So as I said, the format of our Sunday school this morning will be that of an open forum. And I think I gave some indication on Wednesday night that we would do this. So maybe you've come prepared with a question or maybe it's formulating in your mind right now as we speak. So I'll give you the opportunity to just hold on a second. I think Barbara just dropped off and it may be she can't hear me. And she can't hear me because I have had the Bluetooth on. So maybe you could text her that I took the Bluetooth off and she wants to come back in. I think she left because she couldn't hear me. So if somebody could get a text to Barb, she can come back and, again, I'm sorry I did that. Oh, here she is. She's back in the room. So let me give her a minute. Okay, I think Barb's coming back on with us, and she should be able to hear me. Let me just look at the... Yeah, I think we're good. I think we're good. Yeah, I can hear you now. Good, good. Well, welcome back. So does anybody have a question? Just open it up for you guys. Yes, Jan, go ahead. You're helping us out, these open forums. I follow Andrew Boucher, and lots of times he posts things that it looks like he's studying. And one of the things that he posts is about the Trinity. Who's this? Andrew Boucher. And he was going through the different mistakes that Christians make in assigning the Trinity to the likeness of an egg. You know, the yolk, the white, the shell, and says, well, that is this heresy. or the water, for example. H2O, it can appear in ice form, water form, or vapor form, and that's another heresy. So I don't think the average Christian knows any of what that means or the implications of what truly defines a trinity. So I was wondering if you would address some of those mistakes and set us on the right course in how we viewed it, or try or not. Well, to do adequate explanation of Trinitarian theology requires a great deal more than just one shot at it this morning. I would simply say that there's a certain sense in which the Godhead is absolutely unique. We shouldn't really think of anything that we could find upon the earth that corresponds to the fullness of the essence of God. And certainly his triune existence is something that, looking like Patrick sought to teach it through the culver. I always thought of a four-leaf clover, but I guess they had a three-leaf clover. And so he endeavored to do it through that. And others, of course, the properties of H2O is solid gas and liquid. Yeah, well, again, it can't be all that at the same time. It's one or the other, depending upon the temperature. But God is who God is in the fullness of his being and his tripersonal existence eternally. So there's nothing really that we can liken God to, something that is an essential oneness and yet an essential threeness, of the threeness interpenetrating one another, so that there is a oneness as well, a unity. And the way in which theology has described it is that God is one in his being, but three in persons. that the notion of personhood, entering into the whole question of interrelationships of the persons with one another, that the father is not the son and the son is not the spirit and there is distinctions of personality, but yet there's interpenetration of each of the persons with one another. So the father is in the son and the son is in the spirit and the spirit is in the father. And again, we don't have anything quite to liken it to. You know, Augustine tried to do it in terms of defining God as the lover, the beloved, and the spirit that just binds the two together. I mean, all kinds of ways you can try to formulate it, except we must say that there's lots of things in scripture that we cannot fully explain. How God can be one of three, how Jesus could be God and man and one person. These things are beyond our ability to say, well, How does it work? How does it exist? It's just, we know it does. By faith, we know that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. And biblical testimony drives us to that conclusion. And with reference to the person of Jesus, His humanity is tested on full display in Scripture, as well as His true and proper deity. And so, We try to make the argument of the Trinity from the materials the Scripture itself presents, how Scripture itself defines God, with a full expectation that we're dealing with an infinite, eternal, unchangeable being. We're dealing with a being beyond our ability to comprehend. Who shall know the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor? What should you compare to God? Are the questions that Isaiah says. Although it's interesting that the challenge of Isaiah, what should you compare to me, may well have an answer. I've been reading a doctoral paper that was published in which the writer goes into the passages in Isaiah 40 and makes a fairly strong argument that the answer to the question, whom should you compare unto God, is the servant. It is Jesus, ultimately the servant of the Lord, in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. So it's not that God doesn't have anything comparable to him, because man's made in his image and likeness, and the Son of God comes as the image of the invisible God. And so there is a question of, maybe Isaiah is asking the question, who is a proper partner? to God in covenant, who is the loyal servant of the Lord, who will fulfill his will, his purposes in the earth in terms of his purposes to have a people in whom he dwells by his spirit to occupy his domain, his kingdom, and his promises. It may well be that that's more of a redemptive context that Isaiah is looking at than just as what we would call theology proper. And that's the other thing to consider is that we see mostly not God as he is in himself. We see God as he is in action. God as he is in his redemptive purposes, what we sometimes call The trinity on mission, or sometimes it's called the imminent trinity, a trinity who comes near and operates his works of creation, providence, and redemption. But God exists apart from his creation. God is the eternal God. And to see him as he is in himself in his eternal existence, again, is something that we're not really privy to. You think of all the statements that says, for instance, Paul says that he speaks of the God who dwells in light and approachable, who no man has seen or can see. So, you know, I read the thing that Andrew posted on that. And of course, I'm in agreement that the truth is what the truth is, as biblically defined. But again, I think the problem is that the average Christian, maybe because of failure of the pulpit to instruct in these things, maybe because of just our own limited sight and our own limited sense of what the reality is. I don't want to take the salvation of people out of the realm of Christ and personal commitment to faith in trust and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, if they have Christ wrong, and generally speaking, people of the Trinity wrong will get Christ wrong to some extent, they may have a different Christ. They may have the wrong Christ. But if it's the Christ of Holy Scripture, if it's the Christ who's come for human redemption, and the Christ who comes in the scriptures and says, come to me and follow me and believe in me and trust in me and walk with me, You know, I'm not going to make final determinations about their eternal destiny. That's the thing that, you know, I have trouble with. You know, I think altogether as evangelical Christians, we tend to be very good judges of who's admitted and who's not admitted. I think heaven's going to surprise us with a whole lot of unexpected things. Again, you know, people can be wrong and in error and even troubling era, a very difficult era, and yet God could work positively and savingly, even in the midst of that. I think of all the errors I've believed. I think of all the ways I've strayed in my understanding of the Word of God. And yet, from the beginning, even when I couldn't give an account of the Trinity, I was a believer. I came to Christ. I came to faith. And it was just a question of growing. And again, we all grow at different rates. And so that was the problematic part of this is that, I'm sorry. You saw that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I'm not going to say that, you know, to make a clear statement, this is not what the church has historically taught. But you know what? Lots of people who are evangelical judges of others, they don't hold what the church has historically taught. They don't. You've got people teaching in evangelical seminaries that are teaching an eternal subordination of the son, which is ridiculous that eternally God was subject to God in some kind of way of distinction, of authority and power, where there is a division that is unwarranted in understanding the unity of the persons and understanding the full deity of the persons. making those distinctions and teaching those distinctions. A lot of times the reason that people come up with those distinctions is to have some other concern that they're after. And with some of these evangelicals, their concern is to provide in the eternal relationships of the Trinity a justification for their view of male and female. And they see those passages that says that the The Father is the head of Christ, and Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of the woman. And again, I think even there, you're not dealing with eternal relations, you're dealing with function. You're dealing with the way in which people get on with one another and function to the glory of God in an effort where there are distinctions, but there's also unity. But in the eternal relations of the Trinity, that's heresy, what they're teaching. That's not what the Church has historically taught. And we give grace to those people, we don't say that they're outside of salvation because they're mistaken, and I think gravely mistaken, and teaching something that the church has not historically taught. So, anyway, I don't have final answers on that, but I do believe that we need to frame the doctrine of the Trinity in a biblical light. And I think that's one thing that is an interesting thing. Because we live in a day today where a lot of Trinitarian Christians know that the arguments that maybe were brought up at Nicaea or at Chalcedon for the Trinity and for the deity of Christ are not good arguments. They're not. But There is something about the church and its historical witness that even when they employ the wrong text to teach the right doctrine, they have a sense of what the right doctrine is. You know, one of the things I criticize about a lot of Trinitarian thinking is that we've not really exegetically grounded the doctrine in what the scriptures actually teach. And I think that's another area of trouble and problem within the modern church. Because we have our doctrine of the Trinity out here, we have our preaching from the word here, and we don't know exactly how the two intersect, how the exposition of the word impinge upon the doctrine of the Trinity as it's been historically taught. And I think a lot of works needed on that whole subject. Now, God's raised up, I think, a good number of really good modern evangelical scholars who've taken on that task, and they're doing a real good job in it. One of my favorite is a fellow named Fred Sanders, who I think has really formulated the doctrine of the Trinity, very sensitive to the historic witness of the church. He gets Chalcedon, he gets the historic doctrine correct, but he also gets the Bible correct. And he doesn't look to take a text that doesn't really teach what the church in its zeal to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity that they see in the Word of God. A lot of times we then run to the Bible and the first thing we see that maybe sounds like what we're thinking and saying, what we seize on and say, oh, there, look at that. God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. And so we see the Trinity in the plurals of the Old Testament. But that just doesn't accord, I don't believe, with all of the plurals of the Old Testament where God engages in that kind of language. Because that kind of language is clearly expressed in the book of 1 Kings 22, where the answer is given by angels, some heavenly beings. And Isaiah, of course, it's Isaiah that gives the response, whom shall go for us? Here I am, send me. I'm talking to you Isaiah. But Isaiah was allowed in upon a heavenly scene in which language like that is being engaged in. But who is the enthroned one talking to? Is he talking to the Son? Well, again, we'd like to jump to that conclusion, because it accords with the doctrine of the Trinity. Makes sense to us, because we're Trinitarian Christians, that when the Father speaks in the plural, in the throne room, with the Godhead, on the throne, it'd be the Father speaking to the Son. Now, sometimes it is the Father speaking to the Son, but it's usually the incarnate Son, such as sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies the footstool of your feet. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. That's the enthronement of the earthly king, who also happens to be incarnate deity, ultimately. But that's also conversation. I will set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. God speaks, and he speaks with reference to his son. You are a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. But who will go for us? Is that the Trinity counseling whether we should call Isaiah to do it or not? Actually, they're not calling anybody. Isaiah is doing the volunteering. Well, a very similar scene is found in 1 Kings 22, when the prophet Micaiah is saying what he saw of a heavenly vision in which God said, Who shall I send to deceive Ahab? And one of the heavenly beings says, I will go as a lying spirit. So the Polos do seem, from 1 Kings, to be not an inter-Trinitarian conversation. It's not God speaking within his own being. It's God speaking in the presence of the angels. The angels who are ministering spirits sent forth to do service to the heirs of salvation, God speaks to them. Gabriel is at the right hand of God. The Lord sent him to Mary. These angels go at his command. And when God says, whom shall I send? He's talking in the presence of the angels. And Isaiah says, you don't need an angel, Lord, here I am, send me. So when God enters into this Trinitarian conversation, because I've said that for so long, I've said, I thought that for so long, but I just don't think that's what's there in Genesis, is that the angels who also are these heavenly creatures who bear the image and glory of God, God enters into conversation with them about his intention with regard to the creation of man. And you might ask, well, why would that be? Why would God have to bring the angels in upon that conversation? Because at the end of the day, what's happening on earth is to parallel what's happening in heaven. Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The earthly creation is meant to be a parallel of the heavenly. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There was the creation of the heavenly scene as well, of God's own special abode and the host of the angels that do his bidding at his command. And when you look at God's dealings with his earthly people, you find that the very same language that's used of that heavenly host is used of Israel in the wilderness. They were the host of the Lord. God has an earthly host that parallels this heavenly host. And so again, I think there is a. You know, it's interesting when you raise this question. And, and, and, you know, I was thinking if I was going to say anything, um, because there was no questions, I was going to try to tell a little bit of what we're looking to do on Thursday night with regard to biblical theology. Because you see what biblical theology tries to do is it tries to answer the questions we have about God and his will and his purposes and his doings in the world from within the text of scripture itself. tries to go into the Bible itself and try to figure out, just from the scriptures, what it is that God is saying and what it is that God is doing, so that we don't come with a preset system of notions and ideas. No, we all come with a set of notions and ideas. We're confessional Baptists. We have a preset set of notions and ideas that are contained in the confession of faith. But we don't believe our confession of faith is inspired and inerrant. And we believe it was the product of fallible people who saw much of what scripture teaches. But sometimes what Christians see are just the things that Christians believe, and then they want to go into the scriptures and deferment, like with this question of the Trinity. is that we have our minds made up, and so we see Trinity wherever we could possibly see Trinity. You know, David Murray wrote a book called Christ on Every Page. And we're New Testament Christians. And we see how Jesus showed his disciples from the law, the prophets, and the Psalms the things concerning himself. So we go back into the Old Testament. We want to find Christ on every page. Well, I believe Christ is on every page, but Christ is on every page as the answer to the questions that are raised or the solution or the fulfillment of the promises that are given. So in other words, the Old Testament is a book without an ending until you see Christ in it. It's the answer to everything that led up to Jesus. The Old Testament is preparing the way for him. And we see it in that light. But before we see Christ, we have to see what the issues are. We have to see what it is that God is intending to do. We have to see what it is that Jesus comes to do. Because Jesus doesn't come out of nothing. He doesn't just descend into this world with no pre-story. It's a back story. leading up to the coming of Jesus in the fullness of the times. Paul says, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those that are under the law. And all that language there refers to Old Testament realities. In fact, everything in the coming of Jesus is, this was done to fulfill that which was spoken by the prophets saying. or this was done to correspond to the previous things that God had done in his revelation. So we have to really begin with the Old Testament and really see what's going on there in terms of the arc of the biblical story. The plot line of scripture, beginning from Genesis really through to Revelation, And then we begin to understand things. We begin to figure things out. We begin to understand, I think, for instance, that with respect to the Trinity as a doctrine and a teaching, it really is not there in the Old Testament at all. At least not directly. It doesn't say circumcise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It doesn't say that. It doesn't say in any of the prayers of Scripture of the Old Testament, put my name on them by blessing them in the name of the triune God. It doesn't say that. There is no direct teaching that we come from the Old Testament and we say, well, here's the Trinity. And you know what? There's another thing to be said. There's nothing in the New Testament, although it's a lot closer, of things that actually say all that Nicaea says about Jesus, about what the creeds say about Jesus. Because what the New Testament is, it's a reflection upon what God has already done in His Son. It's expanding upon it and explaining it. It's post-Jesus coming, his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and writing letters to churches that are teaching the implications of this act of God and what God has done. And it's in that context we see that the God who is at work in this redemption is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but we don't see it directly taught, we see Him in action. I don't know if this is making it clear. I really think, something that Fred Sanders says, and I think it's true. I think he got it from B.B. Warfield. The B.B. Warfield argued that the Trinity is revealed in the sending of the Son and the sending of the Spirit. The Trinity is revealed in Christ's coming and in Pentecost. God is revealed as a triune God in the actual acts of God. for human salvation. He asked the question, who is this God who comes to save us? Just as Israel said, who is this God who sent you Moses? What is his name? Well, he asked the question, who is this God who comes in New Testament salvation? And the answer is, it is the God who is in Jesus, the God who comes incarnate in the person of Jesus. And we see the Trinity in the actual revelation of the salvation of God in Christ's coming and in the giving of the Holy Spirit. But we do see in the Old Testament, the word that tends to get used is adumbrations. It's a word that means precursors, a sense of anticipation that the reality is there. But I think Warfield used the image of a room, not well lit, but richly furnished. It's richly furnished, but it's not well lit. And it takes the light that comes in Christ appearing to shed light upon that room that's dark but richly furnished. And so it's in the light of the New Testament we see that the God of the Old Testament is the triune God. And for instance, we see in John chapter one that in the beginning was the word in a context that is calling to mind Genesis one. And so rather than the plurals of Genesis one being precursors of the Trinity or adumbrations of the Trinity, the fact that The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters, and God said." There you have the Trinity. You have the Trinity at work in creation. The Trinity not as he is in himself, apart from creation, entering into the in a reality of a God we cannot see or know in himself, we see him revealed in his saving works. And there's another saying, in his creating works. In all of his works, God is revealed. And so what John says, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him. The Word. And without Him was not anything made that was made. John's reading Genesis in the light of Christ's appearing. In the light of the eternal God made flesh. The Word being made flesh who comes to dwell among us. And we see His glory. The glory of the tabernacle. Set His tent among us. the presence of God among us as he was in the tabernacle in the wilderness. He's present in the person of Jesus, the true tabernacle temple. I mean, we see the Old Testament God coming in the person of Jesus. And when we see the relationship of Old Testament God, His actions of creation, His actions in Providence, His actions in saving Israel from bondage in Egypt. And then we see the actions of incarnate Israel's God in the person of Jesus. The God of Israel becoming enfleshed in the person of Jesus. And we see that He is that same God. We see the Yahweh-ship of Jesus. We are building a very strong case for the Trinity, not just by picking out a text here and a text there and a text there that sounds like that's the Trinity, but it really is the Trinity as we see the Trinity at work, as we see the Trinity ultimately incarnate in Jesus and in the coming of the Holy Spirit. So we see the were richly furnished, enlightened by the coming of the light of the world and the coming of the Spirit's grace and blessing upon the church. Does that make sense? So, you know, it's so good to see the Bible and its doctrines in its own natural form, as it comes to us in the books of scripture themselves, as God himself has revealed it. And not just a, well, you know, we have a doctrine that we want to flesh out, and so we go searching for texts that seem to sound like this might apply. Oh, you know, this sounds like election, so let's throw it in. This sounds like regenerate, throw it in. It sounds, you know, a lot of times the things that Pete thinks sound like are not off the mark, but it's just not the way the Bible itself teaches the thing. And, you know, we have in our reformed tradition, just lots of things that I think are essentially true. But the way they've been formulated in the history of doctrine is just not the way they're formulated in the Bible. A great example of this is the special nature of the Ten Commandments. There's a special law that God gave to Israel that we call the Ten Commandments. We don't just call them the Ten Commandments. I think Deuteronomy does as well. The ten words, I believe, is the words that are given. They're the ten words that God spoke on Mount Sinai that becomes a special part of the revelation of God. And, of course, the people who look to argue, well, is the law temporary? Is it just for Israel? Is it permanent? You have The good guys, us, the reformed, say, well, the reality of it is that there's different kinds of laws. There's moral laws, Ten Commandments. There are judicial laws, that's the commandments that God gave to Israel to do in the land. And then there's the ceremonial law. So you have ceremonial law, judicial law, or civil law. that is given to Israel, and then the moral law of the Ten Commandments. And we nod our heads and say, right. And, you know, that's a lot better than saying wrong. It's a lot more right than it is wrong, but it's just not as right as it could be. Because similar distinctions are made in the text of Scripture itself. Mike, is everything okay? Yes. Similar distinctions are made in the text of scripture itself. Again, there is no passage that speaks about moral law versus civil law versus ceremonial law. But when you read the law of Moses in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and the sections of Deuteronomy, Clearly there are different kinds of laws. The whole book of Leviticus engages in laws. I shouldn't say the whole book, because there are some portions of the book of Leviticus, like chapter 19, 18, 19, it's called the Holiness Code. But by and large, you go through those first nine chapters that have only to do with sacrifices. You're dealing with a different kind of law. You're dealing with the law of the tabernacle. you're dealing with the law of priestly sacrifice. There clearly is a body of legislation that becomes the priest's manual of how the priests are to function as God's representatives in the tabernacle worship of Israel. That's the book of Leviticus, by and large. And then there are those hosed set of laws, and you see it a lot in Deuteronomy in particular. The laws begin with this note. When you enter into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, then this is what is to happen. These are the laws of the land. These are the laws that are to determine your relationship to your neighbor in terms of property, in terms of inheritance, in terms of just a bunch of other things that regulate the life of God's people in the land. And a lot of those commandments do not have eternal significance. Clearly, Jesus saw that when he said of the law that regulated the divorce of a woman in Deuteronomy 24, on what terms a man could put away his wife. And of course, the Pharisees completely had misunderstood it. And they said, well, Moses has commanded us to divorce our wives. Jesus said, Moses did no such thing. But for the hardness of your heart he permitted you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. So there's a law that has a temporary application. It wasn't so at the beginning and it pertains to Israel's life in the land. So there's the law of the land. There's the law of the tabernacle. There's the law of the land. Seems like the Book of Deuteronomy and the Book of Exodus call that the Book of the Covenant. The Book of the Covenant. And then there are those 10 words from Sinai, which are different. I'm sorry, my dispensational friend. They really are quite different. The law of the tabernacle was not thundered from Sinai. When God said, you've seen what I've done. I've taken you from eagle's wings and I've brought you to myself. Now, if you obey my laws and you keep my commandments, you will be a holy people to me. You'll be a kingdom of priests. When you bring your sacrifice, it doesn't say that. God did not speak concerning sacrifice from Mount Sinai. He didn't speak laws concerning land and inheritance and slaves and dietary restrictions and clean and unclean and all those sort of things from Mount Sinai. He spoke 10 words with an audible voice. And then it's those 10 words that he spoke with an audible voice from Mount Sinai Then when Moses went up to the mountain and he got the instructions about the tabernacle and the book of the law, God took two tablets of stone and with his finger he wrote Leviticus 1 and 2. No, he didn't write Leviticus 1 to 9 on those stones, no. That did not happen. He didn't write the laws pertaining to the land in those tablets of stone. He wrote the 10 words from Sinai. He wrote the 10 words he spoke from Sinai. It's now committed to tablets in which two were given, the two tables of the law. Now again, theology would then look at two tables of the law and say, okay, we make a distinction between man's responsibility to God and man's responsibility to his neighbor. Jesus made that distinction. Or actually, the Pharisees did when they said, oh, Jesus did as well. But there's a lawyer also who said that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Jesus gave that same instruction, that there is that distinction. And so in our popular mind as Reformed people, we got those two tables of stone. One of them having the first four commandments and the other having the latter six. You all heard that, right? Didn't happen that way. When covenants were entered into, the copies of the covenant were given to both parties. And there was a tablet that was to be placed in the Holy of Holies. In the ark. That's God's covenant copy. And the other was to be given to Israel. That's why there's two. One given to the people and one kept in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. That's God's copy of the covenant. But it's all those commandments on both, written by the finger of God. The only commandments placed in the ark. There was a copy of the book of the law that was by the ark, but not in it. That was only the tablets of the 10 commandments, the table of the 10 commandments. So when you look at the actual evidence that's there in the text, you see there's clear distinctions in the laws, don't you? And you see that there's a clear distinction of those 10 words that are different from all the other commandments. Because they really are the things that do involve the real heart of what is entailed in proper worship of God, and proper justice to one another as neighbors, how we're to live to one another. They are something of an embodiment of a moral code. It's not the only aspect of moral instruction, but it's a summary of a great number of moral duties that do comprise our duty to God and our duty to our neighbors. Now, they're not the only ones. Again, we can jump at it and say, well, we're looking to defend the Ten Commandments. So, you know, we have the larger catechism, and the larger catechism just basically is said to be an exposition of the Ten Commandments, asking the question, what does this commandment require? What does this commandment forbid? Goes through all the Ten Commandments, and they're able to pack in to the Ten Commandments every single thing that you could imagine as moral issues. Drunkenness is in the Ten Commandments. You know where they put it? Who knows where the larger catechism places drunkenness? I'm going to say coveting your neighbor's wife or something like that. That's probably where I would put it. If you covet... Well, drunkenness, is that your plier with drinking, you're thinking? I'm trying to think of how alcohol would get into that. Because of decisions people make when they're... What's that? Because of decisions people make when they're drunk. Yeah, okay, you're right. They actually put it under the 7th commandment for that very reason. They put it under the 7th commandment. Is that it's when you're drunk you are more likely than any other time to enter into somebody's bed unaware, you know, commit adultery. Yeah, that's where they put it. That's where they put it, under the 7th commandment. I don't think, I understand the commandment is very, very broad, and I know you can teach moral duty just looking to bring everything into the words of the Ten Commandments, but again, I think the words of the Ten Commandments have their own special focus. and their own special focus in terms of the fact that they're called a testimony. They're the testimony of God's spoken word to Israel coming from the mountain, that God was in their midst and God's commandments were given to them. But there are other ways that moral duties are learned. There are other ways. It's not just, well, you know, you have five series of messages on the 10 commandments in your ministry, and you make clear to people all their moral duties. Not necessarily. You look, if you will, Deuteronomy 10, I preached on this at evening services a little while ago. We're in Deuteronomy 10 and verse 12. The question is raised to the nation of Israel. He says, this is, I believe, Moses saying to Israel, and now Israel, what does Yahweh, your God, require of you? What does Yahweh, your God, require of you? Well, again, if our thought is that the Ten Commandments are the things that teach all moral duty, then we just say, well, keep the Ten Commandments. But actually, it's a bit broader than that. He says five things. To fear the Lord your God. To live with a sense of divine presence. To act as if God was with you, knowing all of your ways and all of your actions. Knowing that you have an account to give to the God who sees. You fear God. Then you walk in his ways. God has ways. One of the Psalms says, all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth. All of his ways. Look at what God does in the world. You see a God who abounds in mercy and in faithfulness to his people. We learn the ways of God by seeing God in action, seeing the things that God does, that God ministers to the widow and the orphans in the reflection, that God is the one that champions the cause of the needy and the poor, that God is the one who operates with compassion and kindness and love. And so we emulate the God we worship and serve. As we learn His ways, we walk in His ways. So it's the ways of God, the fear of God, the ways of God, the love of God. That's the central thing, the third of the five. To love Him and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul. To submit to Him, serve Him, And finally, to keep the commandments and the statutes. It really comes to the end of a long list, which I'm commanding you today for your good. The commandments are clearly there, they are to be kept, they're designed to be for your good, but the whole matter of moral duty is really bound up in the whole relationship that we have with God, as the God who we come to know, and we come to love, and we come to fear, we come to emulate, and we come to serve. In all these ways, we're learning. the pathway of moral duty. And so it's a bit broader than all of it, but certainly the commandments are central. And those 10 words from Sinai are absolutely non-negotiables. They do a wonderful service in the summarizing of God's law in a way that you can count them on your fingers. Ten fingers, ten commandments, great way to learn them. Great way to learn them. So we started with the Trinity, but I think it was good to go there because, you know, there are ways to see the truths that we believe as Christians. that we learn from theology, that we learn from church confessions, because again, God's by His Spirit is among His people. This is something to the effect that Christians in history have had good instincts about a lot of this stuff. They've been on the right side on a lot of this stuff. But they don't always formulate it in the best of or the most compelling of scriptural ways. So we have our dispensational friends say, well, you just show me in the Bible where there's moral and ceremonial and civil laws. And of course we can't show them that. It's just something that theology teaches us so. But we can show them that there's a uniqueness to these 10 words. And that there's a wider concern with regard to tabernacle the worship rituals of the nation, and their civil life as a nation, living in the land that God had given them, and how those laws are applicable to that people at that time in that place, and they don't become universal laws. So we don't slip into theonomy, the idea that we need to get Old Testament law going in our nation. with all of its sanctions in particular, so it gives us some justification to form mass executions of people that we don't like and are, you know, yeah, they are immoral, but they're also to be treated with regard, love, compassion, and respect. So anyway, thank you for your question, Jan. Anything, we don't have time for questions this morning. I hope this has been helpful. Let's go, and if you have any more questions on this, join us Thursday nights, Biblical Theology. It's a good thing to be doing. Let's pray together. Father, we are thankful for this time to consider these matters, and we're thankful for the richness and fullness of your word. We're thankful for the very exciting and challenging ways that the scripture itself just lays out your truth, the things we need to know and understand We pray that we would be a people of the book, that we would learn to understand the Bible from within its own pages and be able to see more and more of what great things you have made known and revealed for our good. We ask you now to bless us as we greet one another, as we have a time of fellowship and refreshments, and as we enter into the morning hour, draw near to us with your presence and grace, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.