Our God is Triune (Part 2)

But one of the one of the real beneficial things and probably one of the ways that we overlook the trinity is when we don’t, when we overlook when the father and the son and the Holy Spirit all occur together in the same passage. Even if it’s not, even if it doesn’t say, you know, something super clear as far as, you know, in that formula, and there are times where it does, but the fact that all three of them are together distinct, but yet unified, yet one mind, one essence is important for us to understand. And so what we’re gonna do today is primarily like this would be a good day to take notes, especially if you wanna take notes to kinda list out these verses and to keep, because this is a good way you can refer back to it whenever you’re on this topic or you want to refer back to it for any later study. Okay? So let’s stop and pray and just ask the Lord to bless our time together in our class today. Father, we thank you again for the chance to come to Sunday school to study the glories of god, to study how good you are to us, to study your great attributes, lord.

We have enjoyed learning about you and seeing your how you are revealed in scripture. I pray that you give us eyes to understand, ears to hear, Lord, and help us as well as we look at the scripture. Lord, help us just to be to be struck with your greatness. And I pray that you’d help each and every person here as well, that you’d help us to have to have increased knowledge of what the word says, but not just raw knowledge, but also the application of that knowledge to make us more holy, to make us more conformed to the image of Christ.

We pray that you would bless the kids as well in their class as they study the word and as they learn your word. I pray that you would give Ms. McClain wisdom and understanding and the power of your spirit as she teaches them and I pray that they would retain the things they learn. So help us, Lord, in this class and in the kids class and everything that’s done today.

Lord, may you, be pleased with it all and be glorified by it all for we ask in Jesus name, amen. Okay. So the trinity, if, by definition, we covered this last week, is the doctrine that there is only one and there is only one true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three co eternal and co equal persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence.

Okay, so let me make this clear because as we look at these scriptures, it’s going to be important for us to understand why our definitions matter. So when we talk about the Trinity, the definition of the Trinity as as God’s nature or God’s attribute, it it is not it is not that we look at... We have the definition. We start with the definition and then we seek to prove that from the Bible. It’s the reverse of that. In other words, we look at all of the scripture related to the father, the son, and the holy spirit, and we observe that the father and the son and the holy spirit are all equal.

We observe that they are all, they all claim deity. We observe that they’re all, that they are unified, that they are one in, not only one in will, but also one in nature, we observe that. And so that’s how we derive these definitions. So, and we talked about last week the false understandings of the Trinity. You have modalism, which is the idea that God just appears in different modes or forms, but it’s just one God, right? So that would deny the distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then you have the idea of, and that would be something like Arianism would teach that, which we’ll cover that a little bit later.

We’ve already covered it, but we’ll cover it more. And then you have the idea of the trideism, which is that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three gods, three separate gods. And of course, that’s not that’s not accurate either. And so, when we look at this, it’s important it’s important for us to understand the the definition and what this means, especially as we look at these verses that we’re gonna see.

Because we’re absolutely gonna see verses that show that that God, that God’s nature is distinct in three persons, but yet one. That both exist at the same time. And so that’s why we have the term Trinity. That is tri unity or triune nature of God. Now we saw last week how that the Trinity is not fully revealed in the Old Testament. You must wait until the New Testament to get a full revelation of the Trinity, which reminds us of the fact that the Old Testament is incomplete without the New.

And then we looked particularly at Genesis chapter one in various verses chapter one verse number two, chapter one verse 26, 27, and then chapter three verse 22, chapter 11 verse seven, all of which are instances in which God speaks in the plural referring to Himself. God speaks in the plural referring to Himself. And a number of those cases, if you remember, He speaks when he’s having, he’s not, not when he’s speaking to man, but especially in the context of when he’s speaking inwardly.

That’s when often the plural is used. Like when he’s speaking before he makes an action, like let us make man in our image. That’s not speaking to Adam, that’s speaking within himself. And so in that case, it’s plural. And so we saw those examples. And lastly, we saw as well that when we talk about the trinity, as I said, we also most must talk about the deity of of Jesus Christ and we also must talk about the deity of the Holy Spirit.

Now, the deity of Christ and the deity of the Holy Spirit are both essential doctrines. They’re essential doctrines. You remove that, you have altered the God of the Bible, okay? You are you are dealing with a false God at that But both of those are vital, both of those truths are vital because they’re related to the Trinity. And we saw just as a little bit of trivia, what is when we talk about the deity of the Holy Spirit or the denial of the Trinity, what is the goal in those false doctrines?

Denying Christ. What’s that? Denying Christ, that’s not It’s ultimately, most importantly, an attempt to deny that who Jesus Christ is, right? Because he’s the savior. And so that’s the goal. That’s so nobody cares if the Holy Spirit is is is God. Like, I mean, we care but but that’s not anything anybody argues about but if you deny the Holy Spirit is god, you’re denying the trinity and if you’re denied the trinity, you’re denying the deity of Christ. That’s the goal And we’ll see this played out. We’ll see it in scripture, very very plainly laid out for us.

Now, the other thing we have to understand about this idea of, of the Trinity of the three persons of the Godhead that are one, is it’s important for us to understand the meaning because, as we’ve already covered, by definition, a being who is God, is supreme to all other beings can only ever be one. Alright, we covered that before. It’s this idea of the self existence of God, the eternality of God. There’s only room in the universe for one of those, right? God himself is the only one. And so this is why it’s so important for us to understand the nature of the trinity.

Because you cannot have Jesus Christ as God and the Father as God as two gods. You can’t. It actually contradicts the very definition of God. And so you must see that Jesus is either a man or he is very god and there is a trinity. There is no in between by definition, okay? And so, we move on from there and I want to we want to go in the Old Testament now. Let’s start in Isaiah chapter six. Let’s go there.

Isaiah chapter six. Alright, I didn’t give you a chance to ask any questions or make any comments. Anybody have any comments on what we’ve covered so far you’d like to mention?

Isaiah chapters, yeah, Sam. I don’t think you could prove that. I don’t know that you could separate those because he said literally every single thing, every thought, every breath, every word, every action that Christ did was in direct response to the direction of his father. And that’s why, and here we go again, that’s why understanding that the dual nature of Christ is so important. Because he did humble himself before his father, he did humble himself before men.

But God, it is true. There is nowhere in scripture where the Bible says that God humbles himself except that he humbles himself to behold the things of earth, which is actually a statement of non humility. It’s a statement of exaltation. But God doesn’t need to humble himself for he is God, right? He doesn’t humble himself. However, when Christ came in his human nature, he did humble himself.

And so that tells us that the human nature is required for Christ to do that. And as a man he humbled himself. That’s what Philippians two says, right? Yep, yep.

Right. And so all of these things are related to the question of how do we understand Jesus Christ and his humanity and in his deity and how does that play into the Trinity and all of that is vital. These are not small issues. These are major issues and they affect how we view the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m a tell you something. In a practical matter, as a practical matter, in common Christianity, right? In common Christianity, I don’t know exactly what I mean by that statement, but just in the just run of the mill kind of what you meet when you see churches in our day, you see people primarily view Jesus as a human being. A good human being, but a human being.

In other words, that’s one reason why the Lord Jesus is often thought of as a friend. Is He? Yes. But that’s all He’s thought of. He’s thought of only in his human capacity or his human nature, not as in his divine nature. Okay, let’s go to Isaiah six now. Isaiah six verse number three. This is at, this is a vision Isaiah has when he’s before the presence of the Lord and you’re very familiar with this I’m sure. Isaiah six verse three says this, talking about the Seraphim in verse two, who are literally flying around the throne of God giving praise night and day. Verse two, and above it stood the Seraphims, each one had six wings with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

And one one cried unto another and said, holy, holy, holy, that’s three times, is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his, not there, his glory. Now I noticed that. Now, is it definitive that holy, holy, holy refers to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit? No. But when you view this verse, which is also repeated in Revelation four eight in John’s vision, where John saw the Seraphim, he called them beasts, creatures.

He heard them also say holy, holy, holy. But the point is, when you view the Old Testament in its completed form in the New, you see, oh, they’re before God and they’re crying holy three times.

Right? When you look at it in that case, it’s like, okay, well maybe there’s a reason why it’s three and not two or four or five or seven. It could be seven. Seven’s a number of perfection, right? It could be seven, but it’s not, it’s three. And that makes perfect sense when you know the New Testament. Okay, go to Isaiah 42 since we’re already in Isaiah. Isaiah 42.

Isaiah 42 verse one. Now, pay pay careful attention to to the words here. Behold, my... Now this is God speaking, notice what he says, behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth, I have put my spirit with, upon him, he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

Now we know that this passage is quoted by Jesus in Matthew chapter 12. Matthew 12 verses 18 to 20. And so the servant being spoken of here is Jesus according to his own words. He is the fulfillment of this. He is the servant. So here you have God the Father referring to the servant who is God the Son, and God the Father says, I have put my spirit upon him. Now you say, well, is not the Holy Spirit because it has a lowercase s and not a capital s. Let me just remind you that the... First of all, Hebrew does not have capital or lowercase, okay? This is translated from Hebrew, right? And also when the Bible was originally written even in the New Testament, they used all caps. That was the way they wrote. That was the earlier writing was all caps. They didn’t have distinctions between capital and lowercase letters. I know that might come foreign to you and it might seem foreign to me. Cambodian has no capital letters.

And so you say, well how do you tell the difference between the Holy Spirit and just Spirit in general? Well, by the context. But we... Now sometimes in our Bible, they’ll say capital s because the context is clear that it’s referring to the Holy Spirit and sometimes it’s ambiguous. But here’s the point. God’s spirit is being referred to in verse 42. So you see the the father, you see the servant, Jesus Christ, and this servant’s gonna come back up over and over, Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53, the servant, the suffering servant, who has the Spirit on him, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Look at Isaiah 48.

Isaiah 48 verse 16. Come ye near unto me, hear ye this, I have not spoken in secret from the beginning. From the time that it was, there am I. And now the Lord God and his spirit hath sent me. Okay, now pay close attention. Who is me? Who’s the speaker? Is it the Lord?

Pay attention. Is the speaker the Lord? No. Because he said the Lord hath sent me. So the Lord is separate. The speaker himself is someone And then it says the Lord’s spirit. The Lord and his spirit has sent me. That’s three people, is it not? That’s the speaker. In this case, the speaker is Jesus, pre incarnate Jesus, being sent by the father, the Lord, capital l o r d, by his spirit. That’s the three.

Alright? Everybody get that? I’m getting some kind of a little bit of blank look, I’m wondering if everybody’s tracking. Can you kind of give me a nod if you’re tracking a little? Okay, everybody’s tracking. Alright. Sometimes I’m afraid I’m... I gotta go back and try to come at it a different angle. Isaiah 61, look at that, Isaiah 61.

Isaiah 61 verse one. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me. Alright. Again, question. Is the speaker the Lord? Alright, the speaker is not the Lord because he says the spirit of the Lord is upon me. So that’s... And so you have the spirit, you have the speaker, and then you have the Lord, okay? Because the Lord hath anointed me, see how they’re separate, to preach good tidings unto the meek.

He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted and to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of prison to them that are bound. Now, this is also quoted by Jesus in Luke chapter four verse 18 to 21. So, the speaker here is Jesus. Prophetically, it’s Jesus speaking. Notice, you have the lord, you have Jesus speaking, and you have the spirit of the lord upon Jesus.

Isaiah 63, look at that. Isaiah 63 verse seven. Now pay close attention to this, little bit longer of a passage but you’ll see some similar characteristics here. Isaiah 63 verse seven, I will mention the loving kindness of the Lord, now stop there for a second, is the speaker the Lord? No. Separate. Okay? I will mention the loving kindness of the lord and the praises of the lord according to all that the lord hath bestowed upon us on us and the great goodness toward the house of Israel which he hath bestowed on them according to his mercies and according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.

For he said, surely they are my people, children that will not lie, so he was their savior. In all their affliction, he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity, he redeemed them and he bare them and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled and vexed his holy spirit. That’s one of the few times you see the term holy spirit in the Old Testament. Usually it’s just spirit or spirit of the Lord. Here it says holy spirit. Again, don’t get bothered that the h is not capital, okay?

It’s just a... Even in the New Testament where the H is capital, it’s not just a name of the Holy Spirit, it’s also a description of the Holy Spirit. His spirit is holy.

But it’s based upon the Old Testament here. But they rebel and vexed his Holy Spirit, therefore he was turned to be their enemy and fought against them. Then he remembered the days of old Moses and his people saying, where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? Where is he that put his holy spirit, there it is again, within him, that led them by the right hand of Moses with his glorious arm, dividing the water before them to make himself an everlasting name.

Now notice verse 12 mentions God’s arm. It also mentions how that God led them through the wilderness And in the New Testament, we find out that the rock that led them was Christ, remember? So you have Christ kind of hinted at there. Verse 13, that led them through the the deep as an horse in the in the wilderness that they should not stumble. As a beast goeth down into the valley, the spirit of the Lord caused him to rest.

So did thou lead thy people and make thyself a glorious name. So in the New Testament we know that Israel was led by Jesus. Now this is way before Jesus was born. But Christ led them as the angel of the Lord. Notice this, verse number nine. In their affliction he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them. See that? That’s a reference to Christ. You have hints of references to Christ in verse 12. You have three mentions of the spirit of God, and then of course you have in the background is the Lord himself.

All three of them are involved in this passage. You see this? Lastly, let’s go to Psalm 33. Psalm 33. Psalm 33 Verse number six. Says this, by the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. So this is in the context of creation. Notice there’s... Now this is not a clear... This is not a perfectly clear example, but again, looking at this verse from the New Testament, we see something. Well first of all, by the word of the Lord, so we see the Lord.

Jesus is the word of God, John one one, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, word was God, that’s the word of God, Jesus, that’s one of his titles. And then it says, all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. The breath is the word, the the breath, the air is related to the spirit. And so, and we already saw this in Genesis. Remember the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. So... And we know in the New Testament that Jesus himself upholds all things by the word of his power. He is... He was the the creative entity, and that’s also a mark of deity. The creator is God.

And so you have the word, you have the Lord, and you have the spirit also all in these verses. Any questions so far? Any comment? Alright. Alright. We’re all together then. Alright. Let’s go to the New Testament now. Go to Luke chapter one. Luke chapter one.

Luke chapter one verse number 35. This is at the announcement of the conception of Christ. Luke one verse 35. And the angel answered, now the angel is not God. The angel is Gabriel. We know that. So that’s not a figure we need to pay attention to here. The angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Ghost, that’s one, shall come upon thee, that’s Mary, so she doesn’t count.

And the power of the highest, that’s two, shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the son of God. Three. Right? So we could say that the entire trinity was involved in the incarnation of Christ. Can not say that? And you know what we’re gonna see? We’re gonna see the entire Trinity involved at every single step of Christ’s ministry.

All right, so let’s go to the next one. Go to Luke chapter three, couple pages over. Verse 21. Luke three verse 21. Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also being baptized and praying, so we have Jesus, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost, there’s two, descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven which said, thou art my beloved son, in thee I am well pleased. Who’s the voice?

That’s the Father. How do we know it’s the Father? Exactly. Because he calls him So, you have the father, you have the son, and here’s the here’s the key. At the baptism of Christ, it was not just the holy spirit came down upon him. There was a a distinction because if the Holy Spirit had came down upon Christ, that would not have been visible because he’s a spirit, right? Just like when you got saved, there was no visible evidence that you received the Holy Spirit but yet you did.

So in order to visually demonstrate the presence of all three members or persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit manifested himself visibly. Right? So he came down in a shape, in a form like a dove. I don’t know if it was an actual dove or looked like a dove or whatever, but everybody there knew it, especially John the Baptist, he knew that this was the spirit of God. And so you have the three members of the trinity of the Godhead together.

And remember, this is an important moment in the life of Christ. This is the beginning of his ministry. This is his initiation if you will, his baptism. And all three are present. Okay, let’s go to the next one, Matthew chapter 28. Matthew 28.

Matthew 28. I wanna divvy out some verses for people to read. Let’s see. Brother Jim, can you get Acts two thirty eight? Let’s see. Allison, can you get Acts eight sixteen?

Brother Dennis, can you get Acts ten forty eight? And Samson, can you get Acts nineteen:five? I’ll have you read those in just a minute, okay? Right, we’re looking at together, we’re looking at Matthew 2eight 19, Matthew 2eight 19. This is the Great Commission. We just covered this in our services here. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name, notice name is singular, that’s important, of the father and of the son and of the holy ghost.

Now, that’s weird. Here’s what I want you to understand why that’s weird. Is because the name of God is never combined with the name of other gods. So the fact that the name of God is three with the singular word name is indicating a triunity. Does everybody get that? And this is the baptism formula. This is the reason why when we baptize people in water, that’s why we say that because this is the formula, right? And it also shows that at the end, if you will, I’m using this term loosely, the initiation rite of Christianity, baptism.

That is actually, I say initiation rite, you don’t become a Christian by baptism, but that’s when you’re publicly acknowledged as so, if you will. But note, even tied into that ordinance is the doctrine of the trinity. So, you can’t deny that and then practice baptism in this way, Alright? But I wanna show you one other thing. So you have the three together here and these are actually together in the typical formula, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, which which of course becomes a historical way to describe it later.

Alright. Jim, read, nice and loud for us, Acts two thirty eight. Then Peter said unto them, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Do you see it? In the name of Jesus Christ. Do you note that’s different than what we read here?

Alright. What’s the next? Who’s got the next one? Allison? Upon none of them, only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Note that, okay? What’s the next one?

1048, that’s, Dennis, go ahead. Baptized in the name of the Lord, you see that? Alright. Samson nineteen five. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Do you notice the difference in all those? Now remember, in the Great Commission commandment, in the Great Commandment here, the formula is to be baptized in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit. And then in Acts you see baptized in the name of the Lord, baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, that’s the most common way. You do not see this formula again. And some people have built upon that, this idea, especially Pentecostals, that it’s a different way to baptize.

Acts chapter two happened how many days after Jesus spoke Matthew 28? Twenty. At least fifty. At least fifty. Two months. Right? Two months after Jesus said these words, ish, two months ish, is when is when they actually baptized at Pentecost, which is what Acts two thirty eight is. And it says they baptized and be baptized in the name, this is Peter himself, who was party to this event in Matthew 28.

He was there. He heard the very words. And Peter in his in his sermon in Acts two thirty eight he says, repent and be baptized in the name of of the Lord Jesus. Right? Did Peter change his baptism?

No. It had only been two months. Like, he’s not changing anything. Then why is it different? Here’s the other thing I want you to see is that later on in the book of Acts, the naming convention for baptism is the same. It’s Lord or Lord Jesus every other time in the book of Acts. Do you see that? And some people have built a whole doctrine that the baptism of that Jesus commanded is different. The baptism of John is different. The baptism of disciples did in the ministry of Christ is different. The baptism of the apostles later was all different because they used different naming conventions.

Or it’s all the same and there’s a trinity. I think that’s an easier explanation, don’t you? Especially given the complete void of information about these supposedly different baptisms that don’t exist. No, Peter is baptizing according to the commandment of Christ, it’s just that he recognizes that Jesus is an equal member of the Trinity, right? Okay, so I don’t know why we make these silly distinctions and mess up our doctrine, but yet that’s exactly what they do. There’s only one water baptism and that’s it, and they were doing it. And so even at the baptism formula, at the baptism of Christ, you see the holy, the three members of the Trinity, and you also see that same baptism formula interestingly enough at Christ’s own baptism, the three members of the trinity are present and also at the great commission’s commandment regarding baptism, the three members of the trinity are also present.

Alright, any question? Any comment? Before we close? No? Pretty clear, clear as mud? Alright. Well, we’ll wrap it up there and, pick up next time. Let’s pray together.