You're listening to the teaching ministry of Harvest Fellowship Church in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. You can find out more about us on the web at www.harvestfellowshipchurch.org. We pray that through our teaching, we may present everyone mature in Christ. If you're not already doing so, we invite you to stand for the reading of God's word. Our New Testament reading today comes from the book of Ephesians. I'll be reading chapter one, beginning in verse three through 14. This is the inspired and all sufficient word of the living God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. His word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. You may be seated. Let's look to the Lord in a word of prayer, asking the Spirit of God to help us. Father in heaven, we bow before you this morning, and I do pray, O Lord, that as we consider something that is so difficult for us mere, mortal, sinful humans to comprehend, O Lord, we do pray that you will give us a greater understanding of the Holy Trinity. that we will, as we go through the affairs of life and even in our worship, Lord, that we will see a Trinitarian God as you have revealed yourself through your word. We pray for your help, O Spirit of God, to make plain the word of God to our hearts this morning. And we ask these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. So initially I had intended to get into the book of James this week, but it just felt a little strange to me to introduce the attributes of God and speak about the nature of God and then immediately go do something different and so I thought it'd be good to provide a little bit more foundation on this study of who God is and then next week, Lord willing, we will get into James' letter. But I want to speak this morning about the triunity of God. Let me ask you this question this morning, what is the most difficult job that man has ever had to do? The most difficult job that man has ever had to do? Was it to name the animals as Adam did as we see very early on in Genesis? Was it to build an ark that took a hundred years to complete as Noah? Was it to survive, just simply survive the black plague that struck down nearly half of Europe's population? Was it discovering how humans could fly without dying? Or perhaps making a voyage that went around the entire world? Was it to successfully go into outer space and come back alive? Maybe it's something like the splitting of an atom or the mapping of the human genome. And you could add on to that list, perhaps with other ideas in your mind. But as one theologian has put it, the most difficult job that man has ever had to do is the verbal expression of the Trinity. The verbal expression of the Trinity. And the reason for that, his argument is, is that man with his finite mind, We can only know so much, we can only learn so much, we can only understand so much. So with his finite mind and his limited understanding, attempting to use human language to appropriately describe the nature of the divine almighty, he says, is the most difficult job that man has. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a profound mystery. So it is a mystery. that mankind would never be able to deduce on his own through natural reason or his own ingenuity. We don't look up into the natural revelation of God in nature and look into the heavens and say, there must be a Trinity. That would never come to our minds. We know of the Trinity only because of God's revelation of it through his word. This is a purely, we say, revealed doctrine. And even the words trinity, which comes from the Latin word trinitas, or we could even define that as the word threeness. So the words trinity or triune, they're not found explicitly in Scripture. But before we explain how we have formulated such a doctrine from the Bible, I want to define it first. The trinity or the triunity of God is this. Well, first let me just say it's not an attribute of God. It's not an attribute of God, rather the doctrine of the Trinity is the truth. And here's the truth, that there is one God, there's one God who exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of these three persons of the Godhead is God. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are each fully God and each one of these three persons we could say is co-equal and co-eternal with the other persons of the Trinity. As one God, these three persons share the exact same divine nature. Now, just the statements alone We can't fully comprehend. We just cannot. And it is an undeniably difficult doctrine for our comprehension, but it does bring clarity, greater clarity, we could say, to answer that question, who God is? Who God is? Furthermore, this doctrine, the doctrine of the Trinity, is both fundamental and indispensable to our Christian faith. It actually distinguishes the disciple from the heretic. It distinguishes the true church from the cult. To deny the doctrine of the Trinity, and you may encounter people who deny the doctrine of the Trinity, but to deny it is to destroy the very gospel of God. And to fail to comprehend God in the triune way that he has revealed himself, it leads to a different God, a God made in the image of our minds. And that could result in a God who is perhaps impersonal or a God who is a power, a force rather than a person or a God who is not able to be distinguished from his creation. So as Christians we must think of God in the triune way that he has revealed himself. Now knowing that Scripture does not use explicit language, you can't find the word Trinity in your Bible, so knowing that that doesn't exist, how can we say then that this is such an important doctrine? How is that possible? How can we say that the Bible emphatically teaches this? And I just want to give you just a simple flow of deductive reasoning, and we're going to work on this, but I just want to put the three points right up front here, and that's number one, that Scripture teaches unequivocally that there is one God. One God. All throughout Scripture, and especially we'll see that in the Old Testament. But number two, Scripture teaches us that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are all revealed throughout the Bible as well, are three distinct persons. They're not the same person, they're three distinct persons. And number three, Scripture teaches that these three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, are each God. And so we have one God in three persons. One God in three persons. And so we take those foundational truths, which we're not going to give any proof text for yet, we will. But we deduce something from those foundational truths of Scripture. If you go to our website, to the Harvest website, under what we believe, you will find this statement. We believe the Bible teaches that there is but one being of God, yet there are three distinct persons who share this one being of God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Each person is fully and completely God and each is described in scripture as possessing the attributes of God. The Father, Son, and Spirit have eternally existed in the relationship described by the term Trinity. So this morning I would invite you to come along to press on to know the Lord, that was our theme last week, to press on to know the Lord through the study of the Holy Trinity. We're going to look at these first two statements that seem to be antithetical, God is one, which is focused on the unity or the we could say the oneness of the Trinity, of the Godhead. And secondly, God is three. So God is one, God is three. And that is focused on the distinctness of those three persons of the Trinity. And lastly, to sort of bring it home is why is this important? What does this have to do with just besides just knowing this is communion with the triune God, communion with the triune God that as Christians we commune with the triune God. And so first let us consider that we as Christians and some other religions, false religions of the world would say this as well, is that we are monotheists, one God, monotheists. But we as Christians we believe in the one true living God. So we're in God is one. Now I hope that as I go through, because as we're seeking to look at the Trinity this morning, honestly we could spend 10 sermons on it. And perhaps I'm not going to cover something that you wish I would or brings up questions. That's okay. That's good. There's whole books, volumes written on the Trinity. This is merely just to sort of get our teeth wet here and to really provoke our minds to better understand this doctrine. But God is one. Of course, as you read through the Bible, you see this over and over. Deuteronomy 6, 4, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Jesus restates this in Mark chapter 12, verse 29. We see this monotheism, this one God, even in our Old Testament reading this morning from Isaiah 45, I am the Lord and there is no other. There's one God. Besides me, there is no other God. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2.5, for there is one God. There's one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Paul also said, if you remember this when we studied through 1 Corinthians, as he talked about the so-called gods of this earth that the people worship, he says, although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods, quote, and many lords, yet for us there is one God. the Father from whom are all things and for whom we exist and one Lord and he goes on. Now does that show up in our faith? Sure it does. This belief. We tell people you need to believe in God. We're going to pray to God. Let's sing to God. Let's read God's Word. So we have that idea of monotheism that's in our minds because it comes from the Word of God. To be honest, most people don't struggle with that concept, the oneness of God, because they do say it's all throughout Scripture. But as much as that idea of the oneness of God is entrenched in our minds, And as emphatic as the Old Testament especially is about the singular nature of God, I want to ask in this section, as you look through the Old Testament, where do you see those hints, those little revelations of the, we could say, a plurality in the Godhead? The Godhead of God in the Old Testament we see hints of plurality even though the actions of God are expressed in a singular, in a unified way. Well you don't have to look very far, Genesis 1.1. And in there, in Genesis 1-1, which most of us probably have committed to memory, that word there for God, which is the name Elohim, it's a plural noun. It's a plural noun there. It expresses a plurality that exceeds two. So it doesn't necessarily mean three, but it means a plurality of more than two. And they don't get too far. In chapter one, and what do we see? We see the statement, let us make man in our own image after our likeness. And then after Adam and Eve fall in Genesis 3.22, the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. At the Tower of Babel in chapter 11, we see God saying, Come, let us go down. And there confused their language. So we see those little hints. How about passages that seem to, and this is sort of a strange phrase, but seem to distinguish God from God. Meaning that God in these passages refers to himself as if referring to another person. Genesis 19, we see the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It says, the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. What does that mean? Psalm 110, which was a very perplexing verse for the Pharisees to deal with. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Or you go to Hosea, a verse like Hosea 1.7, but I will have, this is Yahweh speaking, but I will have mercy on the house of Judah and I will save them by the Lord their God. We also see in the Old Testament as well the use of what we could call threefold liturgical formulas. Number six. famous benediction. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. We just see Lord, Lord, Lord. We see that three times. But think about even in those verses there of what's being attributed to each one of the lords. The first part we see safekeeping. which all throughout scripture is attributed to the Father. Grace, be gracious to you. The manifestation of grace, and we'll talk about this again, is attributed to the Son. And the one who bestows peace upon the hearts of believers is the Holy Spirit. But that was just a hint, and perhaps even a hint in the well-known verse in Isaiah chapter 6, 3, where Isaiah beholds the glory of the Lord, and the angels, the seraphims, and the cherubims, they're crying out, holy, holy, holy. It's this threefold formula. Now also in the Old Testament what else do we see? We see besides the Father we see the Son who we could call the Word or we could even distinguish him as capital W, Wisdom. So we see the Wisdom and also the Spirit are distinguished as a unique person and also personalized. When you read through Proverbs 8 you see Wisdom personified. Who is that? At least, as you read through it, you should think those thoughts. Who is this? All the way back in Genesis 1-2, of course, we see the Spirit of God. It says he's hovering over the face of the waters. There's a unique distinguishment of the Spirit of God. In Psalm 143-10, you see David crying out, you are my God, let your good spirit lead me. on level ground and also in Isaiah 63 10 it talks about how the rebelling of the Israelites in the wilderness grieved his Holy Spirit. And then finally in this part here of the Old Testament is those promises of the Messiah coming in the name of God but also being God himself. The well-known verse, Isaiah 714, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. God with us. And then in Jeremiah 23 6, this is the name by which he shall be called, the Lord is our righteousness. We see over and over. But you know what's interesting is we don't really see those things until we have already understood the Bible as a whole. To understand who Jesus is, to understand who the Holy Spirit is and the Father. And then you go back and you read the Bible again a second time and things start to jump out to you that you never noticed before. But how did the New Testament writers then elaborate on what the Old Testament started to just kind of like peel back the mystery of? And this is a much quicker part here. But one is that the New Testament writers maintain the unity and oneness of God throughout their writing. You heard that in some of the passages that I read were from the New Testament. The Lord is one. God is one. But they also, whether it's Paul, Peter, John, the other New Testament writers, they also describe the actions and we could say the being of God now in a much more precise way, in Trinitarian terms. If you remember back to Titus chapter 3, when we looked at the description of redemption by Paul, he's talking about all three members of the Trinity. And we see the New Testament writers as well, they ascribe names and titles, divine names and titles to each member, or we could say each person of the Trinity. We see the phrase, God our Father, Christ who is God over all. Or at the beginning of John it says, the Word was with God and the Word was God. Or even in that bad narrative, not bad narrative, but it was a story that doesn't sit well with us in the sense of when Ananias and Sapphira decide to deceive the church and Peter says, you have lied to the Holy Spirit. And then he goes on to say, to clarify, he says, you have lied to God, God, the Holy Spirit. And so we see them giving them these names and titles. The New Testament writers, they also apply divine attributes to each person of the Trinity. They attribute divine works to each one, whether it's works of creation, providence, redemption, and judgment. And they also assign divine honor to each person. And so the New Testament clearly presents Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct persons even though as one God, and so I want to look then at God is three. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinct in persons but not in essence. Essence is the nature, the character of God. So there's not three natures, there's not three wills, There is one God, but there are three distinct persons. You could think about that every day for the rest of your life and you're not going to come past that being a mystery. You're just not. But nevertheless, we must still see it and believe it and stand on it. Now, of course, where do we see that most vividly portrayed? We see that at Jesus' baptism. Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. We hear the voice from heaven. That's the Father. Jesus, the Son, is in the water. The dove comes down to rest upon him, which is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Three distinct persons. Jesus coming down is not the Father suddenly turning into the Son. Three distinct persons. So they are distinguished from each other in terms of, we could say, their personal properties. And these are really simple statements but yet the world and the unbelievers, they stumble so badly over them but nevertheless we need to say them. And first is when we speak of the Father, the Father is God. The Father is God. John 6, 27, Romans 1. Several passages in Scripture declare this outright that the Father is God but we have to also make a second statement and it's this, that the Father, sounds really basic, the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Spirit, he's neither one of those. But one thing that we could refer to God in some ways is we could call the Father the pattern. Father being the pattern, and maybe you'll understand that a little bit more as we talk about the Son, but the Father is the pattern. So the Father is God, the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Spirit, the Father is the pattern. And then we're going to say the same types of statements about the Son and the Spirit. The Son is God. Four words. And every other religion of this world hates that statement, rejects that statement, denies that statement. But the Son is God. As we studied through Matthew, we saw his divinity all over, all over throughout Matthew. But again, the Son is not the Father. The Son is not the Spirit. When we think of the father being the pattern, we could say that the son is the representation of the pattern. You see that in Hebrews. He talks about being the image of the father, but he's not the father. Remember what he says to Philip? I think I even said this last week. If you've seen me, I'm the representation. So if you've seen the representation, then you've seen the pattern. You've seen the father. But about the Spirit as well, then, the Spirit is God. The Spirit is God. And sometimes we can lose sight of that. We almost think of the Spirit being some sort of agent, but perhaps being less than God. But the Spirit is God. The Spirit is not the Father. The Spirit is not the Son. The spirit, we could say he is the spirit of the pattern and of his representation. And one way to think of that, as we see, you know, you see the Holy Spirit, he's hovering over the face of the waters. He is the one who gives the breath to Adam. He is the one that, as we looked at in regeneration, gives the spiritual breath. And so we could call him here the breath or the exhalation, the exhaling, of the Father and of the Son. Think of the breath that we breathe. Breathe into your hand right now, it's probably slightly warm. You can warm your hands if they're cold. But there's no real life in that. You could just call it hot air. But God's breath, the Spirit of God, it's not hot air. It's living, it's powerful, it is the divine person of the Holy Spirit. And so we've got these three persons then as declared in the Word of God, three persons in one divine essence. And another way to think of the word essence is just the being of God or we could even say the whatness of God. What is God? Three persons in one divine essence that is indivisible. So it's not three pieces of a pie. It's not 33% Jesus, the Son, 33% the Father, 33% the Spirit. It's an indivisible essence, meaning that they each possess the same divine essence equally. They coexist as one God. The Father existing in the Son, the Son existing in the Father, the Spirit existing in the Father and Son. And the intention of studying this is not to make our minds hurt, but it should show us our finitude. These are not understandable types of things. We have nothing to compare them to. We have a singular spirit about us. We're a one, one in one, and this is completely different. Now think of the way that the Bible expresses an independent personality for each person of the Trinity. Now, of course, we've mentioned this a number of times, but just their names. There's three different names. There's Father, Son, and Spirit. There's also an order that they're presented in, and this is not an order of importance, so we should not ever assume it's an order of importance, but it's just simply a logical ordering, the logical ordering of Father, Son, and Spirit. It's a logical ordering. but also a manner of existence. The Bible expresses a manner of existence, and we see that especially in the words of Jesus, that the Father has life in himself, the Son is of the Father, so the Son derives his life through the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. In some of the more technical language that we use we talk about the father begetting or generating and he begets the son or he generates the son. The son is generated or begotten and the spirit proceeds from both of them. And that can cause people to stumble as well because as they think of the son being begotten or generated by the father, it can creep into your mind to think that there was a time when the father was but the son was not. But that's not what the Word of God presents to us. The Word of God presents to us that he is eternally begotten by the father, always. And so we must remember then, as we study through all of the attributes of God, as whatever we say of one person, we must say of the other. If we say that the Father is eternal, that means the Son is eternal. That means that the Spirit is eternal. The Holy Trinity, they possess the same power, the same wisdom, the same holiness, the same justice, the same goodness and will. And this triunity of God, where do we see it? most vividly, we see it most vividly in the life of Christ. In the life of Christ. We talked about his baptism just a few minutes ago, but how about his temptation? Who is it that drives the Son out into the wilderness? It says it's the Spirit. The Spirit drives him out. Whose word? Who is he depending upon? Does he tell the devil? He says, I'm depending upon the Father. So we see it there. We see it in his death. He's sustained by the Spirit. He cries out to the Father. We see it in the commission in Matthew 28. Go therefore and make disciples of every nation, teaching them and baptizing them. It says, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Many of you probably know those verses, but have you ever considered why is that singular there? Why does it say name? Why doesn't it say names? Why doesn't it say the names of the Father, Son, and Spirit? Because it's Jesus' way of informing his disciples there that there is one God. He's teaching them right there in that moment. There is one God. There is one and only name of God. But this name that the Israelites clung to in the Old Testament, Jehovah, is now known to them by the new name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And so God is three. But for all of those words, for all of those things that scripture revealed to us, the most important question then is, as we contemplate, as we think about it, as we want to really know the Lord, where should the contemplation of this wonderful mystery, where should it lead us? That's what I want to go over last here is this communion with the triune God. Communion with the triune God. Second Corinthians chapter 13 verse 14. The final verse of Second Corinthians Paul says, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Notice the distinguishment, we see the Lord Jesus Christ, we see the Son in grace, we see God which is referring to the Father in love, we see the Holy Spirit in fellowship, and all three of those are joined together but also distinctly presented. And so first the Christian communes with the Father in love, communion with the Father in love. Think of the love that we saw expressed in our New Testament reading this morning. Ephesians chapter 1. It's the Father who chose us in Christ. It's the Father who chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. He predestined us to adoption, it says, to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. How should that make us feel? We ought to contemplate. We ought to thank. We ought to praise. We ought to glorify the Father for that love, that eternal love, that free love, the life-changing love, his saving love. It's a verse even the world knows. For God so loved the world. How much? To what extent? That he gave his Son, the only Son. Paul says in Romans 5.5, God's love has been poured into our hearts. 1 John 4.10 John says not that we have loved God but that he loved us. When was the last time that you thought specifically or worshiped God specifically around the Father's love? We sing that song, how deep the Father's love for us. How deep? We can never know how deep. It's fathomless. It's bottomless. It's infinite. So how should we respond? How should we commune? We should respond to the Father's love by loving him back. Love him in return. How are we going to love him in return? We're going to rest in him. We're going to delight in him. We're going to reverence and obey him. If we love God, we will keep his commandments. And so we commune with the Father in love. We commune, or we have communion, with the Son in grace. We saw that. The grace poured out upon us also in Ephesians 1. It's the Son who's redeemed us, it says, through his shed blood. He's accomplished the forgiveness of our sins. When was the last time that you considered how great a grace God has poured out upon you by declaring your sins to be forgiven in Jesus Christ? contemplate, we could say, the personal grace of Jesus. And what I mean by the personal grace is the things that you can look at in him and you can say are the desirableness of his person and that which made him suitable to be our Redeemer. So we think of his virtues of mercy, His holiness, his moral perfection, how our hearts should rejoice, even as in Matthew 4, as he does reject the temptation of the devil. And we see this desirableness about him, his kindness, as we saw in the call to worship, come unto me, all who labor. His tenderness, his patience, and his grace. but also contemplate his purchased grace. He's the one who bore the wrath of God. He is the one who satisfied God's justice. He is the one who forgave your sins. He is the one who reconciled you to God. When you look at God in this way, when you look at Christ in this way, in a believing way, you will find him altogether lovely. I wonder this morning if you have beheld Christ, if you've seen God in Christ in a saving way, if you've believed upon all of those things that I just mentioned. Do you believe that Christ died for you? Do you believe that he has paid it all? As we sing, Jesus paid it all. You think of when you get invited to someone's house, What do we typically say if we're going over for a meal? What can I bring? Do you want me to bring a salad? Do you want me to bring a dessert? What can I bring? And then there's a sense that we feel that way with God. God says, here is salvation. We say, yeah, but what can I do? What can I bring? What can I do for you, God, to earn this salvation? And the answer is nothing. We simply believe, as I just said, that Jesus has done it all. That Christ has accomplished for you what you could not. Paid for your sins on the cross of Calvary and rose from the dead as vindication that he had conquered death and that his payment for your sins was acceptable to God. Jesus himself proclaimed the words to simply believe The good news, believe the gospel, the good news that Jesus died for sinners. And I ask you this morning, have you done that? Are you trusting in Christ alone with empty hands, not bringing anything to what God offers? And lastly, then communion with the spirit in comfort. Also from Ephesians 1, we see that the Holy Spirit is the one who seals us unto the day of redemption. He is the guarantor of our inheritance. I don't know if that makes you glad. It makes me glad. I'm not the one who stated it, but I certainly agree with it that if I could lose my salvation, if my salvation was dependent upon me, I would have lost it a trillion times. But it's the Spirit who seals us, who keeps us in covenant with God, who guarantees our inheritance. He applies all that the Father planned in love. He applies all that the Son graciously accomplished. He regenerates, He comforts, He assures our hearts, He anoints, He teaches, He prays on our behalf, He leads, He seals, and He abides with us for all eternity. and our communion with the Spirit affects the entirety of our lives. And that's why Paul said, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. He said, do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. And so this is how we commune with the triune God But all the while as we think of those we could say unique characteristics of each person, at least what we see the manifestation of them, we never lose sight of the fact that God is one. So Christ is on the cross. But God is the one who brings about the redemption of our sins. We see the attribution of creation given to the Father, but it is the work of the Trinitarian God that creates. And I wonder when you enter into gathered worship, If there are ever times that you may lose sight of that. Is it possible that you could sometimes think exclusively of one member or one person of the Trinity? Is it possible to be just fixated on the Father? Father this, Father that. Or maybe to only ever think of Jesus. Let me tell you about Jesus. And it is good to tell people about Jesus. Or to be exclusively excited about the Spirit. And maybe you've met people before where they seem to have a monotheistic view of God, but it only is the Holy Spirit. And we can lose sight sometimes of that. But we must remember that we are, as the children of God, we come to, as Jesus says, we come to our Father, but we come to him in the name of Christ, and we do it through the power of the Spirit. It's a Trinitarian worship. And it is our triune God that's worthy of worship. And so when we worship God, we are worshiping the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And this is such an important theology. It's as important for our schoolchildren, important for mothers with their children, those of you in the workforce, whatever you're doing this week, it's not more important for one of you and less important for another. It is important for every one of you who are in Christ to know that you worship and serve the triune God, the triune God of Father, Son, and Spirit. And so this week, I encourage you, I urge you, gaze, think about this mystery, a beautiful mystery that God is one and that God is three. Bask in the Father's love for you. Rejoice in the Father's love for you. Receive the grace of the fullness of the Son. The grace that John says in John chapter one that is poured out upon you. and walk in the Spirit, the Spirit, the exhalation that proceeds from the Father and the Son to dwell in you, to dwell in you. Bask in the Father's love, receive the grace of the Son, and walk in the Spirit, remembering that we serve and commune with the triune God. Shall we pray? Father in heaven, we bow before you this morning, and we do seek to remember that we come to you in the name of Jesus, empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is, of course, oh God, such a revelation to us of how great you are, in some ways of how incomprehensible you are, and how feeble we are. This is a doctrine we could never know except that you have personally revealed it to us through your word. We pray, O Lord, this week that we can take such a formidable doctrine, a doctrine worth dying for, and that it might sustain us through the week, that we might rejoice in the everlasting love of the triune God, who was not lonely and did not create us because he was lonely, but has experienced perfect love from all eternity. Lord, we pray that you will seal these truths upon our hearts and that it might make us to be true followers of Christ. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.