, and obedience. And there's a few Scriptures that reference that.
What I don't have a slide for you is what I found—the Augustine Gospel Coalition is a real good resource. It's a non-profit that is dedicated to the gospel, and they've got four essential affirmations when it comes to the Trinity.
And the first one is that again there is one and only one true and living God.
The second affirmation is that this one God eternally exists in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The third affirmation of the Trinity is that these three persons are completely equal in attributes and substance, each with the same divine nature.
And then the last affirmation is that while each person is fully completely God, the persons are not identical. The differences among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are found in the way they relate to one another and the role each one plays in accomplishing their unified purpose.
And I just threw a lot of verbage at you guys! The main thing is—God is three persons, one essence. If you can come away with that, you learned something today!
So how did this doctrine come about? Like, why do we have the doctrine of the Trinity? What is this thing about the Godhead and this three-person God, and you know, three persons, one essence—what are you talking about?
Well, again, as I shared earlier, God's nature is embedded throughout the Scriptures. It's a progressive revelation of Himself to us. There are hints of it, types, and shadows in the Old Testament that's hidden in there. As we study the Scriptures, it comes out.
We have the benefit of being on the other side of that. We're in the—you know what you would call the last days or the church age, where we have the benefits of both testaments. We have the Old Testament work where God concealed these things, but we're in the New Testament era where a lot of this is revealed, and we can understand a lot more than people who lived in the Old Testament times. They saw it at a distance, but the glass was definitely a lot more cloudy for them than it is for us, which is why it's so important for us to study the Scriptures and study the whole counsel of God.
So we get a working knowledge of that so that when heresies come, when you hear something that's a little off, you can catch it, and it doesn't take you away from the simplicity that's in Christ—that takes you away from the gospel—which is again why the church found it necessary to define or try to articulate this doctrine.
It would have been taught implicitly through the Scriptures throughout the ages; they had to make it more explicit. So we had these various church councils and stuff that made decisions on things and defined doctrine for us because of false teachers and heresies.
We've got a slide that shows basically the first 800 years of development of the Trinitarian doctrine. And one thing you’ll know—and I know the print's really small, which is why you're going to want to get on the YouVersion app—is that all this deals with almost all of it deals with who Jesus is. And when it comes down to it, you know, false religions, heresy, false doctrine—what they get wrong is the Trinity. What they get wrong is Jesus Christ!
Which again, is why we need to study to show ourselves approved. We need to be able to test what people are saying against the Scriptures—against God's Word that's divinely inspired.
So you see the history there in the various aspects—there were issues of the day they had to face, that they had to define, that they had to defend the truth of who God is.
And again, in the YouVersion, you'll be able to see this slide, so that takes us to our next point. You know, we kind of define what the Trinity is, how it came about.
Our next point is, where is it found in the Bible? Right now, we're going to get into the good stuff, and what we're going to do is walk through the Old Testament.
Again, the word “Trinity” is not found anywhere in the Bible; rather, it's implied. God's nature is implied and taught throughout the Bible, and I'm going to try to draw this out, Lord willing, as we go through some of the Old Testament Scriptures here.
It's interesting because Jesus tried to draw this out as well during His ministry, you know? He had some interesting conversations with the religious leaders of the day. They had a really good grasp of the Scriptures; they knew. They had a lot of knowledge, but they didn't know the Lord. They had a form of godliness but didn't have the power.
I don't know—they knew things, but they didn't know the Lord Himself. So in John chapter 5, verse 39, Jesus basically tells them, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me." The Scripture is about Christ, right? In the Old Testament, Christ is concealed; in the New Testament, He's revealed.
You go on after His public ministry; you know, He died, He’s buried, He rose again from the dead. He appeared to some guys on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, and they had a lot of questions.
Jesus unpacked it for them, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them all the Scriptures and the things concerning Himself. You know when you read on the guy's response, as Jesus is unpacking the Scriptures, as He is interpreting them in light of who He is, the guys' hearts were burning within themselves. Like, they knew they were hearing truth, and they were getting excited! And yet it was hidden—it wasn't until he went away from them that it was revealed to them. They were just with the Christ, they were with the promised Messiah, and all of a sudden, it all made sense; you know, and they're thrilled, going into Emmaus.
It's the same way for us; you know, as we spend time in God's Word, the Holy Spirit being our guide into all truth, God quickens our spirit. He gives us an appetite for the things of God. We find excitement in knowing and understanding who God is, and all the secrets of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Him, as we just simply abide and spend time there. He shows us those things.
So again, in the Old Testament, Christ is concealed and the New Testament is revealed. God's revelation is progressive; his nature is embedded throughout his word.
So where do we see the Trinity in the Old Testament? Funny I ask myself that.
Let's go to the very beginning: Genesis chapter 1. In the very first verse, it says: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."
What's interesting is that word for God is “Elohim,” and they had a couple of different words for God. There was “El,” which would have been the singular use of God's name. There’s “Ella,” which would imply a duality or two gods. Then there's “Elohim,” which is three or more.
Now why did Moses use “Elohim” and not “El” in the very first verse of the Bible? It's because he knew something about the Lord. The Lord Himself had appeared in the burning bush and had shared a little bit about who He is, right?
The next thing that we find that's kind of interesting—well, I guess another point on that is that it's the plural name of God with the singular use of the verb, so it's kind of like the three-in-one right there in the very first verse. In the second verse, we see the Holy Spirit represented in the very beginning of creation.
The other thing that's interesting is that throughout the Old Testament, we see God referring to Himself using plural pronouns. Now why would He do that? Again, He's trying to show us something about who He is—His nature. He is laying the framework for the Trinity that, again, is concealed in the Old Testament and revealed in the New Testament.
A couple verses to share with you going further on in Genesis 1:26: God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
You notice the use of the plural there: "Let us." After our likeness. Now skeptics will say or, you know, other people say, "Well, it was angels that He's referring to there."
Well, the thing is, is that we're made in the image of God, not in the image of angels. You know, Hebrews chapter 1 tells us that angels are ministering spirits sent by God to serve those who will inherit salvation. They don't have creative power.
We're made in the image of God. Going further on, Genesis 3:22—the fallen man—we see again the Lord referring to Himself in the plural in terms of what He was going to have to do as far as preventing Adam and Eve from partaking of the tree of life, right? And that was actually a mercy that God was—didn't allow them to partaking. Otherwise, they would have been in a fallen state for eternity. It was His mercy that He let them die, you know, because He had a better plan. He had a salvation redemption plan from the foundation of the earth that He was going to lay out that was going to be later revealed.
We go to Genesis 11:7, and we see the Tower of Babel—again, man trying to make an effort to reach God—build a tower to the heavens. That was not God's plan; God's plan was he was going to come down to us. He was going to reveal Himself to us.
So He had to frustrate man's plans: "Let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." Because of His grace and love, He kept man from trying to assert himself because He had a better plan that was going to be based on grace, it was going to be based on His love.
We go to Isaiah 6:8 in the call of Isaiah and how the Lord revealed Himself to Isaiah. Isaiah is taken to the throne room of God, and he hears the Lord say, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" Again, we see the plural use of the pronoun there, and Isaiah responds: "Here I am! Send me!"
I don't know if he knew what he was getting into, but that was his response.
The next thing we find in the Old Testament, we have the plural use of God's name at the very beginning. We have the use of plural pronouns in the Old Testament.
We find that there are multiple members of the Trinity represented in certain Scriptures. One of them actually Jesus quotes in Genesis 19:24, you know, when God was bringing judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah because of their pride, because of the sexual immorality that was going on. It says here: "The Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven."
Did you catch that? The Lord rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah fire from the Lord. Two members of the Trinity represented there!
Then we go to Psalm 110, and this is the one Jesus quotes in Matthew 22, I think verse 41 through 45, where again, he's having this exchange with the religious leaders, and they're arguing about who He is and whatnot. He basically reveals to them that He's not just a son of David; He's a son—He's the Son of God. He is David's Lord, and he quotes Psalm 110:1 where it says: "The Lord says to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'"
Jesus asks the rhetorical question: "How could David refer to his son as Lord?" Right? Like, connect the dots, guys! I'm the Messiah; I'm the Son of God.
We go to Daniel chapter 7. Again, God's nature is embedded in His Word. Daniel chapter 7, verse 13 and 14—the context here is Daniel, knowing that the Babylonian captivity was about to come to an end, is grieved. He knows the people are steeped in sin. Most of the people have adopted Babylonian culture; they've adopted their ways.
They've become shopkeepers; they've become prosperous—God’s blessed them. But they don't fear God; they're not observing His commands. Daniel fasts and he prays for wisdom and revelation, and the Lord gives it to him.
And suddenly the curtain is pulled back: he sees Jesus, you know, one like the Son of Man!
In verse 13-14 he says, "I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like the Son of Man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed."
Daniel saw a vision of God handing the kingdoms to His Son!
We see the same imagery happening in Revelation chapter 4 when John’s caught up in the heavens, sees the throne of God and sees the title deed of the earth given to the Lamb of God, right? It's just cool stuff!
Then we get to Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4, and this is where we find the Shema. Any law-abiding, devout Jew would know this like the back of their hand. It was repeated to them, it was drilled into them that "God is one." Deuteronomy 6:4 states: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one."
What's interesting about this is that the Jews had this concept of the plurality or the unity of one. And the word that Moses uses when he's writing this book as he's inspired is the word "Ehad," which means unity; it's not a singularity. He could have used "Yahid," which means alone or absolute singularity. Why didn't he do that?
Well, it's again; he knew something about the Lord. He was divinely inspired to use this other word to make allowance for the doctrine of the Trinity that was going to be revealed fully in the New Testament.
God's nature is embedded throughout His Word.
Then the last thing in the Old Testament—and there's other examples! I was trying to pick and choose what am I going to share and what am I not—I mean, it was just such a rich study just kind of preparing for this.
As we see the threefold repetition of God's name in the Old Testament—now whether it's because, you know, three was the number of completion or whatnot, or again, it just—it's compatible with the doctrine of the Trinity.
But there are a couple verses: Exodus 13, verse 14, when God is revealing to him who He is to Moses. Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?"
And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Say this to the people of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"
And what's interesting when you follow this out throughout the Old Testament as the people come to know God personally, they attach different names to God because essentially "I AM WHO I AM" is not just implying Trinity there, but it's implying "I AM who you need me to be."
I am who I'm going to reveal myself to you to be—it's kind of fascinating!
You go to Numbers chapter 6, verse 22, and again we see more. The Lord spoke to Moses saying: "Speak to Aaron and his son, saying: Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: 'You shall say to them: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His continent upon you and give you peace.' So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them."
You catch that? "The Lord, the Lord, the Lord."
You go to Isaiah 6:3 again, the call of Isaiah—what he observes in the throne room of God: "The seraphim flying around, singing out 'holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.'"
You know, the seraphim knew who God was, and they were paying respect to the fact that God wasn't just holy, but He's a triune God: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
Then we go to Jeremiah chapter 7, verse 4, where the Lord is telling Jeremiah, "Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!'"
But if you guys don't know the story of Jeremiah—basically, God was going to destroy the temple, right? And the people were going to be going into captivity.
You know, Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet because his message wasn't a positive one for the people who were in it; in fact, most hated his message.
He hated his message; he didn't like what he was sharing.
I don't know if I like what I'm sharing!
So I've dumped a lot of Scripture on you guys. Again, it's in the YouVersion Bible app; you can see, you can reference, you can go back and look at this. There's even more Scripture in the New Testament here.
And so we're going to fly; it's going to be a pretty quick flyover, but I think there are 25 verses in the first section. I'm just going to focus on three; there are 53 in the next section when we go into the attributes of God and how it relates to our salvation and what God’s done and how all the members of the Trinity are represented.
But the first thing in the New Testament is that we see that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, though they're separate persons, they are consistently linked together in Scripture.
As you study through the New Testament, you'll see either within a single verse or verses that are right there next to each other—each has a reference to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Three distinct persons of the Trinity—Luke chapter 3, verse 22 says that the Holy Spirit descended on Him, Jesus, in bodily form like a dove; and a voice came from heaven: "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."
This is basically when Jesus was being commissioned for His public ministry, right? He was baptized to fulfill all righteousness, and here we see the Trinity represented at the beginning of His ministry.
We see at the end of His public ministry, Matthew chapter 28 verse 19, that Jesus tells His disciples to go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Again, we see the Trinity represented not just at the beginning of His public ministry but at the end of it, when He was commissioning His guys to go and make disciples.
Then 1 John 3:23-24 it says: "And this is the command that we believe in the name of His son Jesus Christ and love one another just as He has commanded us. Whoever keeps His commandments abides in God and God in him. And by this, we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom He has given us."
We're going to talk more about this next week, Lord willing, but this concept of abiding in Christ, it's important. It's important if we're going to know God personally. We have to learn to abide; we have to learn to spend time in God's Word.
We need to commune with Him in prayer daily. God desires that from us; it's not a requirement, but if we want to know Him, that's what He's laid out. He's given us an invitation to come before Him.
So not only do we see the Trinity consistently linked throughout the New Testament as well as the Old, each person is credited with doing things that only God can do.
There are seven attributes, and we're going to fly over these really quick. Again, you can go into the Church or the YouVersion Bible app to go back and look at these. But their attributes—things that are attributed to each member of the Trinity regarding our salvation:
The first one is each member of the Trinity was attributed to raising Jesus from the dead. You look at these verses, and it's given credit to the Father raising Jesus from the dead; He's given credit to Jesus Himself raising Himself from the dead; He's given credit to the Holy Spirit raising Jesus from the dead.
Which one's God? Which one raised Jesus from the dead? The answer is they all three did!
Right? God’s a triune God!
The next attribute we see is each member of the Trinity declares that they are God. And again, you can go into the YouVersion Bible app. I've got 53 verses. The ones that I'm sharing with you there on these slides is just kind of abbreviation of it, but we see that the Father declares Himself as God; we see that the Son declares Himself as God; we see that the Holy Spirit is declared as God.
Which person of the Trinity is God? What's the answer, guys? All three!
We’re catching on!
The third thing: each member of the Trinity is involved in creating the world. We see that the Father is attributed with creating the world; we see that the Son is attributed as our Creator; we see that the Holy Spirit is attributed to creation.
Which one created everything? All of them! Three!
Yeah, you're catching on!
The next thing we see is each member of the Trinity is involved in saving and regenerating man. You know, not just saving us, but giving us a new nature. We see that God the Father is involved; we see that God the Son is involved; we see the Holy Spirit is involved.
And I know I went through these really quick. Again, that's why get on that YouVersion Bible app. Check me out; make sure I'm not giving you guys a load of baloney, right?
But each member—so which member is involved? I mean, who is responsible for saving and regenerating us? All of them!
We see that each member of the Trinity is involved in justifying man. This is important. You know, clearing the slate against us, just as if we'd never sinned.
Which one was it? We see the Father is responsible in 2 Corinthians 5:19. We see that the Son is attributed with it, as well—justifying us. We see that the Holy Spirit is attributed or involved with justifying us.
Which one is it? All of them!
We see that the Trinity—the sixth one here—is involved in sanctifying us, setting us apart, making us holy. We see that God the Father's involved with our sanctification through His Word. We see that the Son is involved in our sanctification, cleansing us, purifying us. We see that the Holy Spirit is involved with our sanctification.
So which one? Who’s responsible? All of them!
I'll give you a gold star!
Dom, appreciate you, buddy!
Finally, the last one, as it relates to just our salvation, our sanctification, our justification—all that is each member of the Trinity is involved in appeasing God's wrath against man for his sins, and praise the Lord for that!
We see that God the Father is involved—He sent His son. We see the Son is involved—He paid for our sins. We see the Holy Spirit is involved, right, by applying that blood. As we confess Jesus as Lord and by faith, God sends His Holy Spirit abroad into our hearts, and in that renewal process takes place.
You know, God doesn’t see our sin anymore; instead, we're clothed in Christ's righteousness.
It's good news!
So where does this take us? This takes us to the final question I'm hoping we can answer, and that is: Do you know God?
Do you know God?
It's interesting; I was talking with Pastor Jake—I don't know if he's in the room here; maybe he's in first service—but he mentioned something interesting to me. He said, "You know, the Trinity is best caught, not taught."
You know, something he read, and he wanted to share with me—he gave me some books and stuff—but that phrase: what does that mean? The Trinity is best caught, not taught?
Well, what it means is that God doesn't intend for our relationship with Him to be just a mere exchange of information or an intellectual pursuit.
It's not about philosophy or fine-sounding arguments. He doesn't want us to just know facts about Him; He wants us to know Him personally!
Do you guys know God personally?
That's good!
There are actually two Greek words that we find in the New Testament that are used in reference to communicating, you know, knowing God.
The first one is "oida," and the other one's "gnosko." "Gnosko" by far is the one that's used the most, and pretty much exclusively when it talks about our relationship with God.
The word has to do with knowledge of the facts that's gained by observation—it's impersonal—but "gnosko"—it's knowledge that goes beyond the facts or information.
It's knowledge gained through personal experience with someone—it's gained through a relationship with someone.
We see that it's a term that was used to describe the marriage relationship between husband and wife. It's also the term that God uses to explain the relationship He wants to have with us.
Do you guys know God, or is it just up to this point you've been going to church? You've been going to Cedarville, and it's just a bunch of doctrine!
It's a lifestyle, but you know when you think about it, you really don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ; you've never placed your faith in Him; you're kind of living by your own wits.
You trust yourself; you're not looking to the Lord. You don't know Him personally.
What I'd like to do at this time is get the worship team up here—Lord willing, if they're still here—because we went over like eight minutes. Shame on me!
But what I'd like to do is give you guys an opportunity to respond.
Again, maybe you're sitting here; you know a lot about God; you know a lot of facts.
Maybe you've studied theology; maybe you've studied church history, but when it comes down to it, you do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ; you've never really trusted Him for salvation. You've never recognized your need for Him.
I want to give you an opportunity to do that.
So what we're going to do, as they get ready and maybe play, I want to lead us in a prayer of confession—a sinner's prayer.
There's nothing magical about the words—heck, this is something that you could say by yourself tonight when you're laying on your bed. It's more about your heart and expressing your desire to know God.
But I'd like to lead us in a sinner's prayer, and what I'd like to do is, as I pray, have you guys pray after me—give you guys an opportunity to respond.
You guys ready?
Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner, and I ask for your forgiveness. I believe you died for my sins. I believe you rose again from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite you to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow you as my Lord and Savior. I want to know you.
In your name, amen.
If you prayed that for the first time, or maybe you're at a point where something I shared with you resonated, the Spirit's speaking to your heart, and you want to respond, I'll be up here—or tell the person next to you—but don't leave this place without sharing that with someone, without pursuing that further.
God loves you; He's got a plan for you! He wants you to know Him personally, and by His grace, you will!
[Music]
If you guys want to stand and worship with us as we close the service.
[Music]
"To breathe the air of heaven..."
Where pain is gone and mercy fills the streets, to look upon the One who bled to save me and walk with Him for all eternity.
And there will be a day when all will bow before Him. There will be a day when death will be no more, standing face to face with He who died.
[Music]
"And every prayer we prayed in desperation..."
The songs of faith we sing through doubt and fear. When He returns to wipe away our tears.
There will be a day when death will be no more, standing face to face with He who died.
[Music]
"On that day, we join the resurrection..."
And stand beside the heroes of the faith, with one voice, a thousand generations...
So let it be today; we with angels and the saints we raise a mighty roar. Glory to our God who gave us life beyond the grave.
[Music]
"Glory to our God who gave us..."
[Applause]
Well, hopefully you guys come back next week—we'll be unpacking the persons of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
Let me close us out in prayer.
Father, we just give you thanks and praise. We thank you for your Word, Father. I just pray that what was shared this morning would go out, that it would accomplish what you intend for it to do, that you would stir hearts and minds, that you would renew our desire for you.
Bless us as we go from here. We give you all the praise in Jesus' name. Amen.
You're dismissed!
[Music]