Okay, let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this Lord's Day. Thank you for bringing us here. Thank you for many blessings and mercies that you bless us with every morning, Lord God, every day. Thank you so much, Lord God. We pray that we would bless our time learning of you and hearing your word, worshiping you as we sing praises to you, pray, and hear the preaching of your word. Lord, please bless your people and help us to worship you this day in spirit and in truth. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So having concluded a series on the deity of Christ, kind of going through the Gospel of John and showing several ways in which Jesus is portrayed, described, shown as God in the flesh, I want to add to that, but not just by showing who he, who Christ is, that he is God, but then showing what John says about God in general, and with that, the Trinity. What does John specifically say about the Trinity? So we will be looking at certain instances In the Gospel, where John speaks of God, but also how he speaks of the Father. We already saw how he speaks of the Son, but then also the Holy Spirit. And thus we will see the Trinity in the Gospel of John. And so we have already kind of gone into what the Trinity is and some issues in the Trinity when we went through John Chapter 5. There were some issues that I believed were important to understand about the Trinity so we could understand John Chapter 5. So I'm not gonna get too much into the Trinity this morning, or explanation of it, but we will as we progress and go through the different, how John views the Father and the Holy Spirit, and then as we put it all together, we will kind of come back and look at a lot of those truths that we went through. So again, we've gone through Deity of Christ, now we're gonna look at the Trinity in the Gospel of John. We've seen the deity of Jesus, we're going to look at the Father and the Spirit as portrayed as God in the Gospel. And so the first thing that I want to begin with is what is the Christian belief about God? What do we as Christians believe about God? And this is important because Those that do not believe in the Trinity often have a false view of what we think, of what we believe. And they'll make statements that make it seem as though we believe in three gods. And so what we want to begin with as we begin a study on the Trinity in the Gospel of John is what we believe about God in general. And so what we believe about God, I'm going to use two confessions to show what we believe about God. So first, there is only one God, okay? This is from the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter two, paragraph one. The Lord our God is but one only living and true God, whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, who only hath immortality, dwelling in light which no man can approach unto, who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, and withal most judge and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty. So what's key here is that he is saying that the Lord, that the confession is stating that the Lord, our God, is but one living and true God. We believe in one God. Okay, that's the main takeaway from this section, the confession, that we can, there's a lot of things that we can talk about here, but, We will not. So it's, and then in paragraph three, we believe that there's one God, but we also believe that God is triune in nature. And this we see in paragraph three of the same chapter. In this divine and infinite being, there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit, of one's substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, all infinite, without beginning. Therefore, but one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal attributions, which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and comfortable dependence on him. So, while affirming that there is one God, now the confession affirms, confesses that this one infinite being, in this one infinite being, there are three subsistences, or we can say three persons. the Father, the Word, or Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father, the Word, or Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one substance, power and eternity, each having the whole, the entire divine essence, not part of the divine essence, the whole of the divine essence, and yet this essence is undivided. Okay, so it's not, we can't divide the essence into three, give one to the Son, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That would be the area of Parsonism, which we will talk about a little bit more later. So it's undivided, it's one divine essence, and that essence is the thing that unites the three persons, that makes the three persons into what they are, one being, one infinite and divine being. But what it's saying is that within this infinite divine being, there are three persons. that are to be not separated, but distinguished by what it says here towards the bottom, relative properties and personal relations. And these relative properties and personal relations are what we find a little bit above that and towards the middle, where it says, the father, oops. The father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. And we're gonna see the Belgian Confession talk more about this. He's neither begotten nor proceeding. Proceeding, the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. So we can say the Father begets, the Son is begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. So it's the procession of the Spirit, so He proceeds from them both. Those relations distinguish the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let's look at the Belgic Confession, which is a confession of the Reformed churches. It was written in 1561. Article one says, we all believe with the heart and confess with the mouth that there is only one God who is a simple and spiritual being. He is eternal, incomprehensible, visible, invisible, immutable, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overthrowing fountain of all, good. Okay, so one God. Article 8, after this it begins to talk about how did we know, how did we come to know this God, and it's through scripture, through a special revelation. And so according to this truth and this word of God, we believe in one only God. who is one single essence in which are three persons, really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties, the properties that cannot be communicated, which is... Which is why I said in John chapter 5 that when Jesus says that the Father has given him to have life in himself, that attribute of having life in oneself is a divine attribute that cannot be communicated. And therefore, I argue that that actually spoke of his eternal begetting of his divinity. to the incommunicable properties, mainly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the cause, origin, and beginning of all things visible and invisible. He is the cause. He is the fountainhead. The Son is the word, the wisdom, and the image of the Father. the one who is begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is eternal power and might and proceeds from the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, God is not by this distinction divided into three, since the Holy Scriptures teach us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each has his personal existence distinguished by their properties, but in such a way that these three persons are but one only God. So the one only God, again, is because of the one divine essence that unites all three, okay? And what distinguishes them is their peculiar personal properties and relations. That's how we know that the father and the son are not the same, because the son is eternally begotten of the father, but the father is begotten of no one. It is therefore evident that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, and likewise the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. Nevertheless, these persons thus distinguished are not divided nor intermixed, for the Father has not assumed our flesh and blood, neither has the Holy Spirit, but the Son only. The Father has never been without his Son or without his Holy Spirit, for these three in one and the same essence are equal in eternity. There is neither first nor last, for they are all All three, one, in truth, in power, in goodness, and in mercy. So I have this picture to kind of, or illustration, I don't know what you'd call it, to illustrate this. And we can see here in the middle, God, right? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father, and you see all the three persons, all going in, they're all God. Father is God, Son is God, Holy Spirit is God, The Father is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Son. The Son is not the Father. The Father is not the Son. So, they're distinguished by their properties, their relative properties, but all of them, because they share equally and fully, completely, the divine essence, they are all God. All three are one God. So the first thing we believe is that there is only one God, and secondly, that this one God is triune in nature. So what about God in the Gospel of John? It is important to note that John and the disciples and the first century Jews were strict monotheists. of the Roman world in demanding the exclusive worship of its God. Jewish monotheism was defined by its adherence to the first and second commandments. So their view of God was obviously rooted in the Old Testament, in the first and second commandments, but also, as we're going to see, in the Shema. All the cultures pretty much had various gods. There were so many, so many gods. Even when Paul goes to Athens, he sees so many gods, even a shrine to an unknown god, just in case they missed one. So there was a lot of polytheism, a lot of worshiping of various gods. But out of all these cultures, the Jewish religion was the one that really stood out because they were strict, very strict, in worshiping one God and one God alone. So this is the culture in which John, Matthew, and all the other writers of the New Testament are writing. They're writing within this context of Jewish monotheism, strict Jewish monotheism. their belief in one God is written in the Old Testament specifically, and so not only in the First and Second Commandments, but also in the Shema, where it's in Deuteronomy 6-4, where it says, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. But do these kind of, these confessions in the Old Testament that speak of God being one, do these contradict the doctrine of the Trinity? Because many will say that they do. Well, it does not, and this is why. So, the word Elohim, God, means God or gods, so it's either singular or plural. As it stands by itself, Elohim is plural, which means gods. Generally when used to refer to false gods, a plural verb or pronoun is followed. So, for example, in Exodus 23-34, you shall not worship their gods, Elohim, nor serve them, nor do according to their deeds, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces. But there are instances when this rule is not followed. So for example, in Genesis 20 verse 13, and these instances are clearly talking about the one true God. And it says, and it came about when God caused me to wander, literally can be translated, and when God, they caused me to wander from my father's house, because it's plural. To cause to wander is plural. It's in the third person plural. So they caused me. Genesis 35, 7, their God has revealed himself to him, literally they appeared unto him. 2 Samuel 7, 23, God went or literally they went. Psalm 58, 11, surely there is a God who judges on earth, literally they judge. So there is plurality there. I'm not arguing that they believed in more than one God. They're still believing in the one God, but there are instances where the word Elohim in the plural is being used of God, but in a sense of oneness as well. Although Elohim does not necessarily prove the Trinity, it does open the door, or lays the foundation, not for a plurality of gods, but for a plurality within the Godhead, the one true God. And so we see this, for example, in Genesis 1-1, it says, in the beginning, God, Elohim, created the heavens and the earth. Literally, in the beginning, He, singular, created God, the heavens and the earth. So, in this instance, created, there's a first person personal pronoun, he created, but the word God is Elohim, so there's plurality, but there's also unity, singularity, a sense of being singular. The plurality in Elohim and referring to the one true God actually opens the door, again, for this plurality within the Godhead. So did the strict monotheism of the first century Jews make the Trinity an impossible monotheistic belief? Some say that Second Temple Judaism held to a strict monotheism that rendered it impossible to attribute deity to anyone other than God. In this case, only a radical break with Judaism would have allowed this. allowed his, Jesus' followers to attribute divinity to Jesus. So this is what Andreas Kostenberger says. But this is not what John or any of the gospel writers see themselves doing. So in other words, what he's saying is that if Jewish monotheism was so strict that there was no way that there could be a plurality within the oneness of God, that there would have to be a radical break from Judaism. You couldn't say, I'm still a Jew and believe in the God of Abraham and Moses and believe in that Jesus was God and the Holy Spirit and the Father. There would have to be this radical break, this formula of a completely new religion in order to do so. But again, this is not what we see John, Paul, Matthew, or any of the New Testament writers do. They are consciously speaking of the Father as God, as Jesus as God, as the Holy Spirit as God, while at the same time, adhering to Jewish monotheism. And more importantly, they see themselves as adhering to true monotheistic Judaism. they're seeing themselves as truly explaining, because of Christ's revelation, of truly explaining the one true God of Judaism, the true God of Abraham and Moses. So in a sense, they're seeing their view as being even more Jewish, truly Jewish, than the Judaism that rejected Christ as being divine. At the beginning of John's gospel, the first thing that we read is, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and there the word theos is used. Theos is the word that was used as well to translate the word God in the Old Testament into the Greek subteragent. So it is the covenant God of the Old Testament. And so from the beginning, John believes in one God, even though he refers to the Word of Jesus, the Son, as God, and the Father as God. We see this, for example, in John 3, 16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Here he's using, he's talking about the one God who is sending Jesus Christ, the only begotten, and the only begotten is something that he's already explained in chapter one, of the Son of God who is with him in eternity in the bosom of the Father. But again, here he's acknowledging the one God, sending Jesus Christ, but then at the same time, acknowledging him as divine. John 3.21, but he who practices the truth comes to the light so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. Here acknowledging the oneness of God, the one God of the Old Testament. John 4.21, do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. Again, here he's speaking of God, but then also, Why believe in Jesus if he is not God? John 16, 30, now we know that you know all things and have no need of anyone to question you. By this we believe that you came from God. And so here that the disciples are acknowledging that there is one God, that Jesus came from him, but at the same time, in other places, are acknowledging that he is God. So they were not confused, they understood that there is a oneness in God, and that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were God, fully and truly. Okay, now this one is a little bit more difficult, and we'll see why. This verse establishes clearly the oneness of God, that there is one God, that the disciples are not claiming that there's multiple gods. There is one God, and Jesus himself is acknowledging this because these are Jesus' words. So Jesus is acknowledging that there is but one God. And this section here is the beginning of his high priestly prayer, because this prayer is a prayer of intercession for his people. He's about to be betrayed and crucified, and he as the high priest is going to offer up the sacrificial lamb for the atonement of his people. That was the job, the duty of the high priest to offer up the sacrificial lamb once a year for the forgiveness of sins, for the atonement of the sins of the people. So Jesus, as a high priest, is going to offer this sacrificial lamb. The only difference is that in the Old Testament, the priest and the lamb were not the same thing. Here, Jesus is offering up the sacrifice as a priest, but he himself is that sacrificial lamb. So in his worst priest, he offers up prayers on behalf of his people. And in the introduction of this prayer, he says this. He says, from the beginning, Jesus spoke these things, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, even as you gave him authority over all flesh. that to all whom you have given him you may give eternal life. This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorify you on earth, having accomplished the work which you have given me to do. Now, Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was. So Jesus here then is acknowledging that there is only one true God. So that John and Jesus both here acknowledging the oneness of God, there is one God, not many, but this also seemingly presents a problem for Trinitarianism. Does anybody know what that is? Because anti-Trinitarian people, individuals, would bring this scripture up in an attempt to try to disprove the Trinity, or that Jesus is not God. So what is the problem here? The seemingly irreconcilable problem here. Yes, so yeah, the problem is, or what people usually bring up is that Jesus here is saying, they would say, even Jesus did not believe in Trinity because he's saying, who is Jesus speaking it to? He's speaking to the Father. And what is he saying of the Father? He's saying that the Father and the Father alone is the only true God. So Jesus acknowledged that only the Father was God. He wasn't saying, you know, you, the only true God, and me, God as well. He wasn't acknowledging, he wasn't saying that. So how do we reconcile these two things? This is where the importance of knowing, of having an understanding of the Trinity, a proper understanding of the Trinity, and the two natures of Christ. The fact that Jesus is the second person in the Trinity, He is the eternal Word of God, the Divine Son, but that this second person of the Trinity has taken upon himself human nature, right? So he's not, yesterday we were reading for family worship where Jacob wrestles with God, right? And this is a pre-incarnate appearance of the second, of Jesus. But I say pre-incarnate because However Jacob wrestled him, the person was not, we wouldn't say that he was truly incarnate, he wasn't truly a man. He appeared in the form of a man, it was physical, but it wasn't a truly incarnation of the human nature. Angels do the same thing. Angels can appear in the form of, with bodies, right? And they can even eat and drink, but they don't have bodies, they're spirits. But they can take on the appearance of a man without actually taking upon true humanity. So it's a pre-incarnate appearance of the sun, but Right here we're talking about the actual incarnation, that Jesus actually took upon himself human nature. So he became a human being just like us, except without sin. But he became a true human being. And in Adam, All of us are responsible, our duty is to do what? To worship God and Him alone. We have to worship God. So Jesus Christ, as a true human being who would come to serve as a proper substitute for human beings, so as a human, in his human nature, he had to also worship the one true God. He had a God. So Jesus says, my God and your God. Because in his human nature, he does have a God. But in his divinity, he is God. So we need to understand the two natures of Christ and how they function, that in his humanity, Jesus does what we as humans are called to do. But in his divinity, he himself is God. But remember also in the definitions that we read from the Belgic and from the Sacred London about God, that each subsistence or each person in the Trinity is not just divine themselves. They don't have part of the essence of the divine essence. they share in the whole undivided essence of divinity. So, again, this is the area of partialism that says that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are, we can say, thirds of the Trinity. So the Father is 1 3rd, the Son is 1 3rd, the Holy Spirit is 1 3rd, that God is made up of these three persons, whereas the Orthodox, or the correct religion, is that each person shares fully and completely of the whole and entire essence of the divinity. So that when we speak of the Father, we can say the Father is the only true God. We can also say of the Son, the Son is the only true God, and we can say of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the only true God, because each one shares fully and completely in the entire, the fullness, the wholeness of the undivided essence of God. And so when Jesus says, you alone, or you only are the true God, he is right, because God the Father is the only true God, but so is Jesus the only true God, and the Holy Spirit the only true God, because they both, all three share of the divine essence. And then what's more also, as we see here in this text, is that even though it doesn't say Jews is God, if we read the text, He's asking the Father to glorify the Son. He says, Father of ours, come glorify the Son, that the Son may glorify you, even as you have given him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you have given him, he may give eternal life. So again, who gives eternal life? The God alone, but here Jesus is giving eternal life. This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So, if Jesus isn't God, then how is he part of having eternal life? Why is it not just the Father, just knowing the Father, having eternal life? But no, as we've seen already plenty of times, that in order to honor the Father, you must honor the Son. You can't say, no, I do believe in God, I just don't believe in Jesus. You can't. You can't have the Father without the Son. To glorify the Father, you must glorify the Son. To have the Father, you must have the Son. So you can't have one without the other. So to have eternal life is to know both the Father and the Son. And he says, then he goes on, I glorified you on the earth, having accomplished the work which you have given me to do. Now, Father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was. So in this section, we are seeing a distinction between the Father and the Son, so that the Father, As we saw over here, let's see, 19. As we saw here, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Son, but all three are the one God. We're seeing that here, the distinction the fact that Jesus is praying to someone else, the Father, and in this, we're seeing the distinction between the Father and the Son, but at the same time, what is he saying? He's saying, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was. So before the world was, in eternity, or as John puts it in John 1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, And the Word was God. So before time began, before creation and in eternity, the Word was with the Father. And here he's saying, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the Word was. So Christ existed in a glory, in a glorious state before the Word was and continues to exist in that state. But now, as having been incarnated, having taken upon himself human flesh, he is going back to the Father and asking him to glorify him now to that glory that he had before. So, in this we're seeing the divinity of Jesus Christ, the fact that the Father is God, that there's one true God, but both here are being described as being God. So there is only one God in the Gospel of John. In this divine and infinite being, there are three substances, the Father, the Word, and Son, and the Holy Spirit. One subsistence, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence being undivided. So, again, this is the basic definition that we're working with, and this is what we're seeing in John 17, in all the scriptures, that there is an affirmation of one God, yet at the same time, they're attributing divinity to the Father and the Son. So I want to close with this. I know that we're going to close a little bit early, but this is something that I heard and I read from John Calvin a long time ago that really stuck with me. It's a really good quote that as we think of as we think of the Trinity, God as the Trinity, and think of his, as we think of the Trinity, we immediately think of the one, but then as we think, as we're thinking of God in his oneness, we can't but help but think of God in his triuneness, and this is exactly what John is, John Calvin is saying, and he's quoting actually from Gregory of Nazianzus, and he says this, Scripture sets forth a distinction of the Father from the Word, and of the Word from the Spirit. Yet the greatness of the mystery warns us how much reverence and sobriety we ought to use in investigating this." So he's acknowledging that Scripture distinguishes between the Father, between the Word, and the Spirit. And that passage in Gregory of Nazianzus vastly delights me. And this is what he says, what Gregory of Nazianzus says, I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three. Nor can I discern the three without straightaway carried back to the one. Let us not then be led to imagine a trinity of persons that keeps our thoughts distracted and does not at once lead them back to that unity. Indeed, the words father, son, and spirit imply a real distinction. Let no one think that these titles, whereby God is famously designated from his works, are empty but a distinction, not a division. The proper way to think of God is in his unity, his oneness. But in that oneness, there is plurality. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we are not to think of these two as distinct from one another, as separate, but as one. And that is the proper view of Christianity, of the Trinity. And that is what we are seeing in John as he's speaking of God, that he is affirming that there is one God, but does not feel like he's departing from Judaism by saying that Jesus is also God, that the word was God. So, we're starting to see them, the Oneness of God, the Trinity in the Gospel of John. And what I want to eventually do also, again, like I mentioned, is go through the instances of how John portrays the Father as God and his work in the Trinity, as well as Jesus and his work, and the Holy Spirit and his work. So, all three working together as one God. So before we close, are there any questions or comments? We've got five minutes. Okay, well, then let's close.