Well, it seems as if we are doing all right on the streaming sound, but not in here for whatever reasons. The Lord has created sound systems to give pastors patience because these kind of things drive me crazy when they're supposed to be working and they're not. We have been talking about God through these wonderful statements of the 1689 Confession of Faith. This is over a 300-year-old confession of what Baptists believe. Now, there may be some Baptists or some people that call themselves Baptists today that don't believe these things, but this is what Baptists have believed from the beginning over 300 so it was 300 years old and in 19 1969 689 I'm sorry 1989 so that would be 11 years to 2000 so so anyway, it's been over 300 and and 37, 38 years. This particular confession was patterned after the Presbyterian Confession, the Westminster, but of course this is not a Presbyterian Confession, this is a Baptist Confession. There was a Baptist Confession before this in London, the London Baptist put it together and it is not contrary to this. This one is just more expansive and I believe a better document that speaks to the truth of what the scripture teaches. Now, we don't per se believe just confessions, but these confessions are the understanding of Baptists and Baptist pastors and theologians from all of these ages, from the beginning till now. So when we actually look at the confession, what we're actually looking at is the Bible, what these people understood the Bible to believe. And you see it comes from generation to generation to generation. As Paul wrote to Timothy, Give this to faithful men who, you know, you've received it from faithful men. So give it to faithful men who can in turn give it to faithful men. So he received it. That's the first generation. Then he got it. That's the second generation. And then the third generation is who he would give it to. And the fourth generation would be who they would give it to. So we are seeing the progression of Baptist theology. Now Baptist theology or the Baptist church is quite a phenomenon. There is no hierarchy above it. There is no Senate, there is no convention, there is no no organization that's above a Baptist church. In fact, we believe as Baptists that the highest entity in the earth when it comes to Christianity and when it comes to obeying and believing the word of God, the highest entity the highest organization, the highest body, if you will, is the local church. Now local churches get together in associations, they get together in conventions, but these conventions and these associations are not over the church. In fact, each one of these particular groups, each one of these particular branches, if you will, of the Baptist Church are all autonomous. The local church is autonomous. The local association is autonomous. The state convention is autonomous. And the national convention is autonomous. And so the miracle of that is without this hierarchy, making sure everyone stays theologically correct, that the Baptist Church has been theologically correct. Up until recently, it has kept itself, as it were, pure and believing the Word of God. And so we have looked at the first two paragraphs. These were paragraphs per se about God in general. But the third paragraph begins an intimate discussion of this our God. And here's what our forefathers said about him. This is what they believe the scripture teaches. In this divine and infinite being, there are three subsistences. They are of the same substance, but they're three subsistences. And we talked about that last week, about why the Baptist went away from the Westminster and from the Savoy, which is a congregational statement, to the word that they use, the word person. The Baptist uses subsistences to be more precise. and to guard against some things that were creeping in that were not scriptural, that were heretical from various other groups coming into, as the particular Baptists of England were becoming more and more dominant. the General Baptist fading along and ultimately becoming, being absorbed in the Mennonites, but the particular Baptist stronger and stronger, and that's the Baptist that came to the United States of America, and that's the Baptist that founded our convention, the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, you know, like all things modern, things have a tendency, the more modern you become, the less biblical you become. I mean, I just think that cannot even be argued, that as we move along and we become more modern, that the Bible, see, is not looked to and believed as it was in the past. So we must seek out the old paths. We must not become, one who would adopt the spirit of the modern age, but to believe the Bible as it is. And though it's not politically correct, and many people argue against it, you see, against its practices, you know. In fact, I was thinking, I didn't know anything about it. I really don't watch these shows very much, but there was a show that was on, I think, one of the home and garden networks or whatever. Now they're on their own, as I've been told, their own network. But anyway, their last name's Gaines. And something, you know, someone, a homosexual is somehow has gotten into the show and or gotten into the company or whatever it may be and and there was some discussion some discussion from Christians who were watching and and my understanding many Christians did watch these two people as they built houses or remodeled or whatever they did and But that the man, Steve I think is his name, said that basically Christians who were standing against the practice of homosexuality and homosexual marriage were hateful. But see, but that's the spirit of the age, right? They don't see that we are coming from a place of love. If you love someone, you don't want them to be destroyed. You don't want their soul to be damned to hell if you love them, right? You want to tell them the truth. But it's not politically correct to believe the Bible. It's not politically correct to say what God says about how we then should live. So everybody thinks that their opinion is equal to the opinion of the scripture, and it's not. If your opinion is not based upon the word of God, then your opinion is a lie, and it is false. And so we must base our understanding, the way we live, upon the word of God. Same way with understanding who God is, these three subsistences. They are the Father, the Word or the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All three of these subsistences are of one substance, power, and eternity. Sometimes we have said that the Father, Son, and Spirit are equal in essence, in power and in glory. They're expanding that. They said that they're one substance, that is, of whatever God is, all of them are that. Power, they all have equal omnipotence and eternity. They are omnipresent, they are without beginning, without end, each one of these, each having the whole divine essence. So the Father doesn't have a third and the Son a third and the Spirit a third, but every one of them, the Father has it all, the Son has it all, the Spirit has it all. Well, how can these things be? Well, you're never going to figure this thing out logically. And there surely is no analogy that I can give you. There surely is no analogy in our experience and our existence that I can give you that would say it's like this. In fact, it's very dangerous to say that God is like this. I don't know. Did something happen? It hadn't happened. Keep going, he told me. All right, now. So, yet the essence undivided. Now here is, if it's not difficult enough, each sentence makes it even more difficult and beyond our rational ability and logical capacity to understand it. We simply must believe it. So, the essence is undivided. The Father is of none. He stands. Now we're talking about these relationships of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Sometimes it's helpful to talk about the trinity in two terms, ontological, that means ontology, their being, the trinity of being in their being, and then the economic, that is in how they carry out their various works in creation. For example, in creation, you go back to Genesis 1, And you say, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Right? So there's the word Elohim, God. It's plural, by the way. So here is God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and it was void. and the spirit brooded over. It's kind of like, it's really actually the word of a hen who, she's sitting on her eggs. But you would think that a hen just sits on the egg, and then after 21 days they hatch. But that's not what she does. She turns, she broods over them. She will actually turn those eggs. We used to put an X on them in case another hen got up there and laid, one would get the one that was fresh laid because it didn't have the X on. But you'll notice that that X, sometime it'd be on the top, and sometime it'd be on the side, and sometime it'd be underneath because she's brooding them, she's working over them. Well, the Spirit did that, you see. Well, now we have the Father who created, and now here's the Spirit brooding over the face of the deep. But then when we come to the New Testament, we read that Christ, that He made everything, that all things, in John 1, 3, all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. So it is the Spirit who's brooded and yet it is the Son who's created. And so we see in this great Trinity, it is the Father who purposes, it is the Son who accomplishes through the agency and the power of the Spirit. So take that to the work of redemption. Here we are. Our salvation is a triune salvation. It is Father, it is Son, and it is Spirit, you see. How were we saved? We sang this wonderful hymn. I know not how the Spirit moves convincing men of sin, nor how believing in his word creates faith in them, but I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. We know you must be born of the Spirit, but here's redemption. For God so loved the world, So here's the Father. See, there's those people that have this unbiblical understanding that somehow God the Father's against us, and the Son had to go appease Him. And so reluctantly, the Father saved the people that believe in Christ. But that's not right. John 3.16, the greatest verse, the most popular verse, the verse that is mostly most known of all the verses in all the Bible. In fact, it is not only known by its text, but by its reference. Remember the football games? They would just put up John 3.16 behind the kicker, right? Remember? Or behind the goal post, so when you saw, you could see John 3.16, we knew what that meant. What does it say? For God, the Father, so loved that he sent, you see, his son. Just like creation, the work of redemption. How did it happen? The Father purposed it. Before the foundation of the world, you were chosen in Christ before the world began. All that the Father, Jesus says, gives me in John chapter six, shall come to me. And if any man come to me, I will in no wise cast him out. If you come to Christ, you will be accepted. But if you come to Christ, you will be expected. You didn't catch him by surprise. He drew you, remember? I mean, come on, think about your own salvation. Think about that day, that day when it became real to you. What did you feel? The preacher was preaching like the preacher always preached, right? He was saying the same things he's always saying. He was boring the same people he was always boring. And maybe you were one of those bored to tears, wanting it to be over. And then, all of a sudden, the words of the preacher, the voice of the preacher, become the words and the voice of the Spirit, you remember? And when you saw that it wasn't just about them out there, but it was about you in the air. Even as it has been said, this young lady that told me, I knew he died for someone, I just didn't know he died for me. You remember how precious that grace appeared the hour you first believed? No preacher saved you, no mother, no Sunday school teacher, no witness, but the Spirit. The Father purposed But we could never have been saved with this blight of sin on our souls. We never could have been saved with our love of the world and of the flesh of the devil. We never could have been saved without our sin being atoned for. So one Friday afternoon, probably on an April day, Jesus Christ went to the cross beaten, battered, bruised. One up Calvary's mountain, one dreadful more. Walk, Christ, my Savior, weary and worn. facing for sinners death on a cross, that He might save them from endless loss. Blessed Redeemer, precious Redeemer, seems now I see Him on Calvary's tree, wounded and bleeding, for sinners bleeding. Blind and unheed, none of that my friend can save you without this last phrase, dying for me. For me. Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me. That's why an idea of a general atonement could never save anyone. A general atonement has a Savior who cannot save and a redemption that cannot redeem. And an atonement that did not atone. And in fact, if that's your view of it, then you would have to come to the conclusion that He died for no one. But if you understand particular redemption, that He went to the cross, you were not an afterthought, you were a forethought. He went to the cross as an infinite sacrifice for you. He bled and died not for the mass and not for everyone. The salvation, your understanding of salvation. If you are ever in Christ, you must come to the conclusion that He died for you, brought there by the Spirit, and you must experience new birth. Which then causes you to embrace Christ. What is the first act of the regenerated heart? It's to seize Christ. Did you? Are you sitting in here depending upon religious performance? Or because you have attended or joined the church? Are you here today, this morning? Because of that reality in you, the Father who chose you, the Son who redeemed you, and the Spirit who effectually called you. These three. The Father is of none. neither begotten nor proceeding. The son is eternally begotten of the father. So this is how he's revealed to us, eternally begotten. It is his nature to be begotten. You go to the word, the Greek word there, begotten, you go to the Hebrew word begat, it is the father's activity and birth. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. Now we must be careful with this distinction of the ontological and economic trinity. We must not think that the economic trinity is something that came in time. But no, these are eternal positions. These relative positions, relative to one another, positions are from eternity. and the Holy Spirit proceeding from Father and from Son. Again, Jesus says that He's going to leave. In the 15th chapter of John, He's going to leave. And when He leaves, He is going to send Comforter But when the Comforters come Paraclete in the Greek para beside kaleo to be called when this one is going to be called to your side This Comforter come Whom I will send unto you from the father you see it and Even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me. from the beginning, meaning from the beginning of their time when he has called them to himself. So you see, the father is not begotten. We know Christ is begotten, right? John 3.16, he said his only, what kind of son? The little children used to, they didn't know the word begotten, so a lot of times the little children say, he's only a forgotten son, but he's not forgotten, he's begotten. All infinite, without being, therefore but one God, who's not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar, not peculiar in the sense of odd, I mean, we use the word race peculiar, meaning it's odd. No, peculiar in its original meaning means of its own self, particular, set apart. So several peculiar relative to each other properties and personal relations, which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and comfortable dependence upon him. Now, if all of these phrases were not difficult enough, as I've said, then you begin to add these phrases in, it becomes increasingly more difficult to understand these things. Because you can't understand them. You must simply receive them as they are revealed to you. And so Renaghan says the next few phrases articulate the particular relative properties and personal relationships of each subsistence of the Holy Trinity. The Father is unbegotten. The Son is from eternity begotten of the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This is classic Western Trinitarianism. as expressed by the early Nicene Creed. This Nicene Creed, that's from where it came, Asea, it came in 325, AD 325. in its western form. There was an eastern form, but in its western form it's 325. And also, and I'll bring up another name, Athanasian Creed. And you'll remember that Arius and Athanasius in around the 4th century or in the 4th century that they got into a discussion, Arius going on the side of no trinity, Athanasius defending the concept of the trinity and it came down to one word homoousius, homo means the same substance Homoousius, a similar substance And so it was said that all of Christian theology came down to one iota That's the only difference between Homoousius and Homoousius is that iota But all The truth is dependent upon it. Athanasius was right. Arian was wrong. There's still Arians. There's still people that believe in this false concept, the Arian concept of God, leaves out the Trinity. Our Baptist forefathers said that if you don't believe in the Trinity, you can have no According to the scripture, you can have no communion with God and are left out of this most necessary atonement of Christ. You're not saved by what you believe, you're saved because of the grace of God. But if this grace of God comes to you, this saving faith, it will bring these understandings to you. and you will be able to articulate these truths. Well, do we have a microphone? Is this working? All right, I'm going to try to call Sadaq. Hang on just a minute. I know it's a very interesting way to end the sermon, isn't it? There's one thing.