couple minutes of grace, but go ahead and get started. And I want to begin this morning with a question and make you all participate, perhaps more than you want to. What would you say is the fundamental Christian doctrine? So it's a whole system of truth, but it had to be pressed. What's the fundamental fundamental? much as you want, within reason. The fundamental Christian truth. Yes. The Bible is the word of God. Absolute authority. That's good. Any others? Not saying that's wrong or right. Anybody else? Too early? Okay. I know. The fundamental. We're not fundamentalists, is that the answer? Yes. Penal substitutionary atonement. So, the cross work of Jesus. Christ and Him crucified. That's good. Doctrine of God. Who God is. Alright, those are all very very important fundamental truths. At the expense of tipping my hand, I'll announce our topic for today, which obviously is the fundamental Christian doctrine. And it's the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity. And there's a certain sad irony that I'm the person standing before you today, because If there's any person in our congregation, or even in our presbytery, or in our denomination, or really maybe even in the world, who's made it their life goal to inculcate and to teach people of Trinitarian piety, and to press upon them the importance of this doctrine, it's Dr. McGraw. He's like the resident Trinity guy. And he's not here. He is away at a conference. And yes. So he, yeah, yeah, that's true. But with that in mind, my one claim to fame is that I took to somatic theology under him. And so what I'll try to do as best as I can is to tell you what I think he would have told you, to channel Dr. McGraw. And if there are any loose ends and unanswered questions, you can pester him when he comes back, since he is the resident Trinity expert. But with that in mind, let's go ahead and jump in to our topic. And we're going to start by reading a passage of scripture that is laced, saturated, inundated with the persons of the Godhead. And that's Ephesians 1, verses 3 to 14. And Lord willing, we'll come back to this passage. But for now, we'll just read it with an eye to each member of the Godhead and what each of those persons is doing in our salvation. So Ephesians 1, verses 3-14, this is the Word of the Lord. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence. Having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him. In him also we've obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things, according to the counsel of his will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory, In him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory. With that passage ringing in our ears, let us go to our triune God in prayer. Father, we come to you through your Son, the Lord Jesus, and we come by the power of your Holy Spirit. And we thank you for who you are, and we pray that as we study the doctrine of the Trinity, we will never lose sight of the persons of the Godhead, that we would worship you in spirit and in truth, that the words of our mouths and the meditations of our heart would be acceptable in your sight. For Jesus' sake we pray, amen. Amen. All right. Well, just to give a little bit of context to where we are in the larger catechism, in question six, it says, the scriptures make known what God is, the persons in the Godhead, his decrees, and the execution of his decrees. And so last week, Pastor Peter dealt with that question, what is God? Now we're moving on to the next section in the larger catechism. And really, There are three classic questions in theology. First, whether God exists. Second, what is God? What kind of God is he? And then third, and most profoundly, who is God? So last week, Peter dealt with the question, what is God? His essence, his attributes. Now we turn to, in many ways, a more mysterious question, who is God? Dr. McGrath said before that we need to know the right God, we need to come to Him in the right way. Well, who is the right God? And the answer is... Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is triune. He's three in one, one in three. J.I. Packer talks about two great mysteries, the mystery of the incarnation, the God-man, two natures in one person. And the other mystery he speaks of is God himself, who God is. And really here, as we approach this topic, I want to be careful. We're taking off our sandals because we're on holy ground. It's here, perhaps more than any other doctrine, we realize our own finite limitations, our inability to comprehend God. We begin to understand something of what Hermann Bavink said when he said that mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics. And I know last week Peter mentioned that we would have no fruition of God as our blessedness and reward except by some voluntary condescension. on God's part, which he had been pleased to express by way of covenant. Well, when we come to the Trinity, we really have those two big principles. Who is God? He's triune. How do we know him? Voluntary condescension by way of covenant. This is taking us to the heart of what Christian theology is all about, because the definition we've been given is what? The doctrine of living to God. through Christ by the Spirit. So with this subject, more than any other, our definition of theology, what we're doing, lights up, comes to life. In many ways, we could say that what we're trying to cultivate is a Christ-centered Trinitarianism, that this is at the very dead center, the hub of what we're doing. So most of what I'll hope to do this morning is to explain and defend this doctrine. But along the way, I want to address the issue of its practicality and its importance in our lives. And the reason I say that is that historically, there have been people who confessed to the Trinity, but denied that it was really that important and that practical. So for instance, in the 17th century you had Armenians who confessed the doctrine, but they said the gospel was still intact without it. And more recently, the liberal Schleiermacher wrote a systematic theology in which he puts the Trinity in an appendix at the end. I think his view of the Trinity is pretty distorted, but even though he attests to it, he puts it in an appendix at the end of his work. And so I'm gonna ask you guys, why do you think this doctrine's important? What would we lose if we lost the doctrine of the Trinity? Any answer? Yes. Okay, so no trinity, no understanding of creation and redemption. Sounds pretty basic. I think Mr. Van Boris mentioned our very salvation. Hinges, which is redemption. Okay, that's pretty important. Yes, Brooke. Yes. Right. I think Thomas Goodwin said, we have one great intercessor in heaven. We have another intercessor in our hearts, the Holy Spirit, who helps us, who comforts us. So yes, our very comfort, our help in this present evil age hinges upon the doctrine of the Spirit. That's great. Anything else? And we'll come back to these subjects. I'm just kind of throwing it out now, letting you all give some feedback, and then we'll connect the dots later on. That's great, though. Good answers. Okay, good. Well, just to whet your appetites as far as how important this is, Calvin called the Trinity God's distinctive mark distinguishing him from idols. So it's the triune God versus everything else. Scott Oliphant at Westminster Seminary is famous for saying that generic theists, deists, and all the rest, they go to hell. They don't really believe in the doctrine of God as he is. And so, yeah, they believe in a god, an idol of their own imagining, but generic theists go to hell. Gespertus Votius, the continental reformer, taught that the doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of fundamentals, the fundamental fundamental. And so as you go through historic reform theology, you realize again and again that no trinity, No theology, no trinity, no gospel. Stakes are eternally high. With that in mind, just give you a little bit of an agenda for what we're going to do. At a macroscopic level, we're going to address the question, who is God? And we're going to answer that in three particular ways by raising three additional questions. And those are tied to our larger catechism. First question is going to be, how many persons are there? That's question nine. Second, how do they relate to one another? Question 10. And finally, how do we know that they are divine? And that's question 11. And along the way, my aim is to show how this is both significant, but also how it's practical, how it affects the way we actually live. So with that in mind, first question, how many persons are there? If you have a copy of the larger catechism, let's read question 9. How many persons are there in the Godhead? There'd be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one true eternal God. The same in substance, equal in power and glory, although distinguished by their personal properties. So how many persons are there in the Godhead? There's three persons in the Godhead, good. With that in mind, sometimes it's helpful to think about the larger catechism in relation to the shorter. And there's a couple things that are added here. On the one hand, there's the word eternal. I think that points to the idea that we're talking about God in himself from all eternity, not how he relates to creation in time. Another additional point is personal properties. How the persons are distinguished, how they relate to each other, that's dealt with in the next question. There's a little bit of a fuller elaboration of the Shorter Catechism, but in general, it's the same basic truth. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of this doctrine, just to give you a little bit of history, a little background, and I'll try to make it very brief because we don't have all day to do this. The Bible everywhere presupposes the doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine that there was one God, there are three who are God, and these are related to each other distinctly and inseparably is all throughout Scripture. But it's never said so in so many words explicitly in any one place. So the data's there, but we come to it by good and necessary consequence, which is a good reminder to us because all Orthodox Christians who are on their way to heaven confess the doctrine of the Trinity. And we arrive at it by good and necessary consequence. And it's true. And there are other things that are also true, like infant baptism, that again, we must approach by good and necessary consequence. The Bible teaches it, but we have to connect the dots. That in mind, some history. I said it's in the Bible, but throughout church history, men have wrestled with how do we articulate this in the best way? How do we make sense of it? And the first person to ever use the term was Tertullian, the use of the term Trinity. And he's wrestling with this three in one, one in three. The first few ecumenical councils of the early church all deal with this doctrine. So 325, Council of Nicaea confessed that the son is equal to the father, the same in substance. Later on, the three Cappadocians, you have Basil, Gregory, and the other Gregory in the Eastern Church. They put a greater emphasis on the deity of the Holy Spirit and have a more full-fledged Trinitarian theology, which in 381, you have a Constantinople, no, I can't say it right, the Council of Constantinople and the creed that arises from that, which affirms even more clearly the deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. From there, especially with Augustine, you have an emphasis on the fact that not only is the Son eternally begotten of the Father, but the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. This language of and the son, it's called the Filioque clause, becomes a huge rift between East and West. In 1054, the churches actually split over it, among other things. And so by the time you get to Calvin, Tim Warfield shows us another advance in this explication of the doctrine. You have a full-fledged Trinitarian theology, which then is codified in the Westminster Confession. That's just a brief sketch. Tertullian, Cappadocian fathers, Nicaea, Constantinople, Augustine, ultimately Calvin and others. Yes. Right. Yes. No, I think Mr. Van Voorhis has made a good point. There are explicit statements throughout the Bible, for instance, that Father is God, Son is God, Spirit is God, fully divine, that these three persons are distinct and inseparable, that they're related to each other. And so the doctrine that Right, but to say all of that as one doctrine in that many words is nowhere explicitly said. So we're having to still take different passages and read them in light of each other. So I agree with you that that's an explicit statement, but that doesn't give you a full doctrine of the Trinity just right there. true, the joining comma. I'm not going to deal with textual criticism. That's above my pay grade. No textual criticism. So, lest we get bogged down in history, let's just keep moving. And really, this comes down to two basic truths. that God exists in three persons. On the one hand, involves the unity of God and the plurality of God. And both of those things are important. If you go back to the ancient philosophers, they wrestled time and time again with the problem of the one and the many. What's more central? What's more basic? The one or the many? Well, in the mystery of the Godhead, we find that unity and plurality are both equally ultimate. First, we have the unity of God, that God is God is one in essence. God is one in essence. He's numerically one. Deuteronomy 6 says, the Shema, hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. Radical. Monotheism. He's not only numerically one, he's qualitatively one, as we learned last week, that God is most pure spirit. He is simple, without parts, body, or passions. God is one. But even in saying that, just to clarify what we mean, there could be the temptation to think of this as something impersonal or abstract. And here, Hermann Bavink is very helpful. He emphasizes that within the one being of God, there's nothing abstract, nothing impersonal, that he is absolute personality. He is personal absolutes, unity of God. But equally true is the plurality in God's. God is not only one in essence, He is three in person. And this is evident throughout the scriptures in what we'll call triadic passages. Passages where all three members of the Godhead appear working in concert, but also working distinctively. Dr. Bartosz already mentioned one. In creation, Genesis 1, we have the Father creating. He's doing so by speaking through his word, the divine Logos, as the Spirit hovers over the face of the waters. Three persons involved. We even have the divine name Elohim, which is a plural word for God, perhaps suggestive that in addition to the unity of God, there's also plurality in God. Another, just gloss, is the image of God. It says, let us make man in our image. One God in three persons. And then if you go to the New Testament, it really explodes. You have 2 Corinthians 13, 14, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, communion of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28, baptismal formula. We're baptized in the name, singular, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And perhaps my favorite passage of all, and it's recorded in all the Gospels, but Matthew 3 has it famously, you have the baptism of Jesus. What do we see? We have Jesus, a distinct person, we have the Father saying, this is my beloved Son, in Him I'm well pleased, and then the Spirit descending on Him as a dove. triadic passages. So, B.B. Warfield, sometimes people have asked the question, is the Trinity in the Old Testament? B.B. Warfield has the classic quote on this. I'm going to briefly read it to you. It says, The Old Testament can be likened to a chamber, richly furnished but dimly lighted. The introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before, but it brings out into the clearer view what much of what is in it, but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before. The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament, at least not in as much light. But the mystery of the Trinity underlies the Old Testament revelation, and here and there almost comes into view, thus the Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation that follows it, but only perfected. extended and enlarged. The whole Bible testifies to this and really we can say this is mystery without contradiction. And why would I say that? Mystery without contradiction. God is one in essence, three in person. Any ideas? Why is this not contradictory to say this? Yes, Esther Ellis. Yes, not three and one. Or if we said he's three in the same sense in which he's one. We're saying he's one in essence, three in person. So we can confess that that's true. When it comes to explaining what that means and how it works, our minds fall short. We receive it by faith. It's a revealed truth. Yes, it's mystery without contradiction. And I love the quote of Gregory of Nazianzus. You find in church history, people tend to go in two different directions. Modalists, like oneness Pentecostals today, they will stress the unity of God at the expense of his divine persons, the plurality. You have Arians or even Tritheists, they'll really stress the plurality of the persons at the expense of the divine unity. But with our doctrine of the Trinity, both are equally ultimate. And so Gregory of Nazianzus says, no sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three. No sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three, I think of him as the whole. and my eyes are filled and a greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. Mystery without contradiction. This is the basic doctrine of the Godhead. That's the first question. First question, how many persons? Let's move next to the second question, how do the persons relate to each other? It's not enough to say God is one in essence, three in person. He's three in one, one in three, but how do those persons relate? And that takes us to question 10. We'll read that. What are the personal properties of the three persons in the Godhead? It is proper to the Father to beget the Son, and to the Son to be begotten of the Father, and to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son from all eternity. Who are the divine persons? We have three persons, and they relate to one another in a particular way. When it comes to personhood, Calvin is helpful here. He defines a person as a certain incommunicable quality. a distinguishing quality or personal property not common to the other members. We put it this way. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. But the Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Father. But there is this personal distinguishing property, an incommunicable quality. And historically, it's been put this way. The Father is unbegotten. He's unbegotten. And often you'll find in the scriptures that when the Bible speaks of God or Yahweh, it's particularly the Father who's in view, representing the majesty of the whole Godhead. And really, if you read John Owen, he'll feel very comfortable referring to the Father as the fountain of the Trinity, the fountain of deity. The Father is alone, unbegotten. Second, we have the Son. And the Son is eternally generated from the Father. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. And we have those images, Colossians 1, he's the image of the invisible God. Hebrews 1 is the exact representation of his character. He is fully God. He is God of himself. He was given to him to have life in himself. And here on this point, this can be difficult to understand. We think, how can the Son be eternally begotten? while at the same time being equal to the Father. And we have to remember that we're not so much talking about causation. We're not thinking about sequential causation, where the Father would cause the Son to be. No, we're talking about an eternal relationship, of eternal generation, in which not only is there eternal generation, but eternal communication, that the Father communicates all attributes to the Son, including the fact that He is God of Himself. And then third, the Spirit proceeds eternally and is God from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son. And some people have wondered, why was that such a big deal in the early church? Why did the Eastern church really object to that phrase, and the Son? And part of it has to do with the way that that whole thing was handled, that it was addressed at a council that wasn't ecumenical. But what do you think is the big deal? What do you all think is the issue with that? And the Son. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Any ideas of why that was such a controversial topic? Possibly. possibly. Really, John 15-26 has that phrase, the Spirit proceeds from the Father. And so the Eastern Church said, it says He proceeds from the Father. That's how the Creed was originally written. We'll just keep it the way it is. But if you read that text a little more carefully, and you really read that whole context of John 14-16, you realize that this is what's actually happening. The Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. Titus 3 puts it this way, that the Father pours out the Spirit and he does so through the Son. And so the problem with the Eastern view is it tends to short circuit. who the persons are and how it's reflected in history. And just practically, often that leads them to a sort of mystical view of salvation, that salvation is becoming God, deification. That's a bigger topic that we can address right now. But, I'm sorry? Part of it's their exegesis of John 15. Right. from the father, and then it was added, and the son. You're asking. It is still an issue. Eastern and Western churches are still divided over a number of things, but it includes that issue. Right. Yeah, and I think the Western church, it was adopted in 589 at Toledo, and it wasn't an ecumenical council. I think it's a true statement, but I think they should have handled it a different way, because it was in place for a long time. Maybe I don't understand your question, I think it's the imposition of authority. I think it's the fact that it was the customary and accepted language up until that time. The person is usually credited with really developing and the sun language with Augustine in the West. That's, again, maybe part of that. Yes, Brooke? Sure. Right, well, I'll put it this way. Maybe this will be helpful. It's a great question. You put it this way. Who God is in eternity is reflected in how he acts in history. So there's this eternal order of persons. We have the Father, unbegotten, Son, eternally begotten of the Father, the Spirit, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. These eternal relationships and distinctions, we call them the divine processions. That's reflected in the way God acts in history. And a few examples of that would be that in creation, it's the Father who creates through the agency of the Son by the perfecting power of the Holy Spirit. Or in redemption, the Father is primarily the one who said he plans redemption, the Son accomplishes redemption, and the Spirit applies redemption. And so as you look, at the way God operates in time, it's reflected in who he is in eternity. If we understand that, we understand that that's why when the Bible describes an act of God, it's ordinarily and primarily from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. The Father originates, the Son executes, the Spirit perfects. It's not arbitrary what God does. And actually, I wanted to actually address that. There's really two big principles here. We talk about the personal properties. On the one hand, the persons are distinct. They're distinct. There's these distinguishing properties. And because of that, it's appropriate that certain works are more proper to one member than another. So it's proper or appropriate that the father is the one who creates through the word by the spirit. So that's part of this playing out of who God is in eternity, how he acts in history. There's these appropriate works that are proper to one member or another. At the same time, the persons are inseparable. We have to be really careful. When we stress the distinction of the persons, we're not saying they're separable, they're inseparable. In fact, there's a big word, it's called parakaresis, which is the idea that the persons mutually indwell each other. There's perfect union and communion among the members of the Trinity. John 17, Jesus says, not only I and the Father are one, earlier in John, but he says, I am in the Father, he is in me. this union, this communion, this mutual indwelling, they are inseparable. And because of that, although there are works that are appropriate to one member or another, the works are always undivided. In other words, they're not working at cross purposes. Even as the Son takes on flesh, the Father and the Spirit are working in concert and in harmony with the Son. Just to give you a few examples of that, in the Incarnation, the Father sends Christ into the world. The Son takes on flesh and the Spirit is there hovering over the womb of the Virgin Mary. And so, yes, it's proper to the Son to take on flesh. It's appropriate as a second person of the Trinity. But even there, all three persons are involved. Another example would be the Atonement. Hebrews 9 describes the Atonement this way, that it's the Son offering himself as a sacrifice, but he does so through the eternal Spirit to the Father. So yes, the cross work is appropriate and proper to the Son, but even there, he's offering himself to the Father through the Spirit. The resurrection, another good example. It's appropriate to the Son. He's the one who was resurrected, and yet who raised Jesus. It's the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. He was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. So hopefully that makes sense. Those two key principles kind of drawing from this, there are appropriate works, but all those works are also undivided. Persons are distinct. They're also inseparable. So how is this practical? We've dealt with and plumbed some of the mysteries of the Godhead, or attempted to, in our finite minds. How is this practical? How would this affect our lives? Any ideas? Yes. Yes, that's very helpful. Mr. Van Voorhis mentioned prayer, and a passage that comes to mind is Ephesians 2.18 where it says we both have access through Christ to the Father by one spirit. And so when we pray, we can pray to the triune God, and primarily that means praying to the Father. through the Son by the Spirit. That's why, for instance, we pray in Jesus' name. It's not just Christianese at the end of our prayers. No, we pray in the name of Jesus because he's the one mediator between God and man. So when we teach our children to pray, it's appropriate to pray to the Father, Son, and the Spirit. Stephen prays to the Son. But the primary way that we pray is modeled for us by Jesus when he says, our Father who art in heaven, praying to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. That's a great example of prayer. Another would be just our piety. When we think of 2 Corinthians 13, 14, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, communion of the Holy Spirit. John Owen makes much of this and says that not only do we have communion with the Triune God as a whole, but particularly and primarily we have communion with the Father in love, for God so loved the world. We have communion with the Son in grace, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. We have communion with the Holy Spirit in comfort. John 14 to 16. the comforter who's been sent to help us. And so it gives a personal, relational dimension to our very piety. It informs our prayer, it informs our worship, it informs the way we have communion, not only with God jointly, the members, but also distinctly. That's all very, very helpful. And of course, the gospel itself involves the work of the three persons. All right, time is continuing to move on. So we're going to move on to the third question. We've dealt with how many persons in the Godhead. God's one in essence, three in person. We've dealt with the question of how they relate to one another. Father, alone unbegotten. Son, eternally begotten of the Father. Spirit, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. Distinct persons, inseparable persons. Appropriate works, undivided work. Finally, let's deal with how do we know the persons are divine? And here we move more to an apologetic question, really. A question that would become helpful if you're at home. You hear a knock on the door, and it's, I won't call them Jehovah's Witnesses, it's a Russellite or a Mormon, and they've got some literature. How would you answer their questions when they come and say, well, I don't think the Bible believes or teaches that Jesus is God? Well, this last question is immediately practical from an apologetic standpoint, and let's read question 11. It says, how doth it appear that the Son and the Holy Ghost are God, equal with the Father? And the answer is, the scriptures manifest that the Son and the Holy Ghost are God, equal with the Father, ascribing unto them such names, attributes, works, and worship as are proper to God only. read through the larger catechism, this is sort of a side note, I think it's helpful. There are three questions that begin with that kind of formula. How doth it appear that such and such is the case? You have questions two, four, and 11. And they deal with the issues of how do we know God exists? How do we know the Bible is God's word? And this last one, how do we know that the persons of the Godhead are divine? And so if you want to, you can kind of think of this as a Westminster apologetic framework, that if someone comes to you and say they're an atheist or an agnostic, take them to question two. How do we know God exists? If it's somebody who's a theological liberal or a Muslim, they don't believe what the Bible teaches, take them to question four. How do we know the Bible is God's word? And then anybody who denies the Orthodox Trinity, whether it's a cult or just an unbeliever, well, you can take them to question 11. How do we know the persons are divine? And there's these four categories that are so helpful. Divine names, divine attributes, works, and worship that are ascribed to the sun and to the spirit. And I'm going to make you guys do a little bit of work here. Ask you guys the question. Give me an example in the Bible where a divine name is ascribed to the sun. John 1. Who said that? Sebastian. Perfect. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, distinguished, and the Word was God, identified. So he's God. Perfect example. Any others? Brooke. Throughout John's Gospel, he will say, in the Greek, ego ami, I am. And to a Jewish audience, they would have heard back of that Yahweh. I am who I am. And I think that's a good point. And it's even more explicit in John 12, where it is said that Isaiah spoke concerning his glory, the glory of Jesus Christ. And he's referring to Isaiah 6, where the prophet looks at and gazes upon in some way the glory of Yahweh enthroned among the seraphim. And so Jesus is clearly identified with Yahweh there. Yes. And really, this is part of the whole data in the Old Testament. We have the angel of the Lord, who is both distinct from Yahweh and yet identified with him throughout the scriptures. So the Son is clearly God. What about the Spirit? Where do we find a place where a divine name is ascribed to the Spirit? A little harder. Yes, Wayne. Yeah. You've lied to God. And in that passage, it equates lying to God with lying with the Spirit. Clearly, the Spirit is identified with God. What about divine attributes? Again, these are helpful categories to think through. If someone asks you, how do you know that the Son is God? Well, work through these categories. Where is a divine attribute attributed to the Son? Yes. Mighty God. That's a great example. Isaiah 9. Also think of John 2, where he knew what was in the heart of man. He didn't need anyone to tell him. He has omniscience. I'm sorry. He said Isaiah 9, where Jesus is called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, all those attributes of deity. Another example for the spirit would be the spirit searches the deep things of God. He knows the mind of God. In 1 Corinthians 2, he's omniscient. Divine works, we've kind of already addressed this. Creation, providence, redemption, all three members of the Godhead are at work in those activities. Divine worship is interesting. You look at Revelation, John bows before an angel and the angel says, don't do that. I'm a messenger like you. I'm a created being. Don't bow down to me. Well, earlier in Revelation, John falls headlong before Christ. Christ doesn't rebuke him. He accepts the worship. Every knee is going to bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Clearly, Jesus receives worship. Not only he who sits upon the throne, but the Lamb of God receives worship. Not only the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7, but the Son of Man receives adoration. The Spirit, again, it's not quite as clear. And part of this is because the Spirit In the economic order of operations, of how God works in time and in history and in creation, the Spirit, He is always shining the spotlight upon the Son. He's, as it were, working behind the scenes, and yet it's still clear that the Spirit is worshiped when we go to a place like 2 Corinthians 13, that benediction, which is an act of worship, or the baptismal formula, baptized in the divine name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Baptism is an act of worship. The Spirit clearly is worshipped as well. Right. That's very true, and that's actually why the theology of the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son is important, because it's the Father through the Son who gives the Spirit at the day of Pentecost. And that's a reflection of who God is in himself, played out in history. That's a great point. So, with all of that in mind, what is the fundamental truth of the Christian faith? Again, it's a system of truth. But it's also true that there's hardly a more profound or more bedrock question than, who is God? God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is triune. He's one in essence. He's three in person. Those persons are distinct, yet inseparable, that all things come from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, That what God does is a reflection of who He is. That we could say the Triune God is the Gospel. And that our communion with Him, with the Father in love, with the Son in grace, with the Spirit in comfort, is at the pulse beat, the heart of why God made us and why He saved us. Questions? Comments? Discussion? Yes. Go for it. No, very true. The doctrine of man is essential. And clearly, man is made in the image of God. And so all the truths interconnect. But we have to begin somewhere. Who is God? And then maybe secondly, how can we know it by way of covenant? Yes. Any other questions? Yes. Ryan. Right. Mhm. Right. Now, it kind of becomes a touchstone, almost a litmus test, because who is God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? We could really say it this way. At the heart of Christianity is this mystery and this truth of who God is. And you could say, in some ways, we don't simply believe in Christianity in spite of that. We believe in it because of that. because this is who our God is. And just to give you another practical example, you mentioned engaging with people. This helps us understand what it means when we see in the Bible that God is love. So in Islam, we have radical monotheism, Allah, but it's just Allah, totally isolated, totally alone. For Allah to love, he has to create something. He has to create a world of people. And then Allah can love. Well, God is complete in himself. In God, Augustine is famous for saying there are three. There is the lover, the beloved, and love between them. The father loves the son. The son is loved by the father. The spirit is a bond of love between them. We start to understand how it's possible for our God to be love. And then out of that, he loves us. But God is, first of all, complete in himself. And in any other religion, we simply could not have that. God could not be loved. And it also helps us understand why we have that almost mysterious phrase, let us make man in our image. And I'm not going to get into what all the image of God entails. I think it's a difficult subject. But at least part of that has to be this fact that in God, being is communion. That the persons are who they are in relation to each other. The reason the father is the father is because he has a son. The reason the son is the son is because he has the father. That they're interdependent. And when he makes us in his image, when they say, let us make man in our image, that helps us understand why we are social beings, why we're relational beings, why we are made for communion, not just with God, but even with each other. That's why we enjoy talking to each other, having long conversations, and getting to know each other, being known by each other. Human relationality, our ability and our capacity to relate to other people, is rooted in this fact that our God is triune. He's absolute personality, personal absolute. Any other questions? I know it's a big topic, but my concern is that we don't just dot all our I's and cross all our T's, which we should. We have to be precise. At the same time, I want you to leave with a sense that this affects how you pray. This affects the shape of your piety. This affects the way you teach your children the gospel. John Bunyan, in one of his works, there's a character named Prudence who has a little catechism. And she says, how does the Father save you? How does the Son save you? How does the Spirit save you? And so, whether it's covenant nurture to our children, or just the way we approach God in worship, a few moments when we do engage in public worship, what are we doing? We're approaching the Father through the crosswork of the Son, and we're doing so by the power and the help of the Holy Spirit. What we start to realize is that everything in life is colored, is cast in light of this truth of who God is. And let's keep it not just an academic subject, but remember that these are divine persons. Three in one, one in three, and that impacts how we live, how we think, how we feel. If there's no other questions, I'm going to go ahead and close us in prayer, and we'll begin for public worship. Let's pray. Father, we come to you through your Son, the Lord Jesus, and we come by the Spirit We confess that You are three in one, one in three, our triune God. And Lord, we ask that we would not only have an orthodox understanding of this doctrine, this teaching, but that we would, as Christians, have communion with You. We would have communion with You, O Father, in love. with you, O Son, in grace, and with you, O Spirit, in comfort and in consolation, that our piety, that our very lives would be shaped by who you are. We thank you for your gospel. We thank you, O God, that you are the gospel, that you have given yourself to us, and we gladly receive the gift. Help us now as we worship. We ask all these things for Christ's sake and in his name. Amen.