Answers In Genesis - Sunday School - Week 10

, let's go ahead and, and pray and then we'll jump into our lesson. Our Father, we thank you for just a beautiful morning that we can be together to study your word. We ask that you just fill us with your Spirit as we fellowship around these truths. we thank you, Lord, God, for sending your Son.

We thank you, Jesus, for coming and Living and dying. And we thank you for your intercession and before the throne for us. And we thank you, Lord, that you're coming back to take us to be with you and we thank you, Jesus, that you've sent us the Holy Spirit. And we thank you, Holy Spirit, for convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

We thank you for illuminating your word. We ask that you do that this morning. we thank you for, just, preserving us and keeping us safe, in Christ. Lord, we ask that you just receive glory this morning.

We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. All right, let me Give you guys a couple updates here before we actually get into the lessons. Several of you have been asking about my wife, Katie, and appreciate your guys' prayers.

And, concerns, she is gonna be having surgery on Thursday, and, the surgeon that we've been connected with, his children have the same piano teacher as our children. And in fact, he went to school with Doctor Gary Chan, who's a member here at Cornerstone and Doctor Chan contacted Doctor Victor beforehand and, and it's really neat to see how the Lord has worked things out. And he actually penciled Katie in for surgery before we even met with him. So her surgery is coming sooner than later.

If he wouldn't have penciled it in, we'd be looking at January. And so, we're thankful that she's able to have the surgery on Thursday. They're gonna remove the entire thyroid and a couple of lymph nodes, and so she'll be recovering for 2 to 4 weeks. And so if you guys could just continue to pray for her, we appreciate it.

so we've seen the, the Lord answering prayers and And we're thankful. Katie's like going through this nesting mode right now where like the whole house is getting entirely cleaned up. So, So that's where we're at. this morning, we're gonna be answering this and other questions that you have behind me on the screen.

Has God ever been lonely? Has God Ever been lonely? I used to teach at Terrace Hills Middle School out here in Grand Terrace. I taught English for about 4 or 5 years.

And I remember we had an assembly one time and a lot of my, most of my colleagues knew I was a Christian. And we had this assembly where this gal came in and told Stories or myths of origins from different cultures. And so she came in and began to tell an origin myth about how that long, long time ago, God was, was very lonely and God had nobody to talk to and nobody to love. And so God created a man and he created a woman, and then he had friendship and he had the ability to share love with someone.

And one of my colleagues who knew I was a Christian and she didn't know really a whole lot about Christianity, she just looks over at me like, whoa, isn't this great? Wow, they're talking about God here in the school and she just looks at me as if I would be very approving of, of the story. And I, I just smiled this half fake smile and oh, yeah, but inside, I was just like, this is terrible. And later, she came up and asked me, what do you think of that?

And I said, well, Well, God never gets lonely, has never been lonely. he did not have to create to have a friend, and this opened up a conversation, about the doctrine of the Trinity, and we over the years were able to talk about the gospel and things, many different things, but so we got to talk about the Trinity and the fact that It's really, if you think about it, it's really only within the Trinity that you have a personal God that does not create out of need. But just creates the share of himself.

Because in the doctrine of the Trinity, we have Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existing together for all of eternity.

So, there is eternal love, eternal relationship, eternal friendship. In fact, relationship is essential to who God is. So, God does not create to have a relationship. He creates and shares relationship.

So when you're, when you're talking to unbelieving friends or let's say you're talking to an Islamic friend. Guess what? Allah did not create., Allah had to create in order to fulfill something in Himself. Allah creates to have a friend.

Allah creates in order to share. even the way Judaism is constructed, Judaism has the wrong idea. God has to create in order to have a relationship. Virtually all other religions that have a single God that is eternal.

They have a God that cannot have relationship without creation. And so that's what we're, we're gonna be talking about as we continue our, our, subject on the Bible. This class is called We Can Trust the Bible, part of our adult equipment school that we've been doing here at Cornerstone. Today's lesson, the Trinity.

did any of you guys get to take the quiz? Raise your hand if you took the quiz online. All right. Did you guys, how'd you guys score?

Anybody get 100%? Missed 10, it's pretty good, pretty good. Yeah, it's not, that's actually not an easy quiz and you'll see why here in a moment. there are certain aspects about the Trinity, that are difficult to understand and if you haven't, had a course on the Trinity or taken a class on the Trinity, some of the doctrines can be a little bit confusing.

If you want to go after the class and take the test. You can go to Chali.com. That's Tim Challis. He's a Christian blogger, really excellent resource that I get his stuff every day.

He, he just updates me on different things going on in the news, theology, sometimes just stuff that's going on and, and gives you a good idea from a Christian worldview. Go to the upper right-hand corner and type Trinity quiz. You'll see that they've got the they got Trinity quiz, they have a quiz on the Christ, they have various theological quizzes that you can take and one on the Doctrine of scripture that I took this last week, cause I'm doing a class right now on the Doctrine of scripture on Wednesdays.

so let's, let's do a little bit of review on where we've come so far.

We have a spent quite a bit of time in this class basically just developing the doctrine of the Bible. And it's very important for us to establish the doctrine of scripture as a basis for how we study scripture and how we think about scripture. And so we spent time at the very beginning of this class talking about what we call the sufficiency of the scripture, that all scripture is God breathed and it's profitable. Everything that we need for the most basic questions in life.

Come from the Bible. and I've, I've actually been surprised at what an amazing comfort this doctrine has been as our family has been dealing with cancer. the Bible gives a lot of information about how to deal with trials and sickness, but the word cancer is nowhere in the Bible. The word thyroid is nowhere in the Bible.

But God gives so much information about how to deal with sickness, how to deal with trials, and the thing that's been comforting to me about this doctrine is one of the applications, and that is that God's not requiring us to obey anything that's not taught by implicitly or explicitly in the scripture. And so let me tell you how this is a comfort to us. those of you guys that have been through sickness or illness or what have you, There's all kinds of ways to think about how you should treat something like cancer.

we're going, and my wife is having surgery next week, but she's also changed her diet and this and that, and people have very, various opinions on how to approach it.

Some people drive down to Mexico, spend thousands of dollars on alternative medicines, people do this, people do that, and it can be overwhelming. We had an extended family member that drove 3 hours to come to our house in tears pleading with us not to have surgery or, to do various methods and stuff and But what does the Bible tell us about these types of things? Well, the Bible tells us that God's in control. The Bible tells us that we can go to our elders for prayer.

The Bible tells us that he heals sometimes, but sometimes he doesn't heal. there's a lot that the Bible tells us, and then there's a lot the Bible just flat out doesn't tell us. So here's a scenario. Imagine, imagine my wife and I, we decide to go get surgery and she has her thyroid out, and then, God forbid, 6 months down the road, she dies of cancer and she goes and she stands before the Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ looks at her and he says, Katie, You totally missed it.

It was right there in the Bible that all you had to do was this alternative method, and then you'd have been OK. Is that what Jesus is gonna say? No. What we have in the scriptures is sufficient to answer the most basic questions in life.

And so while there may be questions out there that we wrestle with, we don't have to feel guilt-ridden, we don't have to feel overwhelmed, even if we make mistakes on things that aren't explicitly explained in the Bible. The biggest things that, that God cares about are in scripture, salvation, the eternal well-being of souls, people getting saved, God getting glory, right? And so it's been, it's been an amazing comfort actually. I hope it's a comfort to you just to know that everything that we really need is right here in the Bible when it comes to salvation, issues of growth, and so on and so forth.

We're following a literal historical grammatic hermeneutic that just means we're reading the Bible in the plain sense of the term of the book. We wanna do ex Jesus. What is it that we don't want to do? I said Jesus, we're trying to really pull out of the text what it means.

And this is very, very important for how we interpret the Bible. it's easy to say we're gonna do ex of Jesus until suddenly we come into something in life that contradicts our viewpoint. Once it we something contradicts our viewpoint, then we want, it's easy for us to find what we want in the Bible, right? Somebody says they don't believe in dating unbelievers until all of a sudden their heart starts, starts pattering for an unbeliever, boy or girl.

People say they don't believe in certain type of divorce until all of a sudden they want to get a divorce. people will say different things. We need to be willing to do ex of Jesus, not I of Jesus. we affirm inerrancy and inerrancy is completely under attack today.

It's one of the reasons why over at Grace Community Church, they had a big inerrancy conference last year. The inerrancy is not under attack by liberals, it's under attack by evangelicals. We believe that the Bible is true and it does not affirm anything contrary to fact. It's, is it reasonable for God to swear by Himself?

Yes, it is. Therefore, we can uphold because God can't swear by anything higher and if God has given us truth in His word, then there's no higher authority than what's in His word and so it's not circular reasoning to try to demonstrate truth from the Bible. We can use the Bible to prove the Bible, we talked about that, that the Bible is authoritative. We affirm the preservation of scripture that God has preserved it to today, and there's both a sovereign and a human side to that.

God has promised to preserve his word, but he's also given us the responsibility to preserve His word. There is no neutral ground. We can't just say, leave the Bible aside as we enter into various discussions. Try to pretend like there's neutral ground as if people aren't bringing in their own worldview.

Everybody brings worldview. Everybody brings glasses into the discussion. We just need to admit what glasses we're wearing and see which worldview makes most sense. All right, Let's see.

Let's, that's a basic review of what we've covered. Last week, Dan spent time on talking about what God is like, going over the attributes of God. Anybody remember the, the little memory device that we used and how to remember some of those incommunicable attributes? A E I O U A E I O U, right?

So always what? Eternal Immutable. Was it immutable? What's the I stand for?

I, I can't even remember my own, my own memory device. Always eternal. It's O is omniscient, no, omnipresent, U is unchangeable, so I is not immutable. What it's independent.

I is independent, which is what we're gonna be fleshing out today. So, God is independent. He does not need to depend upon any other creatures and so on and so forth. So, any questions that you guys have about Last week's material, questions, comments?

Criticisms or concerns? All right, let's turn to Genesis chapter one. We're going to go back and take a look. It's some passages of scripture that we've looked at before, but we're going to look at it.

In answering this question, Has God ever been lonely? So Genesis chapter one. Starting in verse one. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void. Darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. Look at verse 26.

Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea. Right here in the very beginning of the Bible, there's no explanation offered as to where God comes from. He is there in the beginning.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God is just there. But then in verse two, God, Elohim is called the Spirit. The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

There's not enough information right here in this verse to necessarily demonstrate the Trinity, but there's at least some different description of God. You have Elohim. And now you have the breath of Elohim, right? The Ruach of Elohim is now hovering over the face of the water.

So, at the very least, it's something that's emanating from God in verse 2. But then in verse 26, we have a really interesting use of pronouns where it says, then God said, singular, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. And this is, caused many theologians over the years to speculate that right here we have an evidence of the Trinity. At the very least, there seems to be some evidence of plurality in verse 26.

Now, some people are gonna give various explanations for these pronouns. One view would be, if you're coming from a, let's say a Jewish perspective, who is the us or the, or the our in verse 26? Who's God talking to? OK, the Jews would not say himself.

Angels. Yeah, so why is there an us? It would be angels. God's turning and he's looking to the angels and he says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

What's one problem with that viewpoint? OK, well, we could say that the angels are like God in some way. And then he's saying, OK, let's make man in the likeness of me and you. There's another problem though.

Yeah, so this has the angels involved in creative powers. Now, theoretically, it could be that God had given creative powers to the angels, but if that were true, it seems like we would see some evidence of that in later portions of scripture. angels participating in the creative act. this would be the only place in all of the Bible that we see angels participating in the creative act of Adam and Eve.

everywhere else, it seems like it's just an act of God. And so there does seem to be reason, especially as we read, we use what we call the analogy of scripture. We're not just reading Genesis isolated from the rest of the Bible, but we have, we have our glasses on. We're actually reading the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament because we believe that all scripture is inspired of God.

And so as we look at the Old Testament through the New Testament, it would make sense that God is speaking to Himself. You have a sin, well, I shouldn't say it should make sense. It makes grammatical sense, even grammatical sense. Let me restate this.

We have God singular saying, let us make man in our image. It doesn't make sense, but we just, we're looking at the, at just what it says on the page, and there seems to be a singular and a plural, not necessarily a trinity, but at least a singular and a plural. Does that make sense? So So we have more than one person involved in this creative act.

In verse 1 and 2, we have God and then we have the Ruak or the Spirit of God involved. So there seems to be some evidence here of more than one involved, and yet the singular seems to point to one. Let's turn to Psalm 33:6. We're gonna be, a lot of what we're gonna be talking about today.

If it makes perfect sense to you, then I'm doing something wrong. Because the, the doctrine of the Trinity defies any explanation, even in nature. And so let's look at Psalm 33:6. Where it says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and the host of them by the breath or the roach of his mouth.

And so we have God is, this is in a a a a form of poetry reiterating what we've seen in Genesis that creation came about as, as a result of God's word. And, and the host of them was created by the breath of his mouth or the spirit or the Ruach of his mouth. let's look at John one. Chapter 11 to 5.

So in John 1, We have John picking up this theme again that we see in Genesis. In the beginning, instead of saying in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning would clearly draw people's minds back to Genesis 1:1, that phrase. But where John goes with it is in the beginning was the Word.

Psalm 33 tells us that God created everything through His word, right? So, in the beginning was the Word. Now notice the language here, the Word was with God and the word was God. this is what some Critics would say, would call this just complete nonsense.

This is contradictory nonsense. How can you have the word being with God but also being God, right? Yeah, we would say that, but how could I, if I said, If I said that there was something with my coffee, if I said this is with my coffee, I would not say this is my coffee, right? What is this thing called again?

It's a A sleeve. OK. So I, I don't do this a whole lot. So, I, I say this sleeve is with my coffee.

It's an insulator. OK. So this is, this is with my coffee, but I would not say this is my coffee. That would seem like a complete contradiction.

But here John is saying that the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Now we seem to be talking about, we're talking about a completely different realm here. Verse 3, all things were made through him.

And without him nothing was made that was made. And in him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. A lot of people, well, if you're talking to unbelievers, and let's say somebody, a new Christian, somebody becomes a Christian for the first time, it's been fairly common for people to say, hey, let me give you a gospel of John. As your, it's like your primer, your, your starter gospel to go read.

I'll tell you what, Gospel of John is not an easy book to understand. And, and while it's all scripture, a lot of times I give somebody the book of Mark to start with just to get introduced. Because when you open up and you, you're a brand new believer and you open up and you see, read these words, in the beginning was the word, the Word was with God and the Word was God, you're just like, what in the world am I, what have I got myself into? This is tough stuff to understand.

But then you look over at verse 14, and the Word became flesh. So now this word that was in the beginning with God and was God became flesh, that's even more problematic, dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So we see in verse 14, that clearly John means that the Word is Jesus Christ. Which creates a whole host of problems for John's audience.

one, anybody that's a Jew that's reading this would say, How in the world can you claim that Jesus Christ is God? And then God became flesh. So the, the idea that Jesus is God is problematic for the Jew. For the Greek or the Gentile, the idea that this God became flesh is just anathema.

there's almost no, for John could not have started this book in a worse way for his audience. This is not, if he was trying to win friends and influence people, this is not a good way. He's got an audience of people who do not believe that in this concept of a Trinity. They don't believe that Jesus is God, and the Gentile audience is offended by the idea that God could become flesh, because flesh is evil.

And yet that's the way John starts this book. Let's take a look at, let's turn to Isaiah 44. So again, we're just trying to establish at this point, some various passage of scripture that demonstrate this, this mystery and this seeming contradiction. So Isaiah 44:23.

24. I'm reading from New King James. A single heavens for the Lord has done it. Shout you lower parts of the earth, break forth into singing your mountains or forest, and every tree in it, for the Lord has redeemed Jacob and glorified himself.

in Israel. Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, and he who formed you from the womb, I am the Lord who makes all things, who stretches out the heavens, all Alone Who spreads abroad the earth by myself. OK, this establishes that God did it alone. By himself.

Right? That God was alone And yet, John comes along and says, in the beginning was the Word, The Word was with God and the Word was God. In Genesis 1:26, we have God saying, let us make man in our image. And yet in Isaiah 44, God says, I did all of this alone.

Look at Colossians 1:15. So I think we, we can all agree that God If God's word is true, God created the world alone, right? Can anybody say alone? God did it by himself, right?

Clawson's 1:15. Says this He that is Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created. Let's read that again.

By him, by who? By Jesus, all things were created that are in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things consist. This is a huge problem.

Isaiah says God created it by Himself. Verse 16 of Colossians says, for by him all things were created. This is a huge problem. This is a contradiction.

And then you have the issue of Christ being called firstborn over all creation. There's some of our 78 Jehovah's Witness friends will bring that up, but they need to understand that firstborn is written in a certain context. Firstborn is often the term that's used of a king, right? It's someone who's given authority.

It doesn't mean that they were created themselves. You can look at, let's see, 1 Samuel 44:24 for this concept. A lot of times in the Old Testament, you'll have the second born who's actually called the firstborn because they're the ones that are given the promises. So, first born is the idea of someone who has handed over the promises or given authority.

If that, does that make sense to you guys? So don't get tripped up on this idea of first born, especially when verse 26 says, for by him all things were created. So everything is created by Him. If he's also created being, then he created himself.

That's a problem. let's look at, Psalm 104:30 now. Psalm 104. And verse 30 says this.

You send forth your spirit, and they are created. You renew the face of the earth. So here this is speaking of Yahweh up in verse 24. We've got Yahweh or Jehovah being said to send forth his Ruach, his spirit, and, and so if Ruak could just be God is somehow sending forth his power.

You could under some people have tried to say it's that, sending forth his influence. What we're trying to establish is that there seems to be terminology being used of the word, there's God, there's the word, and there's the spirit that are all being used in various contexts of being connected to creation. So, let's look at Matthew chapter 3 now. And then we'll try to pull things together.

Matthew chapter 3. verse 13. And this is at the baptism of Christ. Then Jesus, who John calls the word, came from Galilee to John the Baptist, that is, at the Jordan to be baptized by him.

And John tried to prevent him saying, I need to be baptized by you, and you are coming to me. Jesus answered and said, Permitted to be so, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And then he allowed him. For 16, and when he had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened.

To him, and he saw the Spirit of God. OK, so this is the Greek version of the Ruoch. We're talking about spirit or breath. We saw, he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove.

We don't know that it, we're not sure exactly. It wasn't a literal dove, but whatever the image was that was descending, it looked like a dove, right? And alighted upon him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.

This voice is calling Jesus the Son, and so who is speaking? The Father. So in this one scene, we have the Father calling Jesus his son, and a spirit that, when you look at whatever this form is, that's descending looks like a dove. So we have a father, a son, and a spirit all in the same scene in the Bible.

Now this from this one verse, here's what we can't prove. We can't prove that Jesus is God from this verse. We can't prove that The Spirit is God. We can't prove that the Spirit is a person.

What we can demonstrate is that there are 3 distinct Entities going on, Father, son, and then this spirit, right? All at the same time. So whatever is happening here, it seems like the father is not the son, right? Because he's speaking to the son.

And it seems like the spirit is not the sun because the Spirit is alighting upon the sun. And the Spirit, the voice isn't emanating from the Spirit, the voice is emanating from the heavens. So it seems like the Father is not the Spirit. So there seems to be distinction between these entities.

Does that make sense? Do you guys agree? All right. So let's, let's take all of that data.

And let's try to develop this theologically by first of all, talking about A few individuals. Where did I go? All right, let's talk. Is this on a timer or what?

There we go. OK. Anybody have any idea who the three fine looking people are in the middle? Say it again.

Phillips, Craig and Dean. OK. And then the preacher in front of Time magazine? TD Jakes.

That's TD Jakes. And anybody know who the gal is to your left? Gwen Shamblin. Right.

Anybody know what all three of these people have in common? all 5 of these people. Anybody have any idea? Yeah, they all deny the Trinity.

Those of you guys who've had my class before. These, these people all deny the Trinity. In fact, they all have a very similar view of the Trinity. They're more like oneness Pentecostal.

So, all of these folks do not believe in the Trinity the way the church is taught it. They believe, and, in fact, not only do they deny the Trinity, most of them would say it's not that big of a deal. That they deny the Trinity. They would believe that the Father became the son and the son becomes the spirit.

It's like one person putting on three different masks. Or it can be like, I'm a father to my son, Joshua, but I'm a son to my dad, and I'm a grandson to my grandfather. I'm one person, but I have three different relationships. And so they argue that there's one person, but that person relates in three different ways throughout redemptive history.

The church rejected this as a heresy called modalism, denying the distinct persons of the Trinity. And yet, Gwen Shamblin says, why are we getting so worried and caught up about little doctrines that don't make much of a difference? What women need is weight loss. That's virtually, that's what she says.

And Phillips, Craig and Dean, you guys can hear these guys on the radio every day. These guys sing a lot of the songs that we've even sing here at church, like, I won't sing a song that they've written, but they'll take songs that we sing and they'll sing them, and people go to their concerts and they just, this, this thing, it's great. And TD Jakes is still very popular preacher, very popular preacher who's invited into evangelical circles. There was one time there was a song that we were gonna introduce.

Somebody had asked if we could do a song by Phillips, Craig and Dean. I didn't know anything about them at the time, and, and I like the song. I like the melody. Lyrically, it seemed fine to me.

And, and then at the time, our intern, a guy named, you guys probably remember him, DJ Jackson, came to me and said, Do you realize that Phillips, Craig and Dean don't believe in the Trinity, either one is Pentecostal. I said, oh really? He goes, yeah, so are you sure you wanna do that song? As I, I started looking at the song and I just said, well, I think we could just put our own meaning into the song.

And so to which he replied, oh, I like the postmodernists. I said, good point. Let's ask that song. And the fact was, is the song that they had written, if you put their meaning into the song, it was something like You Are One.

Have you guys heard that song? It's a song by Phillips Craig and Dean called You Are One, Speaking to God. And if you understand their meaning of it, it's you are one. You are not Triune.

And they, they don't say you are not triune in the song, they just say you are one over and over and over again, which is they're teaching their doctrine. Of, one is Pentecostalism. And, So anyway, these things are important. There was a book that came out quite a few years ago now called The Shack by a guy named Williamson.

Did anybody read that book? OK. So I wanna be careful about how Islammed this book, because this book is very, very, very popular. I couldn't believe the popularity of the book.

in fact, there was a friend that came up and said, you have got to read this, and it was, I, I, I don't disparage this friend at all. they, they didn't have a whole lot of training on the dock and the training, whatever, and so I started reading it. And this was a full-on feminist development of the doctrine of the Trinity. It's, if, if you've read anything from feminist theologians, what their drive is.

It's, they deconstruct the Trinity. And, and, and they particularly attack the idea that God has revealed Himself in male terms. He's revealed himself as Father and Son, and so they attack those ideas. and they attack particularly what we would call the subordination of the persons within the Trinity.

As we're gonna argue a little bit later, that the, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all equal in essence, but they have arranged themselves, essentially, they have arranged themselves into certain roles. So the Son submits to the Father and the Spirit submits to the Son and the Father. And it's not just like, oh well, we just decided to do it that way. No, it's something, it's essential to their being.

And so while the son is co-equal with the father, he submits to the father and this becomes the whole paradigm for male and female relationships that God has created us in His image and that, that men and women can be co-equal in essence and yet be arranged in authority. And the, and the feminists know exactly what that means. So they've deconstructed the Trinity to deny any subordination within the Trinity. And so anyway, this book does all of that and there were many times where I was ready just to huck the thing out the window.

It just made me so angry because it was a very emotional, it was a very well told tale with a lot of emotion, with all kinds of heresy, and people just, just were lapping it up. These are some comments by people that just love this book on Amazon. I truly believe the shack has the potential to shake up and alter the entire church. This book will seriously mess with your theology, and you will be glad.

Yes, it's really that good. Yes, it messes with your theology because it's heresy. but it's heresy told with a lot of emotion. They didn't just attack the doctrine of the Trinity in this book, it also attacks the doctrine of eternal punishment.

It also attacks the doctrine of the church. It very, it very much belittles the idea of the organized church, and pastors getting training and stuff like that. this one says, wish I could take back all those years in seminary, the years the locusts ate. Systematic theology was never this good.

Shaq will be read again and again with relish, shared by friends, family, strangers. I can fly. Yeah, fly into lies. It's just a really, really, really bad stuff.

And so let's, let's talk about some false views. There's a reason why the Trinity gets attacked. And that is the Trinity is essential to who God is, right? When we're, when we worship, we wanna worship the true God, and salvation is all bound up within the Trinity.

And so, and the Trinity has everything to do with how we relate to one another as human beings. And so the Trinity has always been under attack. there's Unitarianism, that's the view of those three people, or three groups that we just showed you, or 5 people. The Father, actually, so, no, actually, they fall into different categories.

the traditional Unitarianism is you have God the Father, Jesus is a creature, and the Holy Spirit is impersonal. That's traditional Unitarianism. this would be similar like Jehovah's Witness. modalism or Sabellianism is like touching three different sides of the elephant.

You have the Father in the Old Testament, the Son, the New Testament, the Spirit in the present. Three parts of the triangle, so to speak, it's all one. Just depends on what side God putting on 3 different masks, that thing. Then there's tritheism.

This is like Mormonism. So you have 3 different gods. It's not just 3 persons, it's 3 gods. And the church for the first several centuries battled against all of these heresies and ended up, by God's grace, establishing what is on the page of scripture.

What's been challenging for the church historically is to be able to codify what's in the Bible without, and then at the same time try to teach it to people in ways that don't teach heresy. That's been very, very difficult because there's really nothing in nature that really goes along precisely with what's in the Bible. And while Bible teachers have tried to use various analogies over the centuries, The best Bible teachers always give caution about those analogies because they all teach heresy if pushed to the logical end.

So let's take like water, that was what I learned, what I taught when I was younger.

The Trinity is kinda like water. You have H2O, but H2O can be liquid, then you can freeze it in ice, and then you can turn into steam. And so that's like the Trinity. Well, that just teaches Sabellianism or modalism, right?

It doesn't work. People talk about three-leaf clover. You have one clover, 3 different leaves, right? That teaches, actually That's more, we'll, we'll talk about that.

That's an appendage of the, the persons that are appendages to God rather than being fully God themselves. There's all kinds of different analogy, Father, son, the, the relationship analogy, the egg, the shell of the egg, the white of the yolk, the yellow, or the white and then the yolk, that just, that, that denies the fact that each part, each person is fully God. And so there's really no analogy that works. This is a conceptual diagram.

That the early church used. That I think really does work at least conceptually, helping us understand the doctrine of the Trinity. Let me give you a Yeah, let's, actually, let's look at this one. Now, we'll look at that one.

OK, so, in this concept, which you have is, in the middle, the, the church has always established the idea that there is only one God, right? And then the church is established that there's the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But how does the Father, Son, Holy Spirit relate to the Godhead or being God and how does the Father, Son, Holy Spirit relate to each other? When you speak of the Father and Holy Spirit being God, you would say the Father is God, the Spirit is God, the Son is God.

The Father is not part God, the Father is all God, the Son is not part God, the Son is all God. The Spirit is not part of God, the Spirit is all God. But when you speak of the persons relating to each other, The Father is not the spirit, the spirit is not the Son, the Son is not the Father. That's Matthew, that's the baptism scene.

There's distinction in the persons, but unity in the Godhead. So, the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are God. Not just part of God, it's not three parts of the pie. But when you talk about the relationship to one another, they are not each other.

There's distinction in the persons. So we talked about the training as being unity and distinction. Makes sense? If this makes sense, then you've got the wrong idea.

Right? What we're trying, what the, what the early church was trying to do is just explain what the Bible says, even if it doesn't make sense. Recognizing there's a distinction between the Creator and the creature, and that we are not gonna understand everything about the Creator. So let's try to say what the Bible says and leave it there.

Even if it doesn't make complete sense. So, let's take Gruden's approach and let's establish it systematically now. We've looked at the various passages of scriptures. We're gonna establish it systematically.

I love his three points and I like the way he develops them. He starts with the threeness. So we start with the Trinity baptism scene, God is three persons, right? So if you're gonna explain to your children, yourself, friends, whatever, the concept of Trinity, I think a good way to start is to start with the three-ness, that God is three persons.

You can open up to the baptism scene in Matthew 3. Matthew what? OK, Matthew 3, right? Nice and easy.

Remember Matthew 3, you go to the baptism scene, you read it, and you ask people to identify the persons that are there. There's the Father speaking, there's the Son, and then there's the Holy Spirit descending as a dove. Now, this doesn't prove The deity of each person yet, but what you're establishing is that there's 3. Distinct persons.

And we'll add later, it's 3 eternally distinct persons. All right. So, God is three persons. God is what?

Three persons, and we're gonna go to Matthew 3. All right, then the second point that we would establish systematically is that each person is fully God, not part of the pie. Each person is fully God. And so Romans, 1:7 is if you needed any, as if we needed a passage of scripture to demonstrate that the Father is God, but we'll look at it anyway.

In 17 We have this To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father, God our Father, right? There's all kinds of passages that demonstrate the Father is God. But then developing the deity of Christ, there's all kinds of passages develop the deity of Christ. That's a whole lesson in and of itself.

one of my favorite lessons, but we can just look at John 8:58, which just be one, where Jesus said, he's speaking to, the, the Jewish leadership here and he says, most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Before Abraham was, I am. How does that establish his deity? Because God, God gave the word I am or the name I am to Himself.

When he spoke to Moses at the burning bush passage, Moses says, who shall I say has sent me? And Jehovah says, say, I am has sent you for I am who I am. And so Jesus picks up this name of I am, applies it to himself, and the Jews know exactly what he's saying, because in the very next verse, they were, took up stones to throw it at him. That's what you do to somebody that blasphemes.

So if, if, if he wasn't, if Jesus was just saying, hey, what are you guys talking about? All I was saying is I exist. Then why would they pick up stones? Or why, why wouldn't, why wouldn't Jesus clarify and say, hey, don't, don't stone me.

I'm not saying anything bad. No, he's, he's picking up purposely the name of I am and applying it to himself. All kinds of other ways to establish the deity of Christ. You can look at, there's the famous way of John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, right?

John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1. All three of those chap chapters establish the deity of Christ. Then another thing I'll do with people, sometimes if, if they don't understand the deity of Christ is I'll take them to the book of Matthew. And I'll show him all the different places where the Greek word Prosko, and you can find it.

You look in your concordance or Bible dictionaries online or whatnot, but it's the word for bow down, bow down and worship. Jesus says in Matthew 4, the devil says, Hey, bow down and worship me, and I'll give you all these kingdoms. Jesus says, You shall not worship anybody except the Lord your God. And then throughout the rest of the book of Matthew, Jesus receives Prosko.

People bow down to him all over the place and he never rebukes them. And so he receives the thing that he would not give to the devil because only God should receive that. Does that make sense? So Proskels all throughout the book of Matthew, just to stick with one book, where Matthew's clearly using Proskel in that sense.

And so on. Let's see. And then for Jehovah Witnesses, they'll give you guys this one for free. So Romans 10, right?

Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. John is, or Paul is quoting whom? In, in in Romans chapter 10. He's quoting Joel 2, so you can write that down.

In Romans 10, Paul's quoting Joel 2. Whosoever shall call upon the name of Yahweh or Jehovah shall be saved. It's very clearly a quote from Joel 2. Joel 2, it's clearly talking about Yahweh or Jehovah.

And so, when you look at the context of Romans 10, Paul is clearly applying that verse to Christ. Whoever shall call upon the name of Yahweh shall be saved. And you just ask your Jehovah Witness friend, bring them down the context and, and make sure you get them to commit to what the antecedent of each pronoun is. He, he, he, he, he, and it starts with Christ and then it goes, he, he, he, he, you get down, whosever else to call up in the name of the Lord shall be saved.

You ask him, who is this? They'll say, well, Jesus. OK, do who he's quoting? No, you take him back to Joel, show him he's quoting Yahweh.

The Jehovah's Witness Church flip flops on this all the time. On how they're gonna interpret that passage. And then you have 1 Corinthians 3:17. There's all kinds of other ways to demonstrate the deity of the Holy Spirit, but this is just one quick passage.

1 Corinthians 3:17. If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy. which temple you are, where is it? 16.

Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? OK, so that's, that's a good passage right there. you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you. you can also talk about, Jesus uses, that's establishing the personhood of the Spirit.

you have the Acts 5 passage. You have not lied to, to man, but to God where Peter's speaking of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, Mitch. OK, what is that?

He Awesome. Yeah, that's great. That's a great passage for the deity of Christ. Awesome.

That's really good. OK, so what we've done so far in establishing the Trinity is God is three persons, and each person is fully God. And we, we could spend a whole lesson on each of those points right there. And then finally, there is one God.

We read earlier from Isaiah 44, and all throughout Isaiah 4:44, there's this establishment of God being the only God. And so God is 3 persons. Each person is fully God, and yet we don't have three gods, we have one God. So, let's see.

Let's see if you guys can remember that. What's the first point in our systematic development of the Trinity? Say it again. Yeah, there are 3 persons, right?

And where would we, what would, where would we get the passage? Matthew 3. There are 3 persons. What's the second point?

Each person is fully God. And what's the third point? There is one God. Right?

So, we're not trying to argue that that's gonna make complete sense. What we are gonna argue is that without the doctrine of the Trinity, you do not have a personal God. You do not have a God that loves eternally. You have a God who has to create.

in order to have a relationship. And, and I, we're also going to argue that the Trinity. is something that human beings would just not make up. The idea that you can see why people would make up multiple gods.

You can even see how maybe somebody might dream up one God. But the idea that there being one God that subsists in three persons. It is just really, it'd be very difficult to imagine how human beings would just make that up. Because there's nothing, when people make stuff up or they try to manipulate religious systems, they're normally looking at something in their world to manipulate, right?

So we, when when Noah gets off the ark, he, one of the first things he does is what? He sacrifices. So the sacrificial system is established right away by God. And then sacrifices get spread out throughout all the different false systems.

Everybody has an idea of sacrifice in the early religions, but then they start to warp it. And what do they warp it with? There's like, oh, there's this big volcano, this volcano, the volcano god's gonna kill us, we're gonna throw the virgin in the volcano, right? To appease the volcano god.

There's always something that they can look out at, at in their situation in order to manipulate what used to be true religion. So how in the world do you manipulate the true religion to get at the Trinity? You just can't. There's nothing in nature that would drive people that way.

And so that's, that's part of our argument. OK, we're almost out of time, so if we were gonna spend more time on this, you, you could go back to our theology class, I could send you these notes. There's other incorrect conceptions of the Trinity. We don't divide up God into pie parts, right?

The Father is fully God, the Spirit is fully God, the Son is fully God. It's not just little appendages to the godhead. It's not like you have God, and then you have appendages outside. That's another false teaching.

It's not three sides of the elephant. let me read to you a portion of the Athanasian Creed, which I think does a really good job. In trying to establish what we're saying and what we're not saying with what we seem to be reading in the scriptures. These guys that are trying to establish various creeds, they're not just saying, hey, let's make up some doctrine.

They're saying, how can we codify what the Bible seems to be saying in a way that just leaves it, leaves the Bible alone without trying to add all kinds of extra baggage to it. OK, so here's what the Athian Creed goes, basically says, we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity and unity, neither confounding the persons, right? We're not trying to just blend them all up and say it's just one God with three different masks, nor dividing the substance, we're not putting it into pie parts.

and there is one person, the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit, 3 persons.

But the godhead of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit is all 11 God, not three different parts or three gods. The glory is equal, the majesty coequal. Everybody is worthy of the same glory. The Father is uncreated, the Son's uncreated, the Holy Spirit's uncreated, Father eternal, Son eternal, Holy Spirit eternal.

All those incommunicable attributes we talked about last week, they apply equally to all three persons. And yet, they are not 3 eternals, but one eternal, there are not 3 uncreated, but 1 uncreated. So likewise, the Father's Almighty, the Son's Almighty, the Holy Spirit is almighty. We would not say that the Father is stronger than the Son or the Son's stronger than the Spirit, because each person is fully God.

And yet they are not three Almighty, but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. And yet there are not three gods, but one God. So likewise, the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord, and yet they are not three lords, but one Lord.

For as we are compelled by Christian truth to acknowledge every person by himself to be God and Lord, So you can call upon the Lord Jesus Christ, you can call upon the God, the Holy Spirit, or God the Father. So we are forbidden by Christian religion to say there are three gods or three Lords. So there's one Father, not 3 fathers, one son, not 3 sons, one Spirit, not 3 Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity, none is before, none after another, none is greater or less than another, but the whole 3 persons are coeternal, co-equal, so that in all ages, as said before, the unity in Trinity, the Trinity and unity is to be worshiped, total equality in essence.

And so when we worship, this is why we, when we sing or when we pray, we sing rightly to the Father. But we also rightly sing to the Son, and we rightly sing to the Spirit. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. now, so anyway, that's, that's a, a summary.

Of the doctrine of the Trinity. let's just get some final applications, we'll be done. A proper view of the Trinity preserves the independence and personal nature of God. Otherwise, we'd have a needy God.

Has God ever been lonely? Answer. No, because he has always existed within a trinity. A proper view of the Trinity preserves, preserves the worship of the one true God as we give due honor to each person, worshiping God in spirit and truth.

Otherwise, we are worshiping false gods. I, I hate to tell you, but people can be as sincere as they want. But if they're denying the Trinity, Phillips, Craig, and Dean, they are worshiping a false god. They're just flat out worshiping a false God.

And this is not small things. This is not like with, with Gwen Shamblin, hey, let's just talk about weight loss. We're talking about, we're talking about false gods. or the true God.

We need to be worshiping the true God. Proper view of the Trinity preserves the biblical understanding of the atonement, and God is the source of salvation. Otherwise, man would be saving man. It is God who comes to earth to die for our sins, and he becomes a man and he saves us.

It is not just a created exalted man that comes and dies for another man. And so it's all wrapped up in the atonement. And so those are just 3 applications. Oops, sorry.

00, I can't get back. Oh well. 3 applications for Our do the training. Any questions?

Comments, criticisms, or concerns. Yes, Rachel. Right. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's very tempting for us to, to want to make God in our image.

and you can see when you look at the various aberrations of religion over, hundreds of years, you can see how people just are trying to find God in, as a reflection of themselves, their own culture, and we have to be careful of that ourselves. There are ways in which we can all portray God. in a way that's just a reflection of, of what we want him to be. There's a very popular book.

I don't know if I should mention the name of it. there's a super popular book. And That purports to be giving. revelation from Jesus Christ.

That there's words that have come from Jesus to this person and they're writing down the words of Jesus. But you read the alleged words of Jesus, and it really does not sound a whole lot like what you see Jesus saying in the Bible. The whole message of these alleged words of Jesus are basically I'm there for you to comfort you in your tough times. That's basically what almost the whole book says.

And, but it's, it's very like effeminate. It's written, written by a woman. And so all the words of Jesus are very like, not that there's anything wrong with, feminine speech, whatever, it's great, but it's like all these words of Jesus are just very effeminate. It's not something you could see.

Like a carpenter guy saying or, or some of the stuff that we have right on the page of the scripture, Anyway, you guys might know what book I'm talking about, but yeah. Yeah, so the question is, how, what would we say about the salvation of someone before we're ironing out the creeds, of the Trinity? Well, that's an excellent question. we wanna affirm what we call the, the doctrine of the progress of of revelation.

And so God is revealing. The scripture is sufficient for every, for each believer at that stage of redemptive history. And But when Christ arrives on the scene, you have an opening up of what we call the mystery. There's all kinds of new information that is now being dis dispensed to the church with the arrival of Christ and the apostles.

And so the the the church is responsible for all of that as soon as it is dispensed. Now, While the doctrine of the Trinity, this is true of all doctrines, doctrines get tightened up with attack. And so like if you were to meet, let's say you met somebody who is living in 100 AD, would they be able to articulate the Trinity in the same way as somebody who's living in 300 AD? Probably not because it had not been under the same attacks.

But I think they definitely would be able to tell you exactly what Paul says. They would be able to recite, baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Baptism will happen in the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. They'd all be acknowledging that there's one God.

They'd all be acknowledging that Jesus is God, that the Spirit is God. those are part of the early church prayers and early church worship. And But, just like today, if you walked up to somebody here at Cornerstone and started asking them questions like, hey, is the father the same as the son and the son the same as the spirit? walk up to one of my kids and say, hey, Sammy, is the father and the son the same?

You'll probably say, yeah, or, people might not be able to articulate exactly what the church has taught for 2000 years. But once they're shown the scriptures, through the Spirit, I believe they'll embrace it. I don't know if that fully answers that question, but, there's gonna be varying levels of ability for people to articulate. but I think the, the core and the seed of the Trinity is right there in the New Testament from the get-go.

Similar to like, say, let's, let's talk about like, say, the doctrine of an errancy. nobody's talking about the doctrine of errancy when it's not being attacked. They're just talking about how God's word is true and it's for us and it's from God. But once it starts coming under attack, then the church has to start tightening up terminology to distinguish themselves.

It's a great, great question. Yeah, Dan. I think one of the best descriptions of. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Talking about Yeah He describes Carrying on his Yes. Rare to Totally. dialogue from the son to the father about I about Yeah.

It's it's amazing. Picture or a view of a window. what the Yeah So, yeah, Dan is saying just the, what we see that's taught about the roles of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit in John 14 to 17. That actually might be a great follow-up if you guys want to do some reading to follow up this class is to read John 14 to 17 to see the various roles that are described there.

yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for bringing that up, Dan. that high priestly prayer in John 17, just so awesome. Yeah, Alison.

elevation OK. Yes, Allison's question is, is, is, can there be a, a, a problem or issue with like say exalting one person above the, of the other, like the Holy Spirit, for instance, exalting the spirit above the other persons. And I think there definitely can be, there, there can be times where, I know like say since the Charismatic, the rise of the charismatic movement in the 1960s, there's been a big emphasis on the Holy Spirit. And sometimes there's a criticism of putting more emphasis on the spirit than on the other two persons when Jesus said the Spirit would come and want to draw people to glorify Christ.

And I, I think that can be an imbalance. In our circles, however, I think that the, the imbalance can be that we don't put enough emphasis on each person. If it is true that the Father is fully God, the Son is fully God, and the Spirit is fully God, Then we should feel totally comfortable worshiping. The Father worshiping the Son and worshiping the Spirit.

and then try to really study their roles and what is it that the Spirit wants to do. The Spirit wants to glorify Christ and Christ wants to glorify the Father, and so on and so forth. But I don't know that there should be a discomfort in addressing prayers to the Spirit, addressing prayers to the Son, and so on and so forth. we do have examples of that, on the page of the scriptures, I believe.

Paul says, whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ will be saved. and how do you call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? It's through prayer. There's a really good, hymn that we sing, Come Thou Almighty King.

If you guys, you guys know that hymn. The first verse is directed to the Father, the second verse is directed to the Son. The third verse is directed to the Spirit, and then the fourth verse is directed to the 3 and 1. And it's just a great hymn.

it's a great hymn, I think that provides an excellent balance for us. Yeah, last question, Emily. Yeah, one universe, space, time, and matter, you still, you have matter that exists within space, right? And time is more of a, it's like an entity of, we can, we know there's time because matter will travel through space, right?

So that you have something at one point in space and then it's another point in space, it takes time to get from one place to the other. And I, I think all of these things, I, I, I don't want to leave the impression of never ever use these things because the LT terracy. You can use these things to help people get a basic grasp of this three in one concept, but just don't press it so far as to this is exactly what the trendy is. The problem with that analogy is they're still other from, they're distinct from the other thing.

A, a point, a matter is not equal to space. Right? They're distinct. You have something in space.

And so, if you were to really press that analogy, then the father. Yeah, it just doesn't work. And the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God. the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God.

It's, it's not just the Father in the space of God. It's not just the Spirit in the space of God. He is God. There's just no analogy that really Really matches it.

So All right, let's go ahead and pray. Our Father, we're grateful for this wonderful time for us to be together to talk about your word and to worship you. And again, we just thank you for your wisdom in sending your son to die for us. And we thank you, Lord Jesus, just for your.

life and death, burial and resurrection and the high priestly work that you, do for us all of the time, at the right hand of the Father. Thank you for sending your spirit, and thank you, Spirit for just, keeping us secure in you and Convicting us, we ask that when we grieve you, that we would get right and repent quickly. We thank you our God for just the, the The mystery and the blessing and just being able to worship you. We ask you just help us to grow in our understanding.

And, and growing our humility, understanding that you are a great God that is well beyond all that we could imagine, and yet you have given us, the outer edges of your way that we may understand the way of salvation. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. All right, God bless you guys.