Our Heavenly Father, You are holy, holy, holy indeed, thrice holy. Holy Father, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit. We pray, Lord, that as we look into these mysteries that you've revealed to us, that you would cause us to remove the shoes from our feet so that we may enter onto this holy ground with only that which is the work of your creation and none of our own works. We pray, Lord, that You would bless us as we look into the revelations that You have made of Yourself. And we pray that from it, we would see everything in our lives, in this world, in Your Word, in the work that we have to do in terms of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. The Bible opens in Genesis chapter 1 with a startling revelation. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. The astounding thing that is being revealed here is not the creation of the universe. The astounding thing that is being revealed here is the Trinity. The Bible opens with the Trinity. We see here plainly. Now, it was not plain to the men of these days when the revelation was incomplete. But we see plainly in the light of the incarnation of Christ, when we look back at these passages of Scripture, that God was already beginning to reveal Himself and the essence of who He is. And He reveals it to us in this way. By the decree of God to begin the creation of the universe, by the Holy Spirit who broods over the matter out of which the universe will be made, this unorganized matter that makes up all of what the universe is going to become. And there is the Holy Spirit over it. And that matter stays where it is and does not move until the Word is given. And that Word is given when the Son is sent forth as the Word to bring these things into existence. And then the Holy Spirit activates this mass of matter and it begins to move and have being and it becomes the universe. It is called into existence out of nothing and energized by the Holy Spirit who activates it. And notice that the first thing that God makes is light, energy. He puts that activity into it that makes it begin to move. This is why we don't believe in theistic evolution. Theistic evolution has to do with natural law. Everything was made as bodies and those bodies contained endemically within them natural laws by which they moved about. This is a lie. It's a heinous lie. And what makes it such a heinous lie is not that it's a lie against reality, but that it's a lie against what makes God, God. It's a lie against God Himself, against the Father who decrees, against the Son who goes forth to execute, and against the Holy Spirit who is the energy, the activator that makes things do what they do. He is not only the creator of the universe, but He is the controller of the universe from its very beginning to its very end. And so we see here that at the very beginning of the Bible, God already reveals the Trinity. Already reveals the Trinity. Actually, it comes out in the fourth word in the Bible, God. That word is the word in Hebrew, Elohim. And that contains a sense of plurality. Now, it doesn't tell us everything about what it means for God to be three in one in itself and of itself. But as the revelation begins to unfold throughout Scripture, then God begins to reveal more of these things about Himself. Now, what I would like to do over the course of however many times I get up here and talk to you, is to begin a series with you on the revelation, the progressive revelation of the Trinity. Not so much to get into what the doctrine of the Trinity is, although that comes out in the revelation of the Trinity, but to show how God has revealed Himself throughout the Old Testament, the New Testament, and right on into church history. There's no new revelation in church history. The problem there though is that man has not digested it yet. And so he continues to work on it even during that time until he works out his doctrine of the Trinity which comes completely from the Scripture, from the revelation of God. There's so much involved in this. There's so much involved in it. Because it's one of the great ironies that this imponderable thing, the Trinity, is the fountainhead out of which all knowledge comes. This imponderable Trinity. This thing we cannot grasp. But all knowledge comes from it. That's really knowledge. And nothing makes sense without it. Nothing at all. Nothing connects without the knowledge of the Trinity. It is embedded in all of God's creation. It is embedded within our hearts. It's a part of what makes man, man. We either glorify in it or we pervert it, but it's there. It's there. It's in everything. Now, you can take everything we know about the Trinity and put it in a thimble and still have room for your thumb. Everything we know about the Trinity. Because we will never, ever, ever be able to grasp it. Everything we know about it. We may know more, we may learn more, but God will still be as far away from us in comprehensibility as He ever was. So when we're dealing with this, we have to take off our shoes because we're coming onto holy ground. We have to be very careful how we deal with this because there have been too many people, too many men in the past who have fallen because they've come into this this holy ground with all of their rationalistic guns blazing away and wonder when they stand before a church council accused of heresy. We have to be very careful when we come into this. And I tremble as I stand before you and begin to talk to you about these things because I feel completely, completely inadequate. And yet we must. We have to go there. We have to explore what God has revealed. So, I'm not going to spend as much time talking about the particulars of the Trinitarian doctrine as I'm going to spend in talking to you about how this has been revealed to us throughout the ages. How it is unfolding revelation of the Trinity and that all that we learn about God, all that He has been pleased to reveal to us about Him, really flows out of the doctrine of the Trinity. There's a real interesting passage of Scripture in Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7. There's an interesting passage of Scripture here. A very astounding thing that Jesus says. Matthew 7, 21 through 23. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." Now that one should cause you to just halt up and check yourself out. Because basically what he's saying is, I mean, it looks like these people who are standing before him have done everything right. They call him Lord, Lord. They've done works in his name, and yet he rejects them. And they do not enter into his kingdom and are damned forever. Why? Well, the name of the Lord is given to us in many different ways. And this person comes to him saying, Lord, Lord. Lord, Lord. And Jesus basically says that's insufficient. That will not be enough. But we've done things in your name as well. Insufficient. That is not enough. The name is to point to Him. The name itself is not sufficient. You know, you think about all the names that we know for God. Jehovah, Adonai, Kurios, Lord, Elohim, El Shaddai. On the very, very surface, what these are, are they vibrations in the air that excite your tympanic membrane in your ear. Matter in motion, so to speak. a physical activity that takes place. God does not mean for us to understand that His power and His knowledge is contained in an actuation of nature. His name means far more than that. It's there to point us beyond that to the meaning of the Word, because now we enter into linguistics. to the meaning of the Word and what that reflects about His character. In other words, the name is there to begin to draw us into Him. Into Him. And this is Jesus' point here. There's a disparity between these people who are naming the name and judgment day where they wind up with an unfavorable decision. And what has to happen between the naming of the name and judgment day is union with God, coming to the knowledge of God. That's what has to happen. And if that does not happen, then you get an unfavorable judgment in the end. The law is the earthly expression. Jesus tells them, He says, you have to keep the law. You have to obey me. You have to do My commandments. That's an earthly expression in words. And those are given to activate or to interdict us, to keep in our activities in life, pointing us, not that they, our doing them in itself, has any efficacious value whatsoever, but that in doing these things, it points us to the essence of who He is. They reflect His nature. His laws reflect His nature. They draw us into Him. And that's what God wants to do. He wants to bring His people into Him as far as He will allow us to come. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 10, 4-5. I want to talk about this idea of the knowledge of God. Because I'm going to submit to you that there is a certain kind of knowledge of God that God expects us to know. And that certain kind of knowledge of God is basically the Trinity. It is everything that flows out of that, but it is basically the Trinity. 2 Corinthians 10, 4-5, "...for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds." We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. You see, what has to happen between naming Him Lord and Judgment Day is that we have to come to the knowledge of God which takes our thoughts captive, which molds and transforms our minds and brings us into conformity to His will. Turn with me to Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1. I'd really like to go through this whole chapter, but I don't have time. Colossians 1, 9 through 12. There's a couple of things I want to point out to you about this. Colossians 1, 9-12. And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all, spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him. bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints and light. He wants to give us the knowledge of God. He wants to give us the knowledge of God to cause us to increase in it so that what will happen? So that we will have good works and bear fruit. See, this is what's missing in what this person who comes to Him saying, Lord, Lord, has missed completely. They come to Him bringing works that they have sprinkled His name over and expect it to be acceptable in His sight. In other words, they're offering their works to Him as a gift or as a merit, and He's saying, no, I'm not going to take it. Where do those works have to come from? Those works have to come out of the knowledge of God. They have to well out of the knowledge of God. And look at a few things in this passage, Colossians 1. With the knowledge of His will, in verse 9, with the knowledge of His will, His will. There's the Father. There's the decree. There's the foundation. In all spiritual wisdom and understanding. There's the Son, the Word, the Revelation. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, may you be strengthened with all power. There's the Holy Spirit. And you're going to run through the New Testament and you're going to see All through it, interlaced in the New Testament. You cannot read the New Testament in any place without seeing the Father and the Son and the Spirit doing their work as their persons throughout. The whole Word of God is full of it. Full of it. It's not like you have these large passages that are all about the Father, and then these large passages that are all about the Son, and these large passages that are all about the Spirit. It's intermingled and interwoven in all of it, all the way through, all the way through. And that revelation goes all the way back to the very beginning of the revelation of the Trinity. You see, it's necessary for God to allow us to know the knowledge of God. It's necessary for Him to reveal something about Himself to us that's completely unknowable to us, totally unknowable to us. And that's what the Trinity is. It's an incomprehensibility. God reveals Himself to us in Scripture in a lot of different ways. He reveals Himself to us negatively. He calls himself infinite, which means without boundaries. He calls himself eternal, which means without time. And what does that say? It says we're bound to time, we're bound to space, God's not. And then he may give us a positive description of himself like almighty. And what does that say? It doesn't really say as much about Him because it really doesn't describe His strength so much as it tells us what we're not. He is almighty. We're weak. He is holy. We are sinful. All of these things, comparisons, analogies, anthropomorphisms, These kind of shadowy images of who God is. The Trinity is totally different. Completely different. Basically what He does is He comes and takes us by the hand as if we were a blind child, which we are. And He takes us by the hand and places our hand upon the fringe of His glory and says, describe that for me. If it were fur, we would say God was fur. If it were feathers, we would say He was feathers. If it were water, we would say He was water. But when He puts our hands on the Trinity, we draw back and go, I don't know what that is. It is wholly other than me. Completely different. from what I am. And this is what we call one of those incommunicable attributes of God. One of those that speak about God in such a way we can't comprehend. We can't get it. Now, you can start trying to apply all kinds of analogies to the Trinity. And when you do, you're going to violate it. That's all you can do is violate the Trinity every time you try to apply an analogy to it. For instance, you can say, well, God's like a triangle. Well, that's a heresy. God's not like a triangle because He's not three parts in one. Or you can say, well, it's like a balloon in a balloon in a balloon. But what is that? That's tritheism, another heresy. Or you can say that he's like a man who's a man and he's a husband and he's a father. And that's docetism because it puts faces on God. And none of those things speak to what God is. And every time we try to lay our reasoning on the Trinity, we violate the Trinity. And what we wind up with is a God who does not exist. And to me, this is the purpose, one of the great purposes of the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity that is there to identify the God who is over against any gods that we may think of who do not exist. Now, why do we need to study the Trinity? We need to study the Trinity. You need to study the Trinity for yourself personally. Know who we're dealing with in our daily lives, you know. Who is this person you're praying to? Is this person you're praying to God? Or is this person you're praying to a God of your own making? You see, the problem with this man who says, Lord, Lord, and winds up with an unfavorable judgment in the end is that he's got the right name, but the wrong definition behind him. He has the right name, but the wrong person. Now, I don't know why. I'm not sure, you know, it doesn't tell us why there, but there are many reasons why this happens. There are probably millions of people in Western civilization who are praying to Jesus Christ, the name, not the person. And who's in here that they call Jesus Christ is another God, who is not Jesus Christ. And so the God they think they know is not the God who is himself revealed. Where does this God come from? Well, He comes from here. He comes from the stuff that makes up what you think out of. So basically, you take your mind stuff and you put your mind stuff together and create an image and an idol, call it Jehovah, call it God, call it Jesus Christ, call it whatever you want to, but it doesn't matter what you call it, it's you that you're worshiping. Or it's whatever society has molded that image into you. And you have to make sure you know when you bow your head and pray, okay? You're going to bless the food. You're going to ask God's blessings on the food. You bow your head right there before you're about to ask God's blessing on the food and you say, Lord, bless this food. Lord, Lord, who's that? Who are you talking to? And you need to make sure that you understand that the person that you're talking to is, in fact, the Lord. And not just your false image that you call the Lord. Sincerity does not save. Alright? It doesn't matter that you may very sincerely believe in this person that you believe in. That's why God must reveal Himself to us. He must reveal Himself. We cannot reach to Him and attain to Him and know Him. He must reveal Himself to us. And what He reveals about Himself to us is oftentimes things we just can't understand at all. So you need to know that in your own personal life. You need to know where the foundations of meaning and purpose and values and ethics come from. They come from God, the God who is. The true Creator. You need to know who it is that reveals these things to us as He reveals the ways of God to us and not just His acts. You need to know who it is that enables us to live according to the will of God. So you need to know the foundations of knowledge, all knowledge, from the Father. You need to know how God reveals Himself from the Son And you need to know what you must do and how you must do it from the Spirit. And that takes in all of life right there. And you're bound to it. We're all bound to it. We must know Him as Trinity. And you need to teach your children this too. I challenge you to. You know, sometimes we get to thinking about our children, well, they're not ready for this yet. Who are you to say? Is the Bible written just for you? It's written for your children as well. Is this covenant just for you? Or for you and your children as well? Teach your children the Trinity. Say, but they can't understand it. Do you? Do you understand it? And how much more do you think you understand it now than they will when you explain it to them? You tell it to them because ultimately what we're going to find out is this has nothing to do with reason and knowledge. This has to do with faith. This is the test case for faith right here. This is basically where God presents himself and says, you'll either accept this or you won't. And I will tell you something right now. As soon as you take the evidentialist approach to the Trinity, you'll lose it. You will lose it immediately. As soon as you begin to say, I must wait for all of the premises and evidence to be amassed before I can draw a conclusion on this, no conclusion will ever be drawn. And that's the point of it. That's the point of it. The point of it is to say to you, you believe in me as Trinity. You believe in me. Because I said that's what I am. It's that simple. It's just that simple. It's the test case of faith. Because that's what faith is. Faith is our believing in Him without the evidence. So many people approach the Scriptures. The first thing they do is say, well, I've got to read it through first. I've got to work it over, chew it over in my mind, compare it to a few things, find out whether or not I really go along with this, wait for more of the evidence to come in. I'm still hung up on this creation thing over here. I'm not so sure about resurrection. I mean, that's a pretty difficult thing to deal with, resurrection. I've seen a lot of dead. I've never seen them coming alive again. You know, all of my exposures of all of these things to my senses doesn't inform me that these things are quite possible, so I'm going to have to do some surveys, read some books, Wikipedia, whatever it takes, and find out, you know, whether this is just the kind of thing that I can accept or not. And that will honor God because God will not be honored with me if I just jump on this thing and jump into the dark, blindly leap into the dark by faith. He won't like that. He wants me to struggle for it. He wants me to strive for it. God says, you struggle for it, you're fighting with me. You're struggling with me. I tell you what I am and you believe it. That's it. That's it. It's just that simple. And it's just that hard. It's just that impossible. Because it goes against the grain of what we are 100%. We need to know the Trinity. You need to teach it to your children. Children don't start out skeptical in the sense that adults do. It takes a certain degree of sophistication to get to the point to where you're so smart that you become dumb. Which is what basically adults do. They become so smart, they outsmart themselves. Right out of the truth. It's amazing. In the church today, there's a big struggle over egalitarianism in the churches. All through the churches, there's a big struggle over feminism and egalitarianism. Should women be pastors? Should women be pastors? So you read a passage of Scripture like 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 2. It says women are to remain silent in the church. They are not to be leaders in the church. And every child can read that and understand exactly what it means. It means what it says. But adults, after they get sophisticated and educated and begin to seek Enfranchisement and such things as that talk themselves right out of it. Right out of it. Now, I just hold that up as an example. There are thousands of other ones. The Bible, it's a two-edged sword. It either draws you in because you are effectually called or it is a trap that snaps right on your leg and won't let you go any further. Because what it breaks down to is how you approach it, whether you approach it with your shoes on or whether you take your shoes off before you go in. You know, we talk a lot in this church about the real problem with worship practices in various churches across the country. I don't know. I think we probably don't need to say much more about that. I mean, we could probably, you know, come up with a decision and vote on it or something and say, let's not even mention the bad worship practices that are going on in churches anymore. Why don't we just stop doing that? And I'd probably say, well, that's fine with me. That's fine with me. Let's don't talk about it anymore. You know why? Because that's not the problem. The problem is that people worship God badly because they don't know Him. I mean, worship starts going bad because people don't know God. How you cut the Trinity has to do with how you're going to approach God. If you understand God as He is and as He reveals Himself to be in the Scriptures, It's not a matter of deciding how to go through the door. It's a matter of deciding when your knees are going to stop knocking enough to get through the door in the first place. Because you will have developed in the knowledge of God a reverential awe for Him. And your worship will begin to fall into its place. People are worshipping God badly because that person they say they are worshipping is Lord, Lord, but is not God. The person is not behind that person and that's why. That has to be what was in Nadab and Abihu's mind, you know, as they were swinging strange fire around inside of the tabernacle. They knew the name of Jehovah had been revealed. But obviously, they had some construct of an Egyptian God in their minds when they started pulling out their own incense. Something was in there, but it wasn't Jehovah. Okay? Worship and the knowledge of God go together. You know God, you worship God because you fear God. Okay? That's why we need to know these things. Now, the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity is incomprehensible. We've said that over and over again. And we cannot ever have a comprehensive knowledge of the Trinity. I mean, there's just no way. There's no way in the world. And, you know, what's so strange is how you can say that, you can say that, you can say that, and the first thing everybody will do is start trying to come up with these analogies we've talked about, try to start figuring it out, do some kind of rational function on it, or try to all make it fit together in And not have any frayed ends or anything of that sort. Because there's one thing that rationalist man hates. And we're all rationalist man until we come to know Christ. But there's one thing that rationalist man hates. He hates frayed ends. He doesn't like threads of knowledge hanging off and battering about in the wind. He wants to tie them all off. He wants to tie them all off. He's just manic about that. Got to tie those things off. Got to have it all to where it's working just right in a pattern where it connects from beginning to end in the whole nine yards. And God in the revelation of Himself puts the Trinity out there and He says, there's one praying in for you right there. You're not tying this one together. You will not. Because if you tie these ends together, You won't know me. You won't know me. You'll know some false guy, but you won't know me. So here's what we have to come to. We have to come to the conclusion that Paul came to in Romans chapter 11. And that conclusion we have to come to is that the incomprehensibility of the Trinity and the inability of us to ever come to a comprehensive knowledge of it is the point. That is the point. Not the substance of how we go about figuring out what the Trinity means. What the point is, is that we don't understand it. What the point is, is that we can't understand it. And there's a reason for that. Paul says, as regards the gospel, Romans 11, 28, as regards the gospel, they, the Jews, are enemies of God for your sake, but as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. There's a great paradox right there. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen. It's a mystery. It's a mystery. God is a mystery. And why? Because it proves to us that God is God and not man. That's why it is a mystery. And that's why it must be a mystery. You know, men are great at making gods. They're great at manufacturing gods. We're just so good at it. You know, we have this eradicate instinct for worship. And it's been misdirected since the time of the fall. And we've been worshiping everything that moves and everything that doesn't. We've been cut off from heaven by the fall so that we no longer have the sensitivities to the spiritual world anymore. We have a dead spirit that now cannot comprehend the things of God. And all that's alive, left alive to die and decay on this earth, is the body and all that goes with it. The body's mind, the body's soul, the body's emotions and experiences. The things of earth. Which is why we have rationalism, naturalism, materialism, which basically says it's all matter in motion. That's all we are. Your love for your mother. Nothing but chemical reactions and so forth. You know, amorphisms going off and all this kind of stuff. Just molecules moving around. That's what we are. And there's no meaning in that. There's no value. There's no purpose in it whatsoever because that's all that we are. And that's what happens when we're cut off from the spiritual. We can't comprehend that anymore because we're dead to it. That's why it has to be revealed to us because we're dead to it. And we only have eyes for earth. So what does that instinct to worship do? It finds things to worship because it can't comprehend God anymore. He's out of the picture now. And so it looks for things, the creature, to worship. Things beneath, things above, and things before us. Those things that are beneath us, the dead, animals, plants, minerals, things that are before us, man and mankind, things that are above us, angels, the state, Olympus, all of those big principles out there. Even the biosphere, you know, something just really interconnected and bigger than us. I don't know, I have no doubt that we could possibly, I have no doubt we could do this. Worship the internet, that's big, okay. Google, Google's big. It's God-like. We could definitely worship God Google, okay? Because that is the direction that our hearts go in. That's the direction that our minds go in. Now, look how God remedies that when He reveals Himself, Philippians 2, 9 through 11. He exactly goes to the heart of man and re-enlivens that which has been been made dead. By what? The humility of Christ. Therefore, and that's there since Jesus, the One who was God, but did not grasp at His divinity, has humbled Himself up to the point of death. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name. Here we see the person and the name together Completely together. Organically together. Divinely together. The name and the person together. So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven on earth and under the earth. Everything that's an object to worship to us bows before Him and bows before His name. And confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So, how do you get from Lord, Lord to a favorable decision on the day of judgment? Well, you get there through the knowledge of God. And when we say knowledge, we don't mean just knowing things because you can't even know those things unless they've been taught to you by God. But it is a relationship that you have with God, a union with God that brings you to this place where you can name Him Lord and see the Christ who is attached to the name as He is, as He is, not as we might invent Him to be. The same is true of Trinity. You know, even the pagans have made stabs at the Trinity over the past. And basically what they've come up with is the same thing that heretics have, tritheism, polytheism, monotheism. That's all that you can do when you begin to play around with the Trinity. Because understand, polytheism, even monotheism, reaction against the Trinity, polytheism, the fragmentation of God, tritheism, The attempt at explaining analogously what the three in one means. You see that in Hindu. The Muslims are monotheists. And all of these are attempts on the part of men to try to come to terms with the Trinity. Because even though men did not understand the Trinity fully in ancient times, they had an understanding of a one God who was somehow plural. And that goes all the way back to the beginning of Revelation. And if I get a chance to do more in this, I'll open that up and let you see how that works in the Old Testament, and maybe take a look at a little bit of ancient history to see what some of their attempts were, and then move on as God begins to reveal Himself as Trinity more and more. God has revealed himself as Trinity ever since the beginning, but he hasn't opened it up all of a sudden, but in slow and painstaking processes over generation after generation, century after century. Why? Why so long in the making? Well, it's basically because we're dumb. And I hate to be so simplistic about it, but that's what it is. We're not only dumb, but we're made dumber by sin. And so God, instead of coming to us and saying, I am three in one, right at the very beginning, He gives us a seed and plants the seed in the corpus of human knowledge, which is protected of the corpus of human knowledge, the corpus of divine knowledge, which is protected by the church. And let that begin to grow and grow and grow and grow over history. And as he reveals more and more of it, because history to God is a garden, he plants seeds in it and watches things come up to fruition. His first clue, as we've seen, is in creation. He gives more clues in the Revelation, the word Elohim, the three men who came to Abraham and so on throughout the Old Testament. The representation of the number three. Have you ever noticed how the number three just keeps hammering and hammering and hammering away in the Old Testament? Three. Three, three, three, three, three. Three times everybody's symbol in Israel. Why three? Why not two? Why not four? Why don't we do it more than three times? Isn't more better? God says three. Get that number in your head. Three cubits. Three pillars. Three bases. Three years. Three days. Three tenths. Three cities. Three men. Three parts, three witnesses, three this, three that, three this, three that, three this, three that. All the way through the Old Testament. Just get your concordance out and look up three. And then get ready. Pages and pages and pages of threes. And you say, why is God doing that? Well, it's kind of like, you know, Teletubbies or Sesame Street, you know. You just keep doing it over and over and over again. Finally, we start going, you know, there's something significant about the number three. And it's only when men begin to just begin to grasp it that He comes along and begins to open up the fullness. And the fullness of this revelation is in Christ. The fullness of it is in Christ. You see it at the very beginning of His ministry where for the first time since creation, we see. And of course, we weren't there to see at creation. But now there are men all over the place. So this is being revealed. It's being shown. Where He comes out of the waters of baptism, The second person of the Trinity. And the voice speaks from heaven. The first person of the Trinity. And the dove comes down and rests upon Him. The third person of the Trinity. And this is why we baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Because the baptism and the regeneration is applied by the whole Trinity. Decreed by God and predestined. Manifested by Christ in incarnation. And in the accomplishment of our atonement. And applied to us by the Holy Spirit who energizes us and enables us by grace to be His servants. And it has to all be there. Or none of it's there. And He reveals this to us. Not a comprehensive knowledge, but a fullness of revelation. A fullness of revelation. In other words, He tells us as much about Himself as He knows He will. And then it's up to us to meditate on that as David says, day and night. Day and night I will meditate on this. And in the end, what's going to happen, says David, I will stand in the judgment and in the congregation of the righteous because I have meditated on these things all of my life long. All knowledge comes out of this. All of it does. End out with a passage from Judges, Judges chapter 18. Because God tells us very early in the Bible that we have real major problems with this doctrine. Really major problems with this doctrine. Let me just read this story for you. Starting in verse 14. Then the five men who had gone to scout out the country of Laish, this is for the tribe of Dan. These scouts are going out for the tribe of Dan. Dan's a loose bunch of clan that hasn't got its inheritance yet because they're too lazy. And so they're going to look for a city that'll be easy to take, and that'll be their inheritance. That's their view of how to do conquest of Canaan. And so they send these five men out. And the five men come back and said to their brothers, do you know that in these houses there are an ephod, household gods, a carved image, and a metal image? Now they're talking about Micah's house, the Ephraimite. They're saying in his house there is these things. Now, therefore, consider what you will do." And they turned aside there and came to the house of young Levi at the home of Micah and asked him about his welfare. Now, 600 men of the Danites, armed with their weapons of war, stood by the entrance of the gate. And the five men who had gone to scout out the land went up and entered and took the carved image, the F of the household gods, the metal image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with 600 men armed with weapons of war. And when these went into Micah's house and took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the metal image... Oh, by the way, did you notice how many times that was repeated? I mean, God does that. Did you get that? The ephod, the household gods, and the carved and metal image. Okay? All right. Just want to make sure you got that. Then he says, what are you doing? And they said to him, keep quiet, put your hand on your mouth and come with us and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be a priest of the house of one man or to be a priest of the tribe and clan in Israel? And the priest's heart was glad and he took the ephod and the household gods and the carved image and went along with the people. So they turned and departed, putting the little ones of the livestock and the goods in front of them. When they had gone a distance from the home of Micah, the men who were in the houses near Micah's house were called out and they overtook the people of Dan. And they shouted to the people of Dan who turned around and said to Micah, what is the matter with you that you come with such a company? And he said, you take my gods that I made and the priests and go away and what have I left? How then do you ask what is the matter with you? And the people of Dan said to him, do not let your voice be heard among us lest angry fellows fall upon you and you lose your life with the lives of your household. And the people of Dan went their way wisely. And when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his home. But the people of Dan took what Micah had made, and the priests who belonged to him, and they went to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, struck them with the edge of the sword, burned the city with fire, and there was no deliverer, because it was far from Sidon, and they had no dealings with anyone. It was in the valley that belongs to Beth Rahab. Then they rebuilt the city and lived in it, and they named the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their ancestor, who was born to Israel, Jacob. But the name of the city was Laish at first. And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves. And Jonathan, the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. So they set up Micah's carved image that he made as long as the house of God was at Shiloh. Now, when you're reading in Judges, And you start out with the birth of Samson back in chapter 13 of Judges. When you get to the part where it says, and Samson died, read two more chapters because you have not come to the end of the story. You've got to go on and read two more chapters. This is the end of the story of Samson. Actually, it's the end of the story of how God revealed Himself in Judges chapter 13 to Manoah and his wife as Trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He revealed Himself to them. Not full, still a shadow, but very much revealed Himself to them at that time. And they sought after that knowledge of Him. And now look what happens at the end of the story. Remember, Samson was a Danite. And all of these things are happening between Zorah and Eshtiol. And now here the Danites are, a clan that's a tribe and a tribe that's a clan. Nothing more, nothing less. And what do they do with the knowledge of the revelation of the Trinity? They make two images, a carved one and a metal one. And to them, from this time on, that's Jehovah. That's Jehovah from this time on. Oh, there's a distinction there, wood and metal. But that's Jehovah to these people from this time on. And look what happens to their worship. Instead of Aaron, they see Moses. Isn't that better? Isn't Moses better than Aaron? It's always like that. It's the way we always rationalize ourselves into a corner. As soon as we lose sight of who God is, the first thing we do is we start saying, you know, there's something superior to what we're doing here. And let's do that instead. And then your worship starts falling apart. And your prayer life starts falling apart. And then your walk and your works and your fruit and everything goes down like a house of cards. And the next thing you know, you have left Israel for good. If you're going to worship the right God, if you're going to have the right worship, you have to have the right God. Because God and His religion go together hand in hand. This requires an acceptance of things that we don't understand. And God lays these things out for us as mysteries so that we have no choice but to either accept them or reject them. Now, we have a lot of ways of rejecting things. We can reject things by saying, I believe in that, and then changing it in here, okay? We can confess the right confession and yet have all the wrong definitions. And when Jesus does judgments, He looks past what you say and right into you. Right into you. At the true person who's in there and the true belief that's in there. And that's what He judges by. Faith is not a holding ground for further evidence. It's not a place where we park it for a while and see what comes in. We're to believe God. We're to believe what He tells us about Himself for one reason and one reason only, and that's because He said it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do ask that You would Build us up in faith. Cause us not to shirk back away from You because You are incomprehensible to us. But open up our hearts and transform them and circumcise our hearts so that that is the very thing that brings us to You. That we can look at Thor and see just a dumb jock, that we can look at Zeus and see some immoral person there, that we can look at Krishna and see some gay person on a lotus. Lord, these gods are no gods. They're insufficient, and they do not satisfy. But when we see the God who is one and three, Almighty. Omnipotent. Omniscient. Infinite. Absolute. Eternal. The things that You reveal to us that You are. Those things that we can't comprehend. Those things that have a tendency to make us look so small and go against our sense of humanism. Lord, for those very reasons, we may accept those things because we know that we can have confidence in You. We know that we can believe you when you speak. We know that when you say you will do something, that you have all power to do it, because you control your universe as you have controlled it from the very beginning, and will to the very end. As you demonstrate to us time and time again throughout Scripture, that you are the rock, reliable upon which to build our faith. Help us to think on these things and to meditate on them all of our lives long. Help us not to shirk away from them because they make our brains hurt. But cause us, Lord, to think on the things of You and meditate on the things of You so that we may know You better. Send Your Holy Spirit to us. Show us these things. Enable us. Make us willing and able servants before You. And we lift these things up to You in the name of Jesus. Amen.