Alright everyone, we're gonna get started. It's been a long time since we skipped December. So we had a catechism question and a proof text. And the catechism question is, what is God? So that's number four. At least four of us can sing it. So let's try to sing it. What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being. Wisdom, power, holiness, Justice, goodness and truth. Now we talked about how the sort of God that we're laboring to defend makes a huge difference in how we would go about defending Him. We said that a God who's absolute, infinite, eternal has to be your starting point, your presupposition to really be those things. If you started with anything as true or more obvious or more certain than Him and His Word, then He wouldn't actually be that God who is ultimate and absolute and self-contained and infinite and eternal. He would be secondary and whatever you started with would be your real God. Does that make sense everybody? Alright, that exact same phrase again. Yeah, but so this is why we chose as our proof text Proverbs 1 7. Anybody got that one? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. That's right. So this is at the very heart of what we believe, you guys. We really belabored the point that every human being actually knows with greater certainty than anything else that God exists. He actually is the thing that is more certain than anything that you know. And it's an act of human suppression of the truth and unrighteousness that we don't automatically already think that way. That we are made in God's image. He is the reason why we can even interact with this world around us. And it's, as it says in Acts 17, in Him we live and move and have our being. That's to say, at all times, it's as if God were singing to us that there's a purpose in life, that you can trust your senses, that there's something called right and wrong, a lot about what is right and wrong. We're always hearing that song. And the scary thing is that as ferocious sinners we suppress that truth. So our job when we're being apologists is what we're trying. It's more like an intervention with a crazy person than it is you interacting with someone who's sharp and wise and intelligent. It's more like when you have someone who's a drug addict and you get together as a family and you tell him all the things he already knows. And you tell it to him like you know he really kind of already knows it even though he's going to oppose every little thing you say. So that's our concept of presupposition. It is a belief that precedes all other beliefs and helps you to make sense of everything. So today we're going to go into the topic of the Trinity and human reason. In the coming weeks we'll talk about the sorts of things you typically think of in apologetics. Things like evidence of design and all of these different sorts of things. We'll try to square this with the sort of apologetics we're talking about. So, here's the thing. I'm going to pray and then I'll open with a question. Let's bow our heads. Mighty God, we come to you as people who are sometimes frightened by what the Word of God says about us. Our capacity to forget about you, our capacity to willfully suppress true things that we know. Lord, our capacity to treat ourselves as the center of everything and insist that everybody else and their interests orbit around ours. God, we pray for forgiveness for these things, and we pray for insight and understanding for how to better share our faith, how to better confront a world in unbelief with your truths. Lord, to be able to do so more confidently. And God, I pray that you'll help us to know what we believe, where your Word says it, and why it's important. We ask these things, Father, for your glory, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, and by your Spirit. Amen. Alright, so we just did our basic structure a moment ago. What do we believe? That's our catechism song. Where does the Bible say it? That's our proof text. Why it's important. Kind of expanded the concept of presuppositions. Well today we're going to talk about the doctrine of the Trinity. And if you guys have ever... How many people have ever actually opened the door when Job's Witness or Mormon come by? How many people have engaged that conversation? Yes. Every one of those guys is going to deny the doctrine of the Trinity. It is one of those things that very obviously sets the Christian faith apart from every other religion under the sun. It's not easily melded with any other religion because our idea of God itself is radically different than what the minds of men have ever made up. So my question for you is this. Do you guys think that the laws of thought that govern your mind are identical with the laws of thought that govern God's mind? That's to say, when you use reason and logic, the rules of mathematics and things like that, all of those things, probability, are the rules at work in your mind, by which you think, are they identical with the laws of thought in God's mind? Well, there's a verse that says His ways are from so far above us. Yeah, jumping straight to the point, Isaiah 55. Anybody know Isaiah 55 verses 7 and 8? Yes, and are my thoughts above your thoughts? God literally tells you that the way you think, it's Right, they're infinitesimally smaller and less comprehensive than God's. And I'll just read the verse right out of the scriptures. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. This means we should not be surprised. when we encounter things about God that seem to burst our mind's way of thinking. And it starts for us as Christians with our doctrine of God himself. This is one of the precious things that we believe. This is one of the precious things that no human mind has ever arrived at by its own reflection on reality. And so we're gonna start with what we believe when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity. Based on our conversation last week, how many gods are there? One. The Bible tells us this in a multitude of ways. And these verses, you guys, that I'm going to mention, and some of these verses will be your proof text, but all of them are valuable. They're the very sorts of things that a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness at your door needs to hear. Israel's most famous prayer, the Shema, it's in Deuteronomy 6. It says, There is no competitor to Him. And in the very next verse, that's where it says, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. The idea is this, not only is there only one of Him, but He is the sole object to whom all your gratitude is due, from the wholeness of your being. This is radically different than a Hindu worldview. What do Hindu people believe? Anybody know? What do they believe about God? Everything can be a God. And that's kind of the high philosophical form of it. And I would say the normal practitioner would think of it this way. There are just multitudinous gods all over the earth. And if you did well in business, there's a God to thank. If you got healed from a sickness, there's another God to thank. If you are in need of finding something, there's a God to pray to. That's radically different than saying the Lord our God is one. and we should love Him as the exclusive object of our love among spiritual beings, absolutely and holistically. What are some other verses that come to mind that would compel you to believe that there is only one God? Okay. Right, yeah, so there you have, you know, the Word and God the Father, and yet they're one. He was with Him and He was Him. I mean, you can't forget that one, guys. I mean, it's John 1, 1. It's the first verse in John. It's one of the more profound insights into the doctrine of the Trinity. What are some other passages or verses that would, you know, compel you to think that there's only one God from the Scriptures that you read? Yeah. Self-existent. That's right. You know, when you think about it, there really cannot, in any meaningful sense, be two self-existent beings. One would, they would either have to coexist in some place that contained them both, and we're gonna talk about this, and you go, where did that container come from? It wouldn't be self-existent. Their existence would be facilitated by space or wherever they were, and there'd be some bigger God than both of them at that point. So yes, self-existence repels the idea of any equal. What about the first commandment? The commandments begin with, you shall have no other gods before me. We talked last week about that idea that that verse, really even what it implies is you can't help but to have God as God. You can just play a game in your mind and put something before him, but you're always really relying on him. Any other verses that come to mind? I've seen Isaiah as well. What were you thinking then? 518. Okay, good. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens, he is God, who formed the earth and made it, he established it, he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord and there is no other. Yeah. You have these sorts of statements by God. I am the Lord, there is no other. One that I love in particular, also in Isaiah, which was noted by a few, is a place to go. You go into those chapters, Isaiah 40 and following, and the assertion on God's part of being the only one you'll find again and again. You know, Mormon theology, they will say, as God is, as man is, God once was, as God is, man may become. Anyone ever had a Mormon quote that little proverb to you? So there's this idea, not only that there's more than one God, but that, frankly, the whole, you know, number of gods is being added to all the time. They'd say there's an infinite regress of gods. I, therefore, really like Isaiah 43 10, and I just, I love the way this is phrased. You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant, whom I have chosen. so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He." That's actually going back to the I am language. Before me there was no God formed and there will be none after me. That's pretty solid death knell to a religion that believes that there has been a vast succession of beings that became divine. And guys, what does it even mean to become God? You're clearly not talking about the God that we've talked about being self-existent, eternal, unchangeable in His being. Right, you're talking about supermen. And I actually, I love to challenge Mormons that they're actually atheistic. They don't believe in a God who is infinite, eternal, made everything. They just believe in really supermen beings, Marvel characters who live within the space-time universe and some are good and some are bad. It's a very, very different worldview than ours. You know, another one I enjoy as well, because people will come at you with some verses. What do you guys think about Psalm 82? We sing it in church. Yes! Anybody remember how Psalm 82 goes? Michael, how's it start? God stands in the congregation of the mighty. He judges among the gods. And show partiality to the wicked. And if you fast forward, I have said you are gods and all of you are children of the Most High, but you shall die like men. What is that talking about? I'll have you know, Mormons love those verses. They would say that that's where their theology is proven. There are multitudes of gods. God judges in the counsel of the mighty. What do you guys do with that? Well, our inheritance as a child of God comes into it. Yeah, okay. Well, okay. Here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to argue that God is talking to men there, and He's men who are puffed up in their thinking. And when it says, I've said you are gods, God calls men the word El in Hebrew, which means power. God's name, and whenever you read God in the Old Testament, capital G-O-D, is Elohim. That's the word El in the plural. One of God's name is powers. He is the all-powerful, and therefore He's all powers at once. Whenever it says that I've said, you are God, speaking of men, it uses the word in the singular, that you're a power, a mighty being. And you guys do this today, you do it all the time. You'll talk about a basketball God, or you'll talk about a, you know, a rock God, or something like that. Or, you know, someone who's really good at something, and you'd call them by that term, not meaning to imply that they are the all-powerful, all-encompassing. So in that passage, it's an allusion to what the Lord says in Exodus 21. He calls his judges gods. He says, you shall take them before the judges of the people. That English translation is of the word Elohim, and it means gods or powers. And so it wouldn't be that common to call someone a power. Yes? Wouldn't that also mean, like, government? Yeah, yes, exactly. Beings in control and in power. In Moses, for example, God says, I make you as God unto the people and Aaron as your prophet. And there again, it's this sort of metaphorical sense of, you know, what you say is going to happen because you're articulating my word. But this is where verses like Jeremiah chapter 10, verse 11, clarify what is meant here. Jeremiah 10, 11, anybody want to get that? Thank you, sir. Thus shall you say to them, the gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens. So, it is very clear. Any sort of mighty being that people would worship, and of course there are demonic powers behind the various idolatrous, you know, forms of worship in the Old Testament. He's saying any of those powers, and they can be called powers, they do have might, they're demon-possessed people and they're powerful people. He says all of them will perish from under the earth. because they're not the creator God. They're not the one who made everything. So you guys, there are numerous angles from which you could demonstrate this basic concept that there's one creator, absolute self-contained God in the scriptures. In Galatians, Paul has the same thought in mind. He says that when they were unbelievers, these Gentile peoples, it says, at that time when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. No created being is like this self-contained, absolute, infinite, eternal, unchangeable being. So the Bible says there is one God. Okay, so where do we get the concept of the Trinity from? We had Nathan allude to it. What scriptures would compel you to believe that God is three persons? Oh, Dr. John? a whole bunch in John. In a lot of the New Testament, it talks about the Spirit. When Jesus ascends to heaven, that He has sent His Spirit in His place to guide them and they give God's Spirit to the people. So there's a lot of implication that that is a part of God. It's His Spirit. Right, right. Not only that, but Jesus identifies the Yes. Right. He's another one like me, another comforter like me. So someone comes to you guys and says, Yes, he says, give me a proof text that Jesus is God. We had Nathan who said, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, the Word became flesh. That's John 1 and John 1 14. What verse was yours over there, DJ? John 8 58. Before Abraham was born, I am. And Jesus ascribes the divine name to himself. When I was, I think, maybe even 11 or 12, I had 25 or 30 proof texts for the deity of Christ because my grandfather denied it. My dad's twin brother denied it. Any other proof texts? Give me a verse that says Jesus is God. Yeah. I don't have the reference, but when Jesus is baptized, so God's voice and then the spirit came down as a dove and then he was in the water. Okay, so there we clearly see three distinct persons. The father saying, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. You know, even to call Jesus the son of God, you know, whose nature do you bear? Your father's, what's the son of a man? A man, you know, what's the son of God, if not God? And if there's only one, there must be one God together, right? He declares the forgiveness of sin. Yeah. And the Pharisees rightly connect that only God can forgive sin. That's right. That's in Mark chapter two. That's right. Yeah, these are great. John 1 18. Definitely read it. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. That's right. See what that's saying about Jesus. He's not just another guy, man, talking about a God who has, he's never comprehended. The concept is that Jesus, the God-man alone has ever been able to reveal the Father to men. It's also indicative that in the Old Testament, when the angel of the Lord appears and frequently will be called God, that's the pre-incarnate Christ working in his revelatory capacity in the Old Testament. Alright, what does Thomas say to Jesus at the end of the Gospel of John? My Lord and my God. What an incredible thing for a man to say about another man. Does anyone know what Jehovah's Witnesses say about that passage? Who deny the deity of Christ? They say that he's cursing. It's like, oh my lord! Oh my! Like that's really what they say. Like what a bizarre climax to the book of John. Someone blaspheming at you know... Exactly, and it's pretty strange to follow that in the next breath with Jesus saying, blessed are you, you know, who, blessed, more blessed is the one who is not seen and believes. It's weird how an exclamation of cursing could be interpreted as an expression of belief. It's very strange stuff. All right, so there. Yes, do it. He says, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow. And then in Isaiah 45, 23, the same thing is said of Yahweh. Absolutely. Every knee shall bow. That's right. You can take the whole first chapter of Hebrews. Yeah. The whole first chapter of Hebrews. That's right. Quote Psalm 95, and it says, you know, God says your throne of God will be forever and ever speaking to Jesus. You guys, the New Testament is replete with these references. You can find these references all over the New Testament that Jesus is not just a man very much like God, not just extraordinary, not just a prophet, but God in human flesh. And, you know, a couple of sermons back when we talked about the virgin birth and why it's important, it's because the gospel is a story about how God saves man. Not a story about how man saves man. And if Jesus isn't God, then the Bible changes into a story about how one man was really good and excellent and teaches us how to be the same. It's only a story of rescue and of sacrifice if God himself is descending. and bearing our penalty for us. And so in Acts 20, 28 is another great one where Paul charges the elders in Ephesus to guard the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. God bought with his own blood. These are just a few of the references in the New Testament. All right, well, let's go on and what about the Holy Spirit? First of all, have you ever thought yourself or met someone else who thought that the Holy Spirit was simply a power or a force? Joe's witnesses? No, I'm sorry. Yeah, no need to call folks out here. So what would you point to to prove that the Spirit of God is a person rather than a power or a force? Yeah. which escaped me at the moment, but. Well, in this, friends, you know, the where question is so important. Friends, when you really meet a feisty person in a cult, they're not going to wait for you to search on your phone to lambast what you think the Bible says. And there's something powerful about citing the word of God. You know, Jesus Christ himself, when he's combating Satan, doesn't tend to use his own words. What does he do? Well, he does use his own words, but as he spoke them in the Old Testament through his spirit, he's quoting the Word of God. And it says in John 14, starting in around verse 16, it says, I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper. And those of you who are savvy, if you've got a study Bible, you'd be able to see this. The Greek language has two words for another. One means another of the same kind. Another one means another of a different kind. It's the word heteros. It's where we get obviously heterosexual, opposite, different sexes. Well, the other word, alas, means another of the same kind. Jesus is saying, don't worry that I'm leaving. God is going to send to you another comforter like unto myself. Even the name comforter implies a person, doesn't it? So that's John 14, 16. And it says He will guide the Spirit into all truth. He does personal things. Yeah, He. It's He. That's right. That's... What's that? Allah. Allah's. Allah. Yeah. Yes. Okay, so where does the Bible say that the Holy Spirit is God? That's right, it's classic proof text. This is an instance where a couple had pledged to give certain funds to the church. And in verse 3 of Acts chapter 5, it says this, Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? who he lied to, the Holy Spirit, goes on to say, basically, while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Wise that you have conceived this deed in your heart, you have not lied to men, but to God. There, in lying to the Holy Spirit, it is directly equated with lying to God. We're not talking about a mere force or power. How could you lie to a power anyways? Does that even make sense? I always like to point out to people as well, in the Bible, when you have a spirit, spirits are always personal. You know, there are unclean spirits who possess men. You have a spirit and your consciousness is associated with that. We would assume the same of the Holy Spirit unless we had compelling reason to believe otherwise. Here's an interesting one. In Romans chapter 8, we are told that when you don't know what to pray for, that the Holy Spirit intercedes for you. That means when you don't know what to ask God for, the third person of the Trinity is interceding on your behalf to God the Father. You guys ever consider that? You have an advocate, he says. The third person of the Trinity is praying to God for you. And of course, it also says that when we pray, it's the Holy Spirit who opens our heart to say, Abba Father. That's one of the reasons, have you ever thought, why should God listen to my prayers? I mean, are we wellsprings of great ideas? Do we have inherent desserts? It's really helpful to know that your prayers, when you are a Christian, are being prayed by none other than God, the third person of the Trinity, through you and with you. God has good reason to listen to God, right? And that changes the entire activity. It's of course, Galatians 4.6 and Romans 8.14, which speak of the Holy Spirit interceding through us. You know, another thing about the Holy Spirit is that Jesus says, you can say bad things about me. He says this to his contemporaries. What does he say about blaspheming the Holy Spirit? Mark 3, 29. Guilty of an eternal sin. Yeah. You know, anybody ever wondered what that's all about? What blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is about? Why Jesus says this? Yeah, it's one of those things people wonder a lot, like, have I committed it? Have I done it? I think what's going on here is Jesus is saying this, you're going to reject me and put me on a cross. And when I die, I'm going to pray, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do. Then I'm going to send my spirit as another witness, another comforter, another convictor of the world of sin and of truth. He's going to be speaking through my people and he's going to be a second witness. And if you reject the second witness, there's not another witness beyond that. And that's going to spell the end of Israel. And in 40 years, they do thoroughly reject the apostolic preaching. And I think what it reflects is a sustained rejection of not just the doctrinal content of Christianity and the message, but a sustained rejection of it as it is manifested and reflected in God's people. And there will come a point where God says, that's it. But it certainly conveys that the Holy Spirit is another person. You can't blaspheme and blaspheme to your own eternal damnation of force. It's a person who's active in the church. For us today, it would be any witness to the gospel that non-Christians encounter, if they reject that until they die, That's right, and the church is called to witnesses, I would argue, in Revelation 11. That's really what it's talking about. Essentially, we have a lot of witnesses, and a person has a lifetime, like Israel had a generation, and sustained rejection of that to the end. And even before then, there could come a point where the Lord says, I am now going to harden you to manifest my power in you. And he does that, obviously, with the nation of Israel in a very poignant way. So friends, here's the thing. It's not, however, just that God is three persons and one being, because that's how we would define the Trinity. One divine being and three persons who are that one being. Obviously, when I say that, there is nothing else in your entire reality that is like that. It is utterly unique. People have tried to make that more sensible by going into various anti-Trinitarian heresies. One is called Modalism, advocated today by Oneness Pentecostals. It's the idea that God began as the Father. In the life of Jesus, He put on another mask, and the one God was Jesus. And then after Jesus ascended, he became the Holy Spirit, and you have God, who is really just one person, one being, acting different parts or different roles in the succession of time. It's called Sibelianism. You guys, who's ever heard that concept before? Erica had a good proof text against that. What was your proof text, Erica? Well, it was earlier, you talked about the baptism of Jesus. What do we have? The Father, this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased, and the Spirit descending in the form of death. You have the same... Right, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Great question. Who is the Holy Spirit interceding to right now through us? He is the one and only God, right? So the concept is that these three persons are not just like different roles, like I can say that Barack Obama is a community organizer, a president, and a whatever, you can give him another role. He was a senator at one point as well. Yeah, a husband. It's not just three roles occupied by one person. The Trinity is three co-eternal, co-existent persons. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And that word with is really, is face to face with, pros or toward God. And the word for face is prosopon. So that preposition is like, the word was facing God. Yeah. Also, when he rises in heaven, I'm gonna come and sit by my side. Seated at my right hand, there's a relationship there. That's right. Yeah, there definitely is. I mean, the fact that He can be interceding certainly would indicate that. He is speaking to the Father and laying before Him the needs of the church, and He's doing that through us and for us. So certainly, we do have that picture. There's coexistence. I always love, I think, you know, John 17, one of my favorite passages in the Bible, but it begins Jesus' high priestly prayer. He says, And there I would say the glory that he's speaking about is the Holy Spirit. And I think Jesus is anticipating that going to the cross, I think what he's actually saying is that for all eternity we have been pouring ourselves into one another. And I'm about to go to the cross in the power of the Spirit and under the judgment of the eternal wrath of God, God's spirit of fire and judgment. And I'm gonna pour myself out in front of everybody. And this is what we've been doing forever. And this leads to another concept that three persons are not just co-existent and next to each other, but the biblical picture is that they indwell one another. You know, the verse that Jason read at the beginning, what does it say? It says, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father is this proximity that is close. It's beyond close. Jesus can say, I am in the Father and the Father is in me in John 14, 10 through 11. You ever see the Trinitarian Celtic knot? Yeah. You get too serious about those images, my friend. But yes, yes, no, yes, it's just a symbol, just a symbol. But no, of course I've seen the knot. And going forth, you know, the concept also, I mean, there are several different ways to think about this, this indwelling. You know, the fact that Jesus is called a word, you know, this projection of a word from a person is a picture. But if you could imagine your words expressing all of your ideas and all of your thoughts and your knowledge of yourself and your knowledge of everything so that it could look right back at you and be all of you. So Jesus is called the Word of God and the image of God. Or you think about the breath that accompanies speaking, just going forth as a mighty power with it. Obviously the word for spirit in Hebrew especially, ruach, is also breath and wind. So it is the most intimate union with one another. The three persons of the Trinity dwell in one another. They have relations to one another, they surround one another, and they're one simple being. Remember last week we talked about God being simple? He's not made up of parts. It's not that the Son is one third of God, and the Spirit is the other third, and the Father is the other third. All three persons of the Trinity are all of God. and equal, and exactly, sharing one and the same being. Jesus says these sorts of things when he says, I and the Father are one, and they immediately think he's blaspheming, and he would be blaspheming if he were like you and I, but he is God in human flesh. So guys, these verses that we have, I think a classic one to memorize, Matthew 28, 19, you kind of get it all in there. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." Impersonal forces don't have names, right? You know, you're going to baptize in the name of all three because they're coexistent persons and they're all God. And there's only one God. There's one name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It has come up in my contentions that the Holy Spirit is not much of a name. That's why people tend to think of it as a force. It's like, well, Father's a role, Son's a role. You can identify as a human without the Son. But the Holy Spirit, this is what, I had gas after dinner. I don't even think Jehovah's Witnesses quite use that analogy about the gas after dinner. But yes, they do love to say that. And usually those who say that are woefully ignorant of the nature of names in the Bible. The first names we encounter are I Am and Elohim, which is powers. Those are the two names in Genesis 1 and 2, the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. Neither of those is what we would tend to think of as a typical name by any stretch of the imagination. Powers? You know, that would be even a better name if you wanted to think of someone as just a force in my estimation. So I would say that's kind of the root error. It's woefully ignorant of divine titles. It would be ridiculous for the Holy Spirit to be named Brad. You know, like, I like to throw that one back at them, like, you know, let's tell me what God should have called this third person of the Trinity. Yeah, Scott, very good one. Yeah. Yeah. We don't. It also conveys logic and understanding. We get the word logic from it. I think we're going a little bit astray here, but I get your point, I get your point. The logo, yes, etymologically that's linked. Okay, but here's my question for you guys. So we know what the Bible says. How many people, first of all, feel like it's kind of news to you what we've said about the Trinity and the doctrine of it? Like some of that stuff, I don't really think about God indwelling. I didn't necessarily think about the relationship being that intimate. you know, co-existent, all of those things. That's the first thing. You can't defend what you believe until you know what you believe. Number two, we had a slew of proof texts, and I will send out my notes, and there are even so many more than we've discussed. But here's my third question. Why does this matter? Why is this so important? that's all powerful, and that's our basis for our religion and our argument, then you can't have three gods. Okay, yeah, so that's important. Yeah, if you wanna have one god, this is a way to bring the biblical data together and retain the truth that there is one God, and without snuffing out the biblical data, that there are three persons called that. So first of all, it's about submission to God's word, is one thing that you're gonna say is super important. Well, to convey some more about why this is important and why, friends, you should never try to prove or argue for the existence of any God but this one. Begins with this question, where is God? What are you guys' answers to that? Heaven. Okay, that's a common answer. Everywhere. Okay, so everywhere, that's another answer. And nowhere. In me. In you, okay. But here's the thing, let's start with heaven. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So here's a problem with saying that God is in heaven. Heaven is a created place. What we would say is that God is accessible there in some form or fashion that is more profound than here, but a more true answer, friends, is that actually heaven is in God than God is in heaven. Okay, so that's, we already are. We live and move and have our being. Yeah, we will be in God's majestic presence in a more profound way. But even then, the Bible is really clear, not even the highest heavens, the entire universe can contain God. Okay, so if God, and so yes, God is in each one of us because he's everywhere, but that still raises a question. Where is God? Okay, he's self-existent, yeah. He's outside of time and space, that's right. So here's the thing, we know all the places he isn't. And this is what philosophers and theologians have called, in the history of the world, negative theology. All we are able to say is, God is not this, he's not there, he's not that. Okay, there's a reason why John Calvin said that unless we know God as a trinity, nothing but the empty name of God flutters about in our brain. Unless we know God as a trinity, nothing but the name of God flutters about in our brain. Because when you get down to it, friends, to say what anything is, you end up with the question of where is it? What kind of relationships does it have? And the answer when you don't have a Trinitarian God is He has no relationships in Himself. He isn't anywhere where He has a life that's expressed or carried out. Our answer is different as Trinitarians. The Father is in the Son. The Son is in the Spirit. The Father and the Son have relationship that is personal in the third person of the Trinity. The third person of the Trinity has a relationship to the Father in the context of the Son. And what this means is that when the Father looks over His shoulder, He sees a person looking back at Him. And I'm using analogy here, of course, when I say see. But He is absolutely personal. When you have a God who you say is simply not in space, not in time, he's not here, he's not there, he's kind of more like nowhere and nothing than he is like something, it is only when we have a God who is eternally and inherently personal that we can go, oh my goodness, I can relate to that God. Look at all you guys. You are in the context of other people right now. You enjoy that. We come to church on the Lord's Day to have that fellowship, to speak back and forth, to communicate. It is at the heart of what we are as people made in God's image that there are people in the plural. And there isn't just one of you. In fact, if there were just one of you, you would all go insane very quickly. You would. And when we talk about God, therefore, we're not talking about a God who is closer to nowhere and nothing and nobody and empty. We're talking about a God who is full, absolutely full, overflowing with eternal relationship. You could say that for us as Christians, it is more apparent for us than any other religion why our God is also our heaven. Our God is also what we are anticipating utterly at the end of time. Being in the presence of the God who is so interesting, so personal, he is fully satisfied and eternally and infinitely in himself, with himself. And we get to go and be part of that, go and enjoy that fellowship. Friends, we're actually saying to the unbeliever that every other idea of God is empty, vacuous, there's no content. We're gonna say that about a lot. I mean, think about this guys. Is all law personal? Everything we know about the concept of personality is that there's some sort of relationship involved. We could say that God, they could say maybe Allah became personal after he made other persons to have relationship with, but in himself, he has no relationship. And that reduces him to being more like a dark, empty shadow and a silhouette than any sort of a God who we could think about as being loving or being faithful or being in any sense personal. Does that make sense, you guys? So what we're saying is that this is actually the only God, the only vision of God that sustains a real depth of personal insight into who He is. Everything else is a shadow and it's empty. And frankly, Islam's gonna be really clear about that. They're gonna say that no one really has any idea what Allah is like. So there's no personal relationship with Allah because, I mean, Muhammad got visions from what they came to call the angel Gabriel, so he's not even really talking to Allah directly, he's talking to Allah's messenger. There's no personal relationship, so your only real guarantee that you'll go to paradise is to kill an infidel. Be killed while you're killing an infidel or something like that. And even then, you go, at the end of the day, there is no person who totally comprehends God. God Himself would be the closest, but there is no revealer of God. And in fact, because God in Himself doesn't have relationships, what do we have with Him? I mean, can He even have a relationship? And He recedes into nothing. And that's why what Paul says in Acts 17 is true of every religion on planet Earth. He says, I also found an altar with this inscription, to an unknown God. Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and all things in it, since he is the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, for in him we live and move and exist. Saying he is our context. And the beautiful thing is that our God is his own context. He is self-contained is another way to put it. He's not contained by an impersonal universe. He's not himself like an empty impersonal universe. He is an overflowing personal relational God. We'd say Christianity alone has this view that reality is absolutely and utterly and ultimately personal. I actually tell people that on a theological level, this is the greatest cure for depression. Depression is something, and obviously there's more to it than just ideas, but when you look at things, things just seem empty, meaningless, dark. We actually have a worldview that says that things are actually so meaningful, so absolutely meaningful, that there is bright personhood on the back of every personal relationship. There's deeper person, and there's what the Bible calls, or rather theologians call perichoresis. That's what they describe the mutual indwelling of the persons as a dance. And it's an infinite dance extending in every direction. It's like there's bigger, more satisfying reasons for every reason when you have a Trinity who is self-contained. There's brightness, there's personalities, there's life, there's not deadness. It's reflective of family. And a lot of depressed people, they become isolated. Yes. Yeah. Right. Well, you know, you're nailing it. You're nailing it. You know, this is actually a really wonderful thing for us as Christians when you ask the question, like, why Why isn't it an ideal of human existence to just be completely alone? Why shouldn't each one of us just seek our own? Allah made everything to just submit to him. That's it. Aren't you being more like Allah if you're a king and you get everyone else to submit to you? I'm just saying, why isn't that the ideal of our pursuit? You know, Christians can say with Christ that it is better to give than to receive, but where does that ethic actually come from? It comes from the Trinity who are constantly and eternally self-giving, mutually indwelling in absolute harmony. We're gonna say that the doctrine of the Trinity is the most illuminative doctrine of God ever to grace the minds of men to shed light on ourselves. If we're made in the image of Allah, who is unitary alone, why isn't the ideal of our existence to just go and find inner happiness by ourselves alone in seclusion? You know, it's because we're made in the image of the Trinity that we pursue and we seek a life of harmony. And I like what Adrian said. Proverbs 18 says this, he who separates himself, seeks his own desire, he quarrels against all sound wisdom. That's declaring that it is not Christian to go and be a loner by yourself and to tackle all things by yourself and on your own. It's just not Christian. And like I had alluded to earlier, my favorite passage in the Bible, I actually debated once, did a debate with a Unitarian. And yeah, I had to read this in full because I just, I feel like this really conveys the importance of Christian Trinitarian personalism, that ultimate reality is personal for us. It's not impersonal like a Mormon where there are all these gods inside impersonal space and time governed by something that came from nowhere and doesn't even know it exists. But this is what it says. This is Jesus' final prayer when he goes to the cross. He says this. He's praying on behalf of his disciples and the world who would believe in him through them. He goes, "...sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have also sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in the truth." He goes, "...that they may be one even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me." The glory which you have given me," and this is surely speaking of the spirit in working through and glorifying and leading Christ, the glory which you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity so that the world may know that you sent me. See, here's what he's saying, he's saying, The unity manifested in the church and this community that they have in the Holy Spirit, the world that was made in the image of the Trinitarian God will know intuitively that this is a place where God dwells in a way that will be evident in comparison to all the religions of men. Now don't get me wrong, the world is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. But when the Spirit of God removes the scales from your eyes, the need for exactly what the church is, a community that is united in the Spirit of God, will be evident. Right. Well, and so that's the thing. We all enter creation and existence with original sin. So it says in Ephesians chapter 2, it puts it this way, we all start out as the world. It says, and you were dead in your trespasses in sin in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. That is regeneration, that is irresistible grace. And it says, by grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. And so that's the thing, mutual indwelling, you guys. And when you think about yourselves as persons, I bet everyone in this room would rather lose a limb from your body than have your child die. How many could say that's a no-brainer? Why is that? Why are you like that? It's because we indwell one another. It hurts more to lose someone to whom you have this special relationship and attachment than it hurts to lose a physical limb. We're made in the image of the triune God. This illuminates who we are. It makes sense of our condition. It also makes sense of all sorts of commandments. In the second commandment, don't make an image of God. This makes a lot more sense when you know that God is the Trinity, the self-contained I am. How are you going to image that? You can't. You can't draw the Trinity. And the sense, the inherent sense of don't try to represent me makes, I mean, it starts to make a whole lot more sense. So the first thing is, you know, the Trinity to secure is what you could call absolute personalism. That person is ultimate. That means relationship, friend. You can have friendship with the ultimate reality that contains everything. Because the ultimate reality which contains everything is personal. That is a belief that only Christian people can have. And that makes all the difference, you guys. It seems to me that that's why any equitable, fair government is based on Christian faith and beliefs. Yes. Because we care for one another. Yes. You're right about that. I'm going to talk more about that concept in great depths, how different our government is. You know, it's A.W. Tozer in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy that said, no society has ever become more noble than its view of God. And that's absolutely correct. Let's touch on that more. So the first idea, though, is absolute personalism. The Trinity is essential to that. You're going to have a worldview that makes something impersonal ultimate. We as Christians are the only worldview that makes personality the context of everything. And that's why we talk about God as our presupposition. Everything in this room is witnessing to God right now. Everything. Some things better than others, like a firm floor that you can count on stepping on. And if you don't got that, you got the ground underneath your feet. But that is testifying to God's kindness to you. That's God saying, hey, you know something about my hand, my mighty hand. You can count on it. these walls that enclose you, the roof above your head. Beyond that, if you could imagine like the Truman Show, you know, this is the set and on just the other side of everything you see is God smiling back at you, singing his song to you about his purposes in this creation. but it sounds like wrath to us because we're sinners and we try to hide from it. The second thing is this, only the Trinity allows us to know God truly. We kind of touched on that with Islam, but a test case, you go, is Allah loving? You'd say maybe he can choose to be loving, but he certainly wasn't loving before there were anything to love. You say, is He inherently self-expressive? Well, no, not before He created. He wasn't expressing anything. So, kind of like, to be self-expressive is kind of like Him to be an actor, because He isn't always self-expressing. For Trinitarians, we say God is always inherently self-expressing. He has a Word who was with Him before the world was. He's not acting when he has relationship with us. He's not putting on a costume and being different than what he really is. He's saying, no, no, this is who I am in myself. When Allah comes down and talks to somebody, he's saying, I've never done this with anybody before. I don't do this. As far as I'm concerned, eternally, I'm more like an empty shadow. And this is Calvin's point that only when we know God as Trinity can we really, really, know anything genuine and true about God at all. I mean, I even love the fact that God is inherently glorified and celebrated. You know, when we're entering into worship, we're not adding to the glorification of God as if like he was lacking in fanfare before that. That again is not like Allah. He's telling everyone to submit. In eternity past, before he created, there was no one submitting to him. It's not the same with the Trinity. Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world was. That is, engage the dance where your glory spirit surrounded the both of us, where we both wielded our spirit and gave him back and forth to one another in love, where the Spirit is breathing through you onto me and through me onto you. I mean, these are all analogies, but the point, though, is that this glorification and celebration of who God is is something He has been doing for eternity. And when we enter into worship, our confession is so careful on this. It says we don't add to God's glory something that wasn't there. We actually, it's like if there was a circle where they're glorifying one another, God insets us in the middle to be the voice piece of the Spirit to praise God through the Son. And we get to enter into that. We're giving God's own glory back to him is what our confession says. This is wonderful stuff. It changes the way that we view everything that we're doing in our hope. So the second thing is we can know God truly. Islam is a great test case. Any other religion, frankly, is. Do the Mormon gods know themselves truly? They find themselves in a universe they didn't make, and time and space they didn't make, and a law of procreation they didn't make. Do they really even fully comprehend themselves in that case? I mean, clearly not. They don't wield all power and all knowledge. So the third thing as to why this is so important is that the doctrine of the Trinity is so clearly divine because we cannot fully comprehend it. You know, if someone comes to you and says, hey, there is a God, he's one person, one being, just like you and just like me, you're like, that wouldn't be that hard to think of. I mean, that's kind of like all false gods, right? There is a God, his name's Zeus. Sometimes he takes advantage of female gods and, you know, sounds a lot like a dude, right? It's amazing when you look at other religions, how human in the negative sense their gods are. What does Mormonism tell you? Every God had a mother and a father. Every God is going to have a female deity or multiple others, and they're going to have children and produce. How is that not just projection of humanity onto the divine sphere? I always like to point out how similar Mormonism and Islam are in this respect. They're just so human. What is heaven? It's going to be perpetual procreation and physical relations. You know, like, a man made this, okay? A man thought of this. It just reeks of that. The Trinity is clearly profound, you guys, for the reasons we've just discussed. It makes God absolutely personal. But it also fundamentally contradicts the way we like to think about things. We can't fit God into a category of anything that we encounter in this world. Is there anything quite like a Trinity anywhere? And I just want you to imagine people creating a religion, making it up, and saying, hey, let's say that God is three persons and one being, and we can't even fully explain that. I mean, really no analogy for it. This is gonna sell. This is gonna sell. This is gonna be a good one, everybody. It just does not have the shape of a human invention. This is the wonderful thing about it. It simultaneously offends the human mind. So you go, men didn't make it up. and simultaneously is the most illuminating doctrine of God to make sense of ourselves as people who need relationship, who feel pain in and with one another, who come as close to mutual indwelling as we possibly can, being as we are physically distinct beings. And so that's where we say, we began this discussion, you know, with the idea that God's thoughts are above our thoughts. You guys, if God were explicable in the same terms as everything you see in this world, guess what? He wouldn't be the ultimate context. He surrounds and surpasses everything. He would just be another object in this universe, explicable by our rules, our laws, our ideas. And we would know he wasn't the transcendent God. if it didn't challenge our mind. Does that make sense? So in fact, that's where, this is just incredible, that's where when we say to the unbeliever who takes issue, like, you know, the Quran itself specifically talks about the Trinity being absurd. And we're actually gonna turn that around on you and we're gonna say, that's the surest indication that you're hearing from a voice who is outside of this universe, above this universe, the creator of this universe, that none of the categories in this universe can fully comprehend him. And yet at the same time, He illuminates them and makes sense of them. Or even desires. It seems like they don't desire what is in Trinity. They want anything else. Right. That's right. And this is where we would say, in a way, what they want is something that submits to our way of thinking. And if God ultimately submitted to our way of thinking, who would be God in that picture? Us and not God. Go ahead, Ben. So contrasting with the the division of, or the native religions like Islam. Romans 14, verse seven, it says, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. So there you have the flipping of the head, they're making up. Right. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well they will neither marry nor be given a marriage. And that's right. We just don't have that same vision of eternity being this very man-indulgent thing. And this is where the Scriptures are really coming alive. They're not just telling you an ethic there of Christianity. They're saying this religion is totally different. than the inventions of men. You take in Romans 1, it says this, But it says this about us, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools." It says, "...and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, of birds, and four-footed animals, and crawling things." A God who fits into our simple categories. A God who's very man-like, a God who's very beast-like, has beastly strength, a human form, whatever it might be, but it's just fantasy. Man smashing together his ideas. It's nothing new. And so, this is being emphasized everywhere. But so the third thing we would say then is the doctrine of the Trinity is clearly divine because we cannot fully comprehend it. and yet we can apprehend it and appreciate that it illuminates who we are and what we are. That wonderful thing, and that is a concept that I spent a great deal of my doctoral thesis writing about, the concept of paradox. It's not just something that kind of bends the mind and seems like a contradiction. It's something that does that and at the very same time, sheds light on everything. That's the beautiful thing about the doctrine of the Trinity. Now, the fourth thing I'm gonna say is this. God is supremely relevant when known to be Trinitarian to the very greatest human dilemmas. And to express this, I'm gonna go into something a little bit more philosophical, but fortunately, our crazy society has made this a lot easier for me. Anything you talk about, Whenever you're speaking, you're engaging in something called the problem of the one and the many. Guys, think back to Genesis 1. It says that God created all the creatures according to their kind. Anybody remember that? That means that there are broad kinds of animals, and then there's a variety of animals who fit into that kind and have minor variations between them. So name some kinds of animals for me. Mammals, yeah. Horses, dogs, cats. Imagine if every single animal were radically different from the next. Imagine if everything in reality were so radically different from the next thing that everything could only be named by its own name. It's just, there's the name for this thing and the name for that thing, but there's no likeness between them. We would literally be living in insanity. We wouldn't actually be able to have any continuity in our experience at all if everything were radically different. Instead, we recognize that there are something that philosophers call universals, Genesis 1 calls kinds, where there is a broad likeness, a unity in difference with a variety that all share that form. If things were not that way, we couldn't talk. Think about everything I just said. If things, we all have an idea of things, and a lot of things fit into things. Things were, I just used a verb for being, and we have a concept of being or existing that a lot of things possess. Some don't, they're called fantasies. Every word I speak encompasses a variety of things. This we would say as Trinitarians is because everything in existence must partake of unity and diversity after the manner of its creator. Everything. Everything must manifest unity and diversity in different degrees. And the reason reality is this way is because the God who made it is himself unity and diversity. I actually remember talking to a fellow, and this guy was an unbeliever. It was Heather's stepdad's dad. And this guy, he was a smart guy. He had a book on John Calvin. And he knew that John Calvin lived in Geneva when they executed a Unitarian guy named Miguel Servides. He was a rampant heretic. and they killed him. And he was brilliant. He actually discovered things about human anatomy. And this grandfather of Heather's stepdad, or father of Heather's stepdad, he said to me, because he knew I was in theology school, he's like, I never understood why that doctrine of the Trinity was so important to you guys. And I said, well, it solves the problem of the one in many. And here's the thing, he was learned enough in philosophy to go, it literally was like a light went off. And he's like, that's the best answer I've ever heard. Now most people won't say that to you when you say the Trinity solves the problem of the one and the many. But you guys, the question of which universals are real is one of the most important questions in society today. We need them to even talk. But are all the universals that we talk about just made up human constructions, or is there really something that is a dog? Yeah, well, and I should ask you this, what is a woman? I mean it. Yeah, well, because we all know it's just so insane. There's something real called womanhood, right? It's a universal, it's a real thing. We can identify not only in human species, but other species. So there's a unity that crosses between species so that we can understand something about ourselves by looking at animals. And what did Adam do? He looked at all the animals and said, wait a second, I'm lacking one of those females. Right? He could reason because reality is the sort of place that had universals and particulars. And think about what Adam did all at once. He said, on the one hand, there's a thing called womanhood, and I see it in all of these creatures. On the other hand, I am different from all of those creatures. I don't belong to the universal called dog or cattle or lions. He's recognizing unity and diversity in reality, and that is essential to human thinking, because he's made in the image of the triune God and says, and by the way, I'm lacking, and God says, yes, you passed the test, and now I'm gonna have you take a nap, and I'm going to make for you a wife, and you're going to have a union with her that is deeper than you could ever have with an animal. Unity and diversity is at the heart of what it means to reason. That's why when you have a God who is just a unity, one person either turns into nothing because you can't say anything about him, because you need to contrast unity and diversity to form any idea ever. You can't have ideas without unity and diversity. And here's the thing, we have a lot of trouble trying to make sense of unity and diversity. The problem with what is a woman is this, and you guys are gonna get this real quickly, On the one hand, you can be wrong about womanhood. What is womanhood? Is it wearing a bonnet and being absolutely silent and barefoot in a home? Is that womanhood? This is why we have this rebellion on this topic of what is the universal that all women should be? And I bet if we even articulated it now, all the women in this room would be like, man, I actually don't totally live up to that. In fact, I frequently don't live up to that. when you take into account all the things that a woman should be. The question is, who has the right to define the different universals and categories and ideals? What is love? Is it loving for me to tell my kids that they want to have all sorts of unhealthy relationships? If you want to do it, go ahead and do it. Is that love? No, so who gets to define? And here's the thing, for us as Trinitarians we go, it is obvious who has the right to define. It is the one being in all of reality who is a perfect union of unity and diversity, who has perfect harmony in himself. He is the obvious authority who should be able to speak to all these matters. Because he has achieved it, he is it, this perfect harmony of unity and diversity. And that changes everything when we talk about the authority of the Trinity. People think of it like this, I could just make up any God and say he's the ultimate authority. No, this God has the credentials in his being and his nature to be an absolute authority. That's why this is an entirely different picture. And before you say something, I want to just talk about the problem of the one in the many. It's not just about universals and particulars. This is arguably the greatest problem of human society. Every one of you has this, who has a family. How can we be one family together and not fight all the time and hate each other? And we could isolate ourselves, but that wouldn't be very family-like. How do we achieve a dynamic here that doesn't make my kids feel like dad's? You can have a unity in your family very simply. Dad can just be an authoritarian jerk, make everybody just do what he says. They're all afraid of him. And there's a sort of unity there, right? Not a very pleasant one. You could have another type of unity where dad says, do whatever you want, kids. Go out and stay out as late as you want. Kind of a family, we're united in the sense we sleep here together at night, but that's about it. Who has the ability to tell you how to achieve a healthy dynamic of unity and diversity in your home? Allah kind of seems like not a very qualified God to let you know that. Frankly, the God of Mormonism doesn't seem very qualified to tell you. He has two sons, one is Jesus and one is Satan, and they're, you know, got a little family dysfunction there. Zeus doesn't seem to be very helpful. Pantheistic deities where God is both the ignorant and the wise, the evil and the right, doesn't seem like, you know, a yin and a yang is not what I'm looking for in my family, right? And the concept is, is that God has written into his very being and nature the obvious credentials to speak those things to you. If you ever wanted to explore this topic, the one of the many by Roussos Rastouni, probably one of the better ones. Yeah. But I would just point this out, guys. What do we have in America in our form of government? Do we have a monarch who reigns from on high and gets to call the shots without any checks and balances. Well, here's the thing, you guys. The fact that even if there is an election that you look at and think there's all these sorts of interference and only the wealthy can prevail, you name it, I would just say, Even that is very different from a monarchic society that has existed in various quarters of the universe. Even if they're trying to deceive you that it's all legitimate, that's still different than being in a place where a guy simply seizes power and there's the night of the long knife as there was in Nazi Germany where they simply just literally slit the throats and killed all the political opposition. What I'm getting at is that in our system of government, it is rather remarkable that there are three parts of it, an executive, a legislative, and a judicial, and there are certain ways in which they function as balances and checks for one another. I'm just saying, that idea didn't arise in Muslim societies, and it generally doesn't seem to work there, right? That idea did not arise in communist China, where Confucianism and different thoughts ruled the day. It's not surprising. And I would say that ultimately, that sort of vision of things, it's not surprising that it arose in a world where the Christian worldview had such sway. So we speak of the Trinity, you guys, as the source and solution to the one-many problem. We have a one-many problem at all because reality has to have unity and diversity. We have the problem because man rebelled against the one being who's qualified to tell you the parameters of what womanhood means, what humanity means, what righteousness means, what justice means. And when we do that, we start filling that with our own definitions, thinking of ourselves as creators, slapping our own names on things. And what does it say in Isaiah? That they're gonna call evil good, and good evil, and darkness light, and light darkness. And that is literally the world we're living in right now. the chaos of human definition. But again, God not only made it, but he's the solution to it. And guys, he's not just the solution to it as an idea who can give us all sorts of good pointers on how to live and what to do. He's a solution to it in a more profound way that he sent his son into the world to die for our sins and the foolish self-destroying definitions that we make and the just penalty that it deserves, which honestly is eternal hell in the eternal insanity that we made. But he bore the wrath of God in our behalf. and prayed that high priestly prayer that we might be a diversity and unity with our God and fellowship for eternity. So he isn't just the solution theoretically. He's the solution in a very living, practical way. Anyone ever had those sorts of thoughts about God? Do you notice that about reality as we know it? Unity, diversity? And yet the problem is very practical. How do we do life together? How do we enjoy life together without the demands of the whole squelching your freedom or your freedom being so insane and anarchical that it destroys fellowship and unity? And you feel it in your own homes, don't you? I know we all kind of know we want to be together. We want to be one. And oftentimes that kind of stinks, right? And then oftentimes, you know, we think we want to do our own thing, but you know, when you actually taste the loneliness of world that doesn't want to be your friend, but your family's willing to be there for you, you know, you need this group. And how do we have this unity and diversity? And it's going to start with worship of the God who's Trinitarian. Did you guys have any questions for me about this concept? You're gonna have to just rephrase that, my friend. Self-contextual, yes he is. What's that? He's tapping into my doctoral thesis. Definitely not quite a 101 proposition, but I argue my doctoral thesis that God wouldn't be an absolute person if he were not three and only three persons. And the reason I argue that is that every Trinitarian relationship, you could say, is happening within the context of a third person. So the Son and the Spirit relate to one another in the Father. They're even described as the arms of the Father. The Father and the Spirit are in the context of the Son. It's very clear. Jesus says, I'm in the Father, the Father's in me. It's very clear that the Spirit is in Him, coming upon Him, you know, in His baptism. And the problem is if you increase or decrease the number You don't have every relationship in the Trinity occurring within the personal context of another person. If you only had two, where are the Father and the Son relating? Where are they? It's a very good question. And the answer would seem to be they'd have to be in some third impersonal thing. And then you don't have this absolutely personal worldview. If you have four, then you either have one person doing nothing, he's not involved in the relationship because the Son and the Spirit are related by the Father. Within him, what's the fourth doing? And then you have these ancillary excess things. So that's what he wanted to hear. I could go on and on. There is something here I wanted to ask. So in physics, in space, you need three points to have a location. If you're missing a point, you can have a line. But it's unending. Where is there a point? You have one point, of course, but since you have length, width, and height, you need three. Yeah. John Frame, at the end of his book, The Doctrine of God, has like 150, you know, what he calls vestiges of the Trinity in creation, in reality. He says, you know, I don't even know what to do with all of these. Sometimes I think they're brilliant. Sometimes I think I'm not sure, but there are all sorts of things like that. Chords. Go ahead. In construction, you want something strong, you build triangles. There's three sides, and there's no weakness. If you have any other design, there are weaknesses. So it's an illustration from nature that that is a unique structure. And I go into some of these in my doctoral thesis, time, obviously, with a past, present, and a future. Guys, here's one way to think of it. When God created the universe, think about any of you artists, you like to draw, anything like that? Okay, so you go, where do you get your ideas for what to draw? What you've seen. And this is where people say all invention is innovation. Every invention starts with something that already was and makes it better, right? Okay, so what about God? When he created, where did he get his ideas for everything he made? Okay, and that's the key. If God got his ideas for everything he made from himself, then absolutely everything in reality must reveal something about God. Everything's a revelation. Well, okay, and see that's thing. That would be something we would say that man made. Now God ordained for man to make it. So there is this, but as far as within God himself, there is no rebellion. And that is one of those profound and mysterious things that God can make creatures who well up decisions from themselves that are wholly within his sovereign decree. And that's one of those grand mysteries. I mean, you go, that doesn't totally make sense to me. We'd go, aha, indeed. And that's why we're talking about God again and not mere man, because you and me can't make. people who well up decisions from themselves and also be sovereign over those decisions. We can make robots and we're totally responsible for what they did. We make free persons who are children and we're not 100% responsible for what they do, especially in adulthood. You can imagine if you could put those two things together, which to us seems like a contradiction, but for God is but a simple paradox. That's more like what God is doing with everything. Yeah. That's right. Right. Yes. Yes. No, of course not. What evil is, is humanity trying to be God. And so, in that very concept there, the thing that they're trying to be is a good thing, godhood, but it's a bad thing when people try to be it. And so, in that respect, even then, we would speak of the ultimate inspiration from God. It's the mucking it up, though, that is man's doing for which we're responsible. us trying to be what we're not. And that's the first time we really screw up the whole universalism particular thing. There's only one God. And think about what Satan said. He said you can become a god. You've already redefined godhood once you said that, right? Because godhood is what you are unchangeably, right? Immutably. Forever. This is Satan already beginning to muck up very important universals and distinctions, and introducing incredible confusion into the creation. He's already done it. He is, in essence, posing as God himself. Yes, yes. And then saying, hey, this is a cool game. I agree, that's right. It's funny how he says he's God, and then he's telling you you, you can be God. Yeah, you've really redefined this whole thing, and then the one being who is God actually has petty motives for not letting you do it. You're really messing with all of the meanings of words, and it's no surprising, therefore, that Deception is inherently related to the problem of the one and the many, and we see it being injected into reality right then and there. It wouldn't have been a problem, it would have only been a joy for us, this whole one and many thing. We would have seen how our ideas kind of get expanded by new information, and we'd see how new information is still illuminated somewhat by our ideas, and we'd go back and forth growing in wisdom and knowledge until God said it was the end, and we would be glorified in His presence. But to that point, though, friends, we shouldn't be surprised to see what we call vestiges of the Trinity. That's what theologians call it, where there are just aspects of creation that we go, that makes more sense if the Creator is this way. It speaks indirectly to the God that we've always worshipped. Alright, the last thing I'm going to say about the Trinity, because we've said four things and I'll repeat them, and I will send up my notes as I always do. The last thing I'm going to say about it is that the Trinity makes God absolutely personal. It makes ultimate reality absolutely personal. The second thing we said is that it makes God knowable, that we can actually have some insight into his being because he has relations. If he didn't, he'd just be empty as far as we're concerned. The third thing we said is that the doctrine of the Trinity is clearly divine because it can't fully be comprehended by us and stretches our minds. And then we'd say the fourth thing is that the doctrine of the Trinity is supremely relevant to the problem of the one in the many. It says why everything has unity and diversity, everything is made by the sole self-inspiration of God, and he's the ultimate one in many. It's not surprising everything in reality has that characteristic. And it also speaks to why he's an ultimate authority. He's the only one who can tell us how to use words rightly. He's the only one who can tell us how to achieve unity in different circumstances. And I'm going to talk about this one many problem one more time in one other capacity, another way to think about it. is the relationship between laws and randomness. Laws create unity in reality, randomness speaks to diversity. If all of reality were just a law, this would be an unlivable place. Everything would just, nothing would deviate, there'd be nothing new. If everything were all random, this also wouldn't be livable, right? You couldn't expect to step on the ground and expect it to continue to be there. I mean, it'd be chaos. We need unity and diversity in our lives or we are not going to be happy. If your life is totally monotonous, are you going to be happy? No. If your life is totally random and chaotic, are you going to be happy? No. The fact that our Capacity for pleasure needs both law and randomness is again a reflection of the fact that we're made in the image of the God who is both one and many. We should not think of God as lacking in excitement and joy and variety. In fact, we should think of God as having an infinite number of dance moves that are always infinitely realized already. And that is a crazy thought to put together. We shouldn't think of God as a static point. He's more like a waterfall that is flowing an infinite amount of water that is already infinitely overflowed. That's how we should think of our God. That's why he says that in my right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Think about this, guys. What makes a game fun? I hope Michael's thought all about it. He loves board games. Here's the thing. If there's not any strategy in the game at all, that would not be a fun game. We'd call that flipping a coin, and we'll just guess what it's going to be each time. That wouldn't be enjoyable. There's got to be some strategy. However, if there's no randomness, it's just a pure matter of mathematical calculation, the best mathematician always wins, you wouldn't play that game. There has to be those two things. That is what we're speaking of when we talk about unity and diversity. There's a law feature to it. There's also something random to it that makes every game different and not predictable. This all speaks to the fact that we're made in the image of the Triune God, and we would have just lived in this world going about having tools in our thought and our minds and skills that are useful, and we'd find something that we couldn't quite handle with that, and then we'd have to develop new skills, and it would be joyful. It would be amazing. It'd be wonderful. It'd only be fruitful. But it's sin that makes this whole thing toil. All of this speaks to the fact that we're made in the image of the triune God. And I just would challenge you to consider if the idea of heaven, that we were ever going to get there and like totally understand it all. So our minds comprehend the one all-encompassing everything. What a depressing view of heaven would that be? Like, well, now we figured it all out. There's nothing more. You've seen all the movies to watch, you know, that's it. That wouldn't work for us. On the other hand, if heaven were a place that was just pure chaos, that from one moment to the next, there was no continuity, it just, just a chaotic succession of visions and pictures and you name it, that also sounds like hell, doesn't it? There has to be unity and diversity and diversity and unity. And it's built in to our very capacity for enjoyment and pleasure. And once again, you go, who can actually affect that for you? Who can find that balance of like, that's a pleasurable, refreshing change, and that is sufficiently familiar that I'm not jolted? Who in all of creation can tell you how to ever find that? Once again, our God has written into his very being the credentials to speak to us with absolute authority and to say, I'm the one who leads you by rivers of living water that are both refreshing and sure and comforting. And so doctrine of the Trinity is supremely relevant to who we are, what we're looking for and what we do. And the fifth thing I'll say about the Trinity is it renders the Christian worldview coherent. In addition to illuminating who we are, being relevant to the one-many problem, it just fits so beautifully into the biblical story. How do we have a God who saves us? How do we have a God who saves us and bears the wrath of God for us if we don't have the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? How do we have the God who comes to us in history, dies for us, and also with another hand, acts within us to tender our heart toward the Savior so that we believe in Him, but the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We need all three persons of the Trinity for this message of salvation to make any sense. And there's, without the Trinity, every other worldview is gonna be a story about man saving man, period. We talked all about the virgin birth in that respect, right guys? always just going to be a story about man becoming better and living up to a better code of rules that God gives to us. The only one where God himself can be the one who is paying the Father the perfect obedience that we have deprived him, is if we have God the Son who is one with the Father. So, at the end of the day, this is everything. This is why we don't look at the Mormon and say, well, the Mormon's my brother, he's just a little bit confused. We say they believe in a complete, they are worshiping a completely different God, and they need the gospel. All right, guys, any other, any questions for me this way? Yeah. Okay, Arisa, yeah. So, you've given a lot of arguments for someone who has a different worldview, doctrine, religion. What if we were to talk to someone who's completely ignorant? How would, like, it came to me, like, the most, how to simplify the trinity, I mean, it's not simple, but to make it in a comprehensible, simple phrase or idea, like, the catechism would probably be the best way, but they don't know the catechism to explain that. And it came to me, well, like this analogy of feeling bittersweet. So bittersweet is your, some of your daughter's son is going off to college, you're sad that they're leaving, you're happy for them, going on their path, you're also proud. Those three emotions are completely different from each other. You can't like being sad and happy, you can't be those two simultaneously. You can't be proud and happy simultaneously. The bittersweet is a encompassing emotion, three completely different emotions, and I would say that's like I think I see what you're saying, that there's unity, really profound unity with very diverse things there. And what you'd be saying to the unbeliever is, listen, all of reality has some pretty powerful overlapping different things that somehow are one together. And you know, so when we talk about a God who's three persons in one being, we say he's the maker of everything. You know, yes, that totally stretches and bends the mind, and it's even more challenging than what I just described, but you already accept that on some level. And so theologians have had a lot of them. Another classic one is just the individual human mind. You have a will, You have knowledge, you have a base of knowledge, things that you already know, and you have reason about the things you know. And those are different. The things you know are not the same thing as the tools of reasoning whereby you draw inferences and stuff like that. Your will in what you want is not the same thing as what you know, and yet you're one intellect. That's probably the most famous of the analogies. Augustine develops that in great depth. So yeah, there are several of them. Another one that he loves to throw out there is, you know, the lover, the loved, and the love. You can't have love without this. You have two people who love each other, and yet there's clearly a love they share that is reciprocal. They both have it. And that's obviously a wonderful one with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So you have these wonderful things. And it's just that for us, what we're going to do is we're going to have to go that extra leap and say, and yet what we're saying about the Trinity is even more profound than just an individual intellect with three parts. It is three co-eternal persons who are one absolute being. And that is always going to be a little bit of a pill to swallow because it's totally different from their experience. But we're going to come back around and we're going to say, he's actually the beginning, the original. Your experience is the side effect. And if you don't start with the original and you only start with your experience, well, then you're going to end up in this weird place that you don't know anything at all. And that's what we talked about presuppositions the other day. But great question, Arisa. I loved it. All right friends, well here is what we're gonna do. Our catechism question that we are going to spend time memorizing is question number six, which is how many persons are there in the Godhead? Okay, who thinks they can sing it? I know my kids can, we're gonna do it, and you guys are gonna hear it. How many persons are there in the Godhead? There are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one God, the same in essence. equal in power and glory. Is it substance? I'm sorry. Yes, it's substance. I said essence. We did. We did. See, look at this. It's working, Michael. It's working. They remembered. Yes. Same one. Michael wasn't as good back then. He's getting better. Alright guys, proof text. We could have a bunch. I like this one for the three persons and the one name of God, and of course it's easy because it's one of the last verses in the Gospel of Matthew. So it's Matthew 28, 19, and so I'll say it, and then you guys can say it back, and I'll just do chunks of it, and then we can sing the doxology, and I'll pray. Alright. Alright. Matthew 28 19. Yeah, let's just go. Matthew 28 19. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right, let's sing the doxology. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. All right, pray for you guys. Lord God, I thank you so much for the privilege that we have to learn about you. Lord, we've only even barely scratched the surface of all of the wonderful texts throughout scripture and concepts that point us to your incomprehensible and yet glorious and illuminating nature as the Trinity. Lord, I pray that we would love you more as we know more about you, that we would be joyful to share about you. God, that we would go about with a confidence that this doctrine is utterly important, even if we question our ability to articulate exactly how and why. I pray, Lord God, that we would have a more keen eye for how you are revealing yourself everywhere, always, and at all times, when we understand that you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally blessed forever. And in Jesus' name we pray, by your Holy Spirit, amen.