Our scripture reading this evening is Matthew 28, verses 16 through 20. As we continue our series in the Belgic Confession, we come to our confession of faith about the doctrine of the Trinity. So in this text, we have one of the clearest examples of the Trinitarian formula. It's associated with baptism, a reminder of the baptism we witnessed this morning as well. Matthew 28, verses 16 through 20. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we ask you to look upon us in grace as we look away from ourselves into the face of your Son, whom you have appointed our Mediator and Savior. As all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in your Son, guide us by your Holy Spirit into the true understanding of the doctrines of Christ. May our meditation upon His truth produce in us the fruit of righteousness, to the glory and exaltation of His name, the instruction and building up of this congregation, and the salvation of the lost through our witness. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Our lesson from the Belgic Confession this evening is Article 8. I try not to say this every Sunday. I think I said it last Sunday, but I want to say it again this evening, that the location or the structure of our reading of the Confession is a constant reminder to us of the role it plays for us, that God has spoken in His Word, and our Confession is always in response to God's Word. I want to emphasize that because there's a bit of an awkward structure, or what, I don't think it's awkward in the confession, but might feel awkward to us, of 8 and 9. Article 8 describes to us the doctrine of the Trinity. Article 9 gives the biblical basis for it. So we're going to be talking about the doctrine before talking about its biblical basis, because that's the structure of the catechism. Now, I think there's a good reason for that, and I'll mention that a little bit later. But for now, it's helpful to reminder that even this confession, which is simply summarizing the doctrine, is in response to the scripture we have just read. So though 8 and 9 might feel confusing that way, in its role in our church, our confession's always in response to God's word. All of that to say, God speaks in His Word, we respond with our confession of faith. We read Article VIII aloud as it's printed in our bulletins. Let us say together, In keeping with this truth and word of God, we believe in one God who is one single essence, in whom there are three persons, really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties, namely, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is the cause, origin, and source of all things, visible as well as invisible. The Son is the Word, the Wisdom, and the Image of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the eternal power and might, proceeding from the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, this distinction does not divide God into three, since Scripture teaches us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each has his own subsistence distinguished by characteristics. yet in such a way that these three persons are only one God. It is evident then that the Father is not the Son, and that the Son is not the Father, and that likewise the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. Nevertheless, these persons, thus distinct, are neither divided nor fused or mixed together. For the Father did not take on flesh, nor did the Spirit, but only the Son. The Father was never without His Son, nor without His Holy Spirit, since all these are equal from eternity in one and the same essence. There is neither a first nor a last, for all three are one in truth and power, in goodness and mercy. I would invite you, in fact, to turn with me to the back of your Psalter hymnals. I just want to show you the structure of the Confession so you don't have to just take my word for it. Because as we read that, I'm sure you were thinking, well, there wasn't a lot of Bible just then. So in the past, I've actually combined Articles 8 and 9 when we've studied this. I don't think I did last time, but I have before that. So I'm trying to do it separately again. So page 857, sorry, could have told you that sooner. Page 857 in the back of your Psalter Hymnals, you see Article 8, that's what we just read. And if you look at Article 9, the scriptural witness on the Trinity, you sort of scan down there, you see a whole bunch of quotes continues on to the next page. If you look at that, one of the things it does is it moves from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And there's something particularly beautiful about how the confession emphasizes that progressive revealing of God as Trinity, one God in three persons. So I want you to see that there structurally, but nevertheless, there's something we learn from this structure. That first, we confess a summary of the doctrine. Second, after that, we're going to look at the scriptural witness. And the reason for that or the truth being emphasized by that is the words I use there on the heading of your outline on being reformed Catholics. So that is the first point on your outline. When it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, this is one of those prime examples of a doctrine, and I think I mentioned this last Sunday, that none of us here, I'm quite confident to say that none of us, had the experience of never having heard of Trinity before. We studied the Bibles on our own, we arrived at it entirely on our own, and then we heard the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed and we said, yep, that's what I've been saying all along. None of us experienced it in that way. The Trinity is a perfect example, maybe one of the clearest examples, of a doctrine that we receive as a result of centuries of the Church reflecting on Scripture. And it's a heritage we receive very much in a way we can distinguish from Scripture, though then what we find that tradition doing is pointing us to Scripture. And then we see it there, we can behold it. So that's reflected in the structure of our confession. Article 8 is saying, look, this is the doctrine we receive from the church that has come before us. And because we are part of that one holy catholic and apostolic church, we, with humility and with a sense of deference, receive that doctrine. But then what does that doctrine do? It doesn't say, all right, believe and receive this because the church says so. Rather, the church says, look at the scriptures. So we humbly acknowledge we would not have arrived at this on our own, quite likely. We receive it from the church, but in a way that points us to God's word. Now, there are many evangelical Christians today who would be uncomfortable with this, that sense of deference to a confessional tradition. Our doing this is something that is a distinctive, something that distinguishes us from a lot of evangelical and Protestant Christianity, especially in North America. We're emphasizing here is our identity as Reformed Catholics, that word Catholic meaning our unity with the one Holy Church, that there is one Church of Jesus Christ and our confession of the Trinity is part of that, our unity with that one Church. The word Reformed actually assumes this. Because the reformers were, as they say there on your outline, just that, they were reformers. Those who were seeking to reform the church, to fix the church, to restore church doctrine according to scripture. People might ask, we can ask of churches today, and the church talks about its history, where was your church before the Reformation? And if you go back to the years before the 1500s, you cannot find any churches called Reformed churches. So what does that mean? Does that mean we came into existence at the time of the Reformation if there was nothing called that before the Reformation? Well, to ask the question, where was your church before the Reformation? That's like asking, where was your face before you washed it? It's been the same face all along. It's different now. It's washed. It's clean. But it was the same face. It was always there. Likewise, that's how we confess the Reformed tradition, that our church was there all along, that it has simply been Reformed according to Scripture. That way of speaking is intended to emphasize our rootedness in the history of the church, that we take seriously the pattern established in places like Jude, verse 3. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That our faith is not something we have made up on the spot. It's not to be simply a result of us as individuals with the scriptures, but is rather something we have received from those who have come before us, once for all delivered to the saints and that we are called to contend for. We already talked about a very Protestant doctrine of Scripture, that that tradition is always subservient to Scripture, absolutely. That tradition is always under Scripture, but it nevertheless has real authority. Again, why are we talking about this here? Well, because of that structure of the Belgic Confession. First, the doctrine, and then the Scriptural basis for it. For the Reformed tradition, it has always mattered that what we confess is the Christian faith. and that we are part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church. Now this is a little bit of a pet peeve of mine. It's very common to talk about the reformed faith and there's nothing wrong about that. That's shorthand for saying the reformed christian faith. But more properly we would speak of the reformed tradition in the christian faith. There is one faith that we share with many different Christian traditions, and for the Reformed tradition in particular, we have always made a point of pointing to that one faith as being what we share. We've reached sort of a point of irony in this today, that it's actually a distinctly Reformed thing, to make a big deal out of what we share with all Christian churches. I'm trying to say that in a way that would sound strange or provocative to you. It's a distinctly reformed thing to emphasize what we have in common with all Christian churches. The history of American Christianity for hundreds of years has very much been a sort of rugged individualism, make it up as you go along, geared toward individual spiritual experience. One of the things we have to offer distinctly is saying our faith is a shared faith. Article 9 of the Confession, so we're focusing on 8 this evening, but Article 9, the one that will go through that listing of the scriptural testimony, ends with these words there that I quote on your outline. And so, in this matter, we willingly accept the three ecumenical creeds, the apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian, as well as what the ancient fathers decided in agreement with them. in this matter that the and so well why well because of all of that scriptural rootedness but we don't then say therefore it's just our own thing we're making up say no this is something we have received from the church before us now as we get when we get to the conclusions there i want to emphasize why this is so important, but I want you to see this up front. One of our treasures as being reformed is owning, making much of, being clear about our unity with, our shared identity with that one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Some of you have said to me, it was a while ago, I'm not sure I remember exactly who it was, but that there has been times in the Reformed world where people have used this language of Reformed Catholics have done so from a standpoint of wishy-washiness. So, Catholicity is simply meaning a kind of eclectic, pick and choose what you like from various traditions. That's not what we're doing here. And I'm thankful for many theologians today who are recovering what I think is the older way of talking about this. That this is a principled, committed, definitive thing that our faith is a faith we share with many other Christian traditions. It's not wishy-washiness, it's a principled commitment. Well, why are we saying all of that now? Well, as I said a moment ago, the doctrine of the Trinity is a prime example of this. None of us can say we pieced this together on our own and then just happily discovered that the Nicene Creed says exactly what we were already thinking. Especially those of us who have grown up in the church would have learned this doctrine in a way we can't ever remember a time where it wasn't in our hearts and in our minds. And so it is very much something we have experienced as receiving from the church before us. You see the structure of your outline, I want to do two things. It's very important that we do both of these things. I want to give you a nutshell summary of the doctrine, and I also want to take us deeper. And the idea here, the metaphor is it's sort of like that nutshell summary is, okay, it's like we're deep sea diving, and that nutshell summary is the airline connecting us to the ship up on the top of the water. and we're going to dive in and we're going to go deeper, but at various points, various individuals of us, different personalities, different strengths and weaknesses, different interests, we may at various points feel lost. We want to remember, we always have that line to the surface, to that summary. But that sense of going into the depths is deeply important, because one of the main things we need to receive from the church that comes before us in something like the doctrine of the Trinity is the sense precisely of those depths. God is bigger than us, that He is glorious and transcendent. And so that moment you have of realizing you've waded into the waters deeper than you're able to fully wrap your mind around, that says two things. One, there's always more to learn, and that's true, but it also says there is a limit to what we can wrap our minds around. And that awareness of that limit, that sense of sort of being up against a depth that is beyond us is part of the point. I hope you see what I'm wrestling with there. In a sort of a teaching context, we can be tempted to feel like at that moment where we're not quite getting it, that means we've somehow missed the point. Okay, maybe the teacher's failed, maybe you failed, something's wrong. What I want to set before you is maybe that's the point. That there is glorious depths here, and what I want to try to do is in that section there, number two under number two, small Roman numeral two, give you a glimpse of those depths. Also, kind of required to do that because Article 8 of the Belgic Confession takes us deep. So, another way of outlining this, the summary of the doctrine there is from the Heidelberg Catechism, all right? Heidelberg gives us a much more basic summary. And then, second, when we go deeper, that's focusing on the language of the Belgic Confession. So, first, the summary of the doctrine of the Trinity. Here is our lifeline to the surface. the sort of clearest nutshell summary. It is a combination of three things that are clearly taught in scripture. First, that God is one. Second, that the Father, Son, and Spirit are God. And third, that the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct persons. What we're seeking to do in the doctrine of the Trinity is combine those three things, to hold those three things together. God is one, Deuteronomy 6, verse 4. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. As the revelation of God continues on, though, it's also clear the Son and the Spirit, while being distinct from God, also are God. And those three texts there are examples of the Father, Son, and Spirit both spoken of as being divine. Now, there's ways of combining those things that need to be balanced by the third point, that they are distinct persons. For example, if all you said is that God is one and that the Father, Son, and Spirit are God, you can go into a heresy called modalism, which says in the Old Testament, God was the Father, in the New Testament, God is the Son, and now in the life of the church, God is the Holy Spirit. Well, why can't we say that? Because there's that third biblical teaching that they are distinct persons who coexist distinctly. And so one of the clearest examples of that from Luke 3 is that the baptism of Jesus. God the Son is being baptized, God the Father speaks, and God the Holy Spirit descends upon the Son. All three persons are present at the same time. There is your summary of the doctrine. One God, three persons. And those three persons are fully divine and distinct. Another thing that is important to affirm in connection with that is that this is not a contradiction or even a paradox, for by it we confess that God is one in one sense and three in another sense. Too often in Christian churches, in sort of individual experience of the Christian faith, there's a way of talking about it that says, yeah, it doesn't make sense, but whatever, I just believe it because the Bible says it. But the Christian faith has never said that. We've always said it's important that God's revelation of himself is rational, it is reasonable. And if we were saying there is one God and three gods, that would be a contradiction. If we were saying there is one person and three persons, that would be a contradiction. We are saying, instead, there is one God in three persons. He is one in one sense, three in another sense, and he is fully both. Now, there is mystery in how all of that fits together, but those do not contradict each other. Christians should not give in to that temptation and simply retreat to paradox or retreat to mystery and to say, yeah, it seems like a contradiction, but, you know, I just believe it. Right? He's one in one sense, three in another sense. Especially for the children, I want to, and this is why, for example, you don't have any blanks to fill in in this section. I wanna make sure everyone has this exactly right. No wrongly filled in blanks. This is your anchor point. We're going to go deeper now. Two things to remember. First, we have the lifeline to that summary. Second, we're headed towards some conclusions that it's my goal, my intention will help us see why all of this matters. and I am asking you to take my word for it there. We're going to get to why this matters. All right, going deeper. The Belgic Confession says this, in keeping with this truth and word of God, and that phrasing, by the way, is anchoring us to our previous study of the articles on the doctrine of Scripture. In keeping with this truth and word of God, we believe in one God, who is one single essence, in whom there are three persons, really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties, namely, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And then the confession goes on to describe what is distinct about the three persons. The Father is the cause, origin, and source of all things visible as well as invisible. The Son is the word, the wisdom, and image of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the eternal power and might proceeding from the Father and the Son. All right, a few things to say about this. First, while the oneness of God is evident in creation, and is clearly testified to in Scripture, there's Deuteronomy 6 verse 4, which I've already alluded to, the trinity of God is revealed in the work of redemption. So what Christian theology has said is, look, we can look around us at the nature of reality, in fact, the very fact that anything exists at all, as proclaiming to us God's oneness. That he is the simple, self-existent ground of being itself. He is being. And that oneness is the ground of reality itself, the reason anything exists. Creation points to that oneness. But then in the work of redemption, in the sending of Christ, the sending of the Holy Spirit, that trinity is revealed. Romans 5, for example, is a passage that speaks of all three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, at work in accomplishing redemption. Next. The Father, Son, and Spirit are fully God and are distinguished by their relationships to each other. Now, this is where we're going deep. They each are fully God. They don't make up part of God. They're not God plus something else, each one of them. They each are fully God. And here's why this matters. This is not how it works for people. You take any three of us, all three of us are fully human. But what distinguishes us is other things about us. There are things about us that aren't required by our being human. There's like a neutral thing called humanness, and then we have separate examples of humanness. That is not what is happening here. All of God is Father, Son, and Spirit. All of Father, Son, and Spirit are God. And what makes them distinct is their relationship with each other. It's not something in them that's different, it's the relationships between them. Well, why does that matter? Because what this is protecting is a way of talking about God's threeness that emphasizes his oneness. Number three there on your notes. While affirming the distinctions among the persons, the confession clearly maintains the oneness of God. God is three in a unique way, in a way that does not detract from his perfect undivided oneness. The confession continues in the second paragraph. You look on your bulletins. The second paragraph. Nevertheless, this distinction does not divide God into three, since Scripture teaches us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each has his own subsistence distinguished by characteristics that is in their relationship to each other, yet in such a way that these three persons are only one God. And it goes on to say how each is not the other. Third paragraph. Nevertheless, these persons thus distinct, okay, so we're affirming the distinction, are neither divided nor fused or mixed together. For the Father did not take on the flesh, nor did the Spirit, but only the Son. The Father was never without His Son, nor without His Holy Spirit, since all these are equal from eternity and one and the same essence. There is neither a first nor a last, for all three are one in truth and power, in goodness and mercy. And here's the key in that last phrase. When it says they are one in truth and power, goodness and mercy, it's not saying they are equally true, powerful, good, and merciful, though that is true. It's saying it is one truth, one power, one goodness, one mercy. Now, the reason I want to emphasize this, even though I know none of us, including myself, are wrapping our minds around it fully, is that I have grown in my worry that a lot of the metaphors we use, the ways we talk about and think about the Trinity, has us imagining three gods. Now, we know we're not supposed to say that, but I worry that that is the predominant metaphor that we are picturing. You picture sort of the father over there, the son over there, and they're sort of separate, and they are fully God, but in a way that they are three gods. Now, you say, okay, well, we know we're supposed to say one God. It's really hard to explain, though. It's often in the metaphors. We will use, for example, so earlier on in, so section two of the doctrine, number one, the summary. I had that phrase, this is not a contradiction or a paradox, for by it we confess that God is one in one sense and three in another sense. Now we can use a metaphor to illustrate that. So for example, the metaphor of an egg. You have a shell. You have the egg white, you have the egg yolk. An egg is one, in one sense, it's one egg, but it's three in another sense. It has three parts. Or you might use the metaphor of water. It has three states, solid, liquid, and gas. And you could say it is three in one sense and one in another sense. Or you could speak of an individual. I am, get this right here, I am a husband, I am a father, I am a son, okay? I am one, one person, but I'm three in another sense. Now all of those metaphors are helpful to illustrate how something can be both one in one sense and three in another sense, and there's not a contradiction. But all of those metaphors, if you use them as an actual explanation for the Trinity, are heresy. They're pure error. So they are helpful as a metaphor for one aspect, But I fear that often those kinds of metaphors are actually what is most in our minds when we think about God. Or, I think the metaphor perhaps that most lurks in our minds, if you don't, it's kind of a scary word there, it's lurking in there, but is we think of godness as being like humanness. And I alluded to this earlier. We think of it as being like there's a thing called humanness, and then you have multiple instantiations of it, multiple examples of it. And so, I am human, my wife is human, and my son is human. There's one humanness, but three humans. When we say one God, three persons, isn't that often what we're kind of picturing, imagining? That is not the truth of the matter. It is a helpful illustration, but it ultimately has us confessing three gods, and that way is ultimately heresy. In all of this, we are speaking by analogy. The three persons are not three gods, but are three eternal, and the theological language here is three eternal subsistences of the fullness of God and his one undivided divine essence. All of God is each person. There's not some godness here and some godness here, like there's some humanity here and some humanity there. That's not what's happening. All of God, the fullness of God, is each person. God is one divine essence or substance who exists eternally as three persons or subsistences. And here's what I wanna do. I told you, we're going deeper. You gotta keep that lifeline to the surface. We're gonna go back, okay? To go deeper here, to challenge that idea of three gods, I have encountered in a way that has surprised me in a lot of Orthodox Reformed writing about the Trinity, the use of the word mode, to say what we're talking about. And what I want to set before you here is that as an analogy, as a metaphor, that word can be helpful. You will find the language in Herman Bobbing, for example, that each of the three persons is like a mode of God. All of God, Father, all of God, the Son, all of God, the Holy Spirit. Now, just like the other analogies we use, if you take that analogy and you use that as the full explanation of the Trinity, it leads to heresy. But it's a helpful balancing the thinking of God as being three gods. God is one. That's what all of this amounts to. One more sentence I want to give you and then we'll come back to the surface. The threeness of God is not three instances of a broader category. There is not a fourth thing of God's neutral essence that can be distinguished from the three persons. That's often what we're picturing then, right? If each one is participating in godness, it's like godness is a fourth thing. That's not what's happening. That's how it is for people. That's not how it is for God. One God, three persons. What all of that is doing, all of that going deep, start coming back to the surface now. Okay, I know some of us are lost, it's okay, I feel a little bit lost too. Coming back to the surface now. What is the point to all of that? To challenge us to make sure we are thinking of God feeling of God, loving God as being one. And you see that oneness is deeply important throughout scripture. I want to give you a glimpse at some conclusions here, and we'll talk about this more next week when we look at the scriptural grounding of all of this. The oneness of God matters. The oneness of God historically is one of the primary ways that Christians have pointed to reality and said that reality itself proclaims the existence of God. That what is needed to explain the existence of reality is that which is fundamentally one. That is simple and self-existent and therefore able to call into existence everything else. And this is a truth we find outside the Christian faith. It's in ancient Greek philosophy actually, a whole history of human beings looking at the world and saying the world proclaims the existence of the being who is one. And what we're saying in the Christian faith is that God is that God. He is that one who called into existence reality. And the more we think in terms of the threeness of God as being like three gods, the more we have cut ourselves off from that. That way that the world proclaims God, the existence of creation proclaims God's glory as the one who is one. Romans 1 verse 20, a passage we have looked at earlier on in our study of the confession, those words, for his, that is God's invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world. That the existence of the world, the existence of creation, proclaims his divine nature, and that divine nature includes his oneness. So, for example, you have all of these actually, I think, quite exciting places in the Old Testament where God's people will encounter someone who's already worshiping God. You have the example of Melchizedek. My favorite example these days is Job. Job almost certainly exists in the world before the flood. He is someone apart from the covenants. He's even before Abraham, and yet God speaks of him as my servant Job. That from the very beginning, people have seen in the very fact that the world exists, the existence of God. And His oneness is one of the primary things proclaimed by the existence of the world. Now, I know that sounds very philosophical, but I hope this matters for all of us, that we were confessing in the Christian faith is not simply a blind leap of faith, something we affirm because we like it or because we're sentimental about it, but we believe that reality itself proclaims the existence and glory of our God. And His oneness is part of that. Second, I know that can feel abstract, though I trust the announcement of His existence matters to us, this is also essential for the gospel. That this God who is one is at the same time the God who is revealed to us in the Son and who is present with us by the Spirit. The more you think of God as being like three gods, and again, I know we know we're not supposed to say three gods, but the more that's in our imagination, the more we separate, for example, the Father and the Son, we get into all sorts of dangerous territory. You have ways of speaking about the Christian faith, for example, where the Father is the one who's angry, sin, injustice, he's angry. And the son is the one who's, well, he's nice. And he comes and he solves that angriness of God. And the more we speak of distinct, the language or the imagination of distinct gods, the more we can feel that way and experience the Christian faith that way. And many Reformed Christians have this struggle. If they'll look at Jesus and they'll say, all right, that's love, that looks great, I can look to that, I can cling to that. But they fear that behind that is a dark, hidden God who is mere power and might and righteousness and justice, merely a decree, merely a will, merely one who is making things happen. But the oneness of God reminds you that in Jesus, the Father is revealed. There is not a fourth thing of godness that is mere power behind that. Rather, the fullness of God is revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ. And brothers and sisters, you need that confidence that in Jesus, God the Father, God himself is made known. There is no divide, that Father and Son are one in their justice and righteousness. They are one in their love and their mercy and their grace. And so all that you see in Jesus, is revealing what the Creator is like. Likewise, from what the Bible says about the Spirit being with us. I don't think I finished the line there. This God who is one is at the same time the God who is revealed to us in the Son and who is present with us by the Spirit. Likewise now, when the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit being with us, being in us, being among us, we might think of that as being a separate entity from the Father. And so yeah, that's great, the Spirit's with us, but the Father is far away. He's mere decree and power and authority. The Spirit's close, the Father is far away and scary. But the oneness of God, again, reminds us and affirms for us that in the Spirit, God the Father and God the Son are with us. It is the Father who is near to us in the Spirit. It is the love of the Son that is present with us in the Spirit. And it is the love of the Father revealed in the Son. You see how this works. God is one. And so while I know we had to go kind of deep to try to challenge us to shake up how we think about it, this is the payoff. There is no scary, hidden, unknowable Father behind the Son. The Son reveals the Father. By the Spirit, actually this is another thing that needs to be emphasized, by the Spirit, Jesus is with us. In Matthew 28, before Jesus ascends into heaven, he says, lo, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. And then what does he do at the beginning of the book of Acts? He sends the Holy Spirit. And that Spirit is the means by which Father and Son are present with us. God is one. One more payoff of that. That means the God with whom you deal, The God with whom at times you wrestle with. The God whom you love and are devoted to serving. The God who has been revealed to you in Jesus and is present with you by the Spirit is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is the God of Israel. It is the Creator God who is revealed to you in Christ. You see, our imagination allows us to think more in terms of three gods. And again, I know we know we don't say that, but sort of picture him that way. You can have that sense of distance, that again, sort of this feeling that God the Father was long ago or far away, and it is God the Son that we have to deal with. No, it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who is with you, speaking to you through his word, fellowshipping with you by the Spirit, calling you into worship on the Lord's day. God is one. Finally, your outline that our Catholicity is true, good, and beautiful. One more plea for you to be convinced there is a payoff to that work of going deep. It's not just about the content of what we confess. It's also about how we confess it. We should encourage our children and young people with this sense that what you confess is not just about our individual experience. It is something we have received that we are seeking to pass on. It is something you share with Christians all over the world in many different Christian traditions. That we mean by Catholicity and that therefore what you ought to be experiencing when we do that going deep is not just the sense of this content is beautiful and challenging. Maybe you didn't feel that. Maybe it just felt difficult. But how about this? We're being challenged by an ancient tradition and a broad tradition all around the world that says to us this stuff matters and that ought to thrill us and excite us as well. I say our catholicity is true. The agreement of scripture, tradition, the confessions is clear. We've seen it this evening. Our catholicity is good. It keeps us rooted and grounded. It's oriented toward the scriptures in union with all Christian churches. We can sense in that a kind of safety and security. It's not ultimate. The tradition has to be challenged by scripture. But nevertheless, that real authority can have a function of comfort and belonging and anchoring. And there is a goodness to that. And I also want to set before us the beauty of this. In a time of doctrinal and church chaos, we have a beautiful treasure to offer the churches around us to say, this Catholicity is exciting, it's appealing, it's beautiful to be able to say that when we confess the Apostles' Creed, that is not unique to Reformed churches. Now it might feel unique to Reformed churches that we actually confess it, But it itself is not unique to Reformed churches, and that is exciting. It's thrilling. It's beautiful that we have that unity with God's people all around the world and throughout history. In other words, it's not just that God is one. It's that our confession that God is one and three in the Trinity is a confession we share with God's people all around the world. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.