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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.
The Holy Trinity
Series To Know God
Sermon on The Holy Trinity
| Sermon ID | 29251931142346 |
| Duration | 48:42 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Ephesians 1:3-14 |
| Language | English |
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