The Loving Community

[UNKNOWN]: Thank you very much.

[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, good morning, first free.

[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I start a message, I tell myself, I'm gonna find a better way to start it than just saying good morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then I get in the room and I see all your beautiful faces and then turns out it's a good morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: The churches together, it's a good morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm glad to be here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad for what we get to, I'm excited for what we get to teach y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: So my name is Barrett Moore.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am the JH and the Young Adult Pastor here at first free and this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are getting into a series all about God and theology.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you were here last week, Adam warned us today's message is going to feel a bit more academic, but I'm excited for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have some fun to break it up so we'll get there.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I would love to also say, if you're our guest today, if you're our guest in the room this morning, we are so glad that you are here and you chose a great morning to come here because this morning, what we're really going to get into.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of levels the playing field.

[SPEAKER_00]: So whether you've known Jesus your whole life, whether you've known Jesus for maybe a few years, whether you are just starting to get to know Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today's message and the questions we're going to ask, no matter how long you've known him, we're all going to have to struggle and work through what this question is and what the answers are and what we do with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that question is, of course, the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is three in one, which is simple to understand maybe, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it kind of makes sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't think about it too much, God is three in one.

[SPEAKER_00]: We understand that practically.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can get the concept, but none of us really grasp that.

[SPEAKER_00]: None of us can actually understand what it means that the one God, not a God made of three, but a God that is three and is one God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: None of us can fully grasp what that really means.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's the bad news for this morning, but I've got some good news, and then I've got some really good news.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the good news first is that God, that God, Yahweh 3 and 1 has revealed himself to us, that there's a certain amount about God that we get to know because God himself has told it to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So God wants to be known by you.

[SPEAKER_00]: God wants you to know about Him, God has revealed who He is and how this Trinity works.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, that's the good news.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the really good news is that God doesn't just want you to know about Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: God wants you to know Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: God's revealed himself to you that you can have a personal relationship with the God of the universe, and that's really, really good news.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this morning, here's where we're going to start.

[SPEAKER_00]: We may not leave today understanding the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can leave today knowing the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to leave understanding everything there is to know about how the three and one works, but we can know who the three and one is.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now our church, you all are very smart, I know this, I think that's fair to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: You all are smart, and some of you are thinking, all right, hey, bear it, that sounds really cute.

[SPEAKER_00]: very disappointing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if that's you, if you're sitting here and you're like, but I wanted some answers, I'm gonna make a deal with you, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: So two parts of our deal, first part of our deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna point you to this message from a few years back.

[SPEAKER_00]: We did also catch this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you are maybe noticing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm wearing the exact same clothes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I was wearing three years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a different green sweater, different tan pants.

[SPEAKER_00]: I like what I like, I don't, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm gonna point you to that message, that message, if you're kind of wired in such a way that you want more of the apologetic answer, you want to understand, you wanna know, how do we defend the Holy Spirit is God?

[SPEAKER_00]: How do we defend Jesus as God?

[SPEAKER_00]: That message, it's Palm Sunday, the whole message, is just talking about the divinity of Christ and how we know that Jesus claimed to be God, for today,

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to operate on the truth, which is, yes, Jesus claimed to be God very clearly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Scripture very clearly calls him God, calls the Holy Spirit God.

[SPEAKER_00]: But today, what we're going to do instead, rather than in a apologetic argument, we're trying to understand it conceptually, we're just going to stick in that one lane today of who is the Trinity relationally?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so here's our questions.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to use as we kind of guide ourselves this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: How has God revealed Himself to us through His Word?

[SPEAKER_00]: How has He made Himself known to us?

[SPEAKER_00]: And why is it so important that we get it right?

[SPEAKER_00]: How has God revealed Himself to us through His Word?

[SPEAKER_00]: How has He made Himself known to us?

[SPEAKER_00]: And why is it so important that we get it right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then our second part of the deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: if you will stick with me this morning and you get to the end and likely many of us will.

[SPEAKER_00]: You still have some questions.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to point you to my email.

[SPEAKER_00]: Shoot me an email.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of study in a lot of time that went into this message.

[SPEAKER_00]: As you can imagine, with something as epic and grand as the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, distill it in 30 minutes is kind of difficult.

[SPEAKER_00]: So,

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've got questions, email me, I would love to talk about them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I get paid to do it, I got all day.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about the questions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about your questions.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so with that out of the way, as a baseline, we're going to start in the same way that we started last week with our statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to just read straight through our statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: This will kind of guide us as we go about this morning and it begins with this.

[SPEAKER_00]: We believe in one God, creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing, in a loving unity of three equally divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Having limitless knowledge and sovereign power, God has graciously purposeed from eternity to redeem a people for Himself and to make all things new for His own glory.

[SPEAKER_00]: So last week, Pastor Adam focused on that first line.

[SPEAKER_00]: We believe in one God, creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this week, we're gonna really focus in on that second line.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if we take this step by step, let's just start with those first two words.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean to be eternally existing?

[SPEAKER_00]: And just like we spoke a moment ago about three in one and how we can understand it academically, but we can't understand it like really.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can understand the concept, but we can't really fathom what that means.

[SPEAKER_00]: The same is true for time.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've never really considered this, we can understand eternally, eternity academically.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can understand eternity as in, there was infinite time before me, and at some point I was born, and someday I'm going to pass away, and there will be infinite time after me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what's interesting about this is that this actually doesn't have anything to do with our relationship with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you know Jesus or if you don't know Jesus today,

[SPEAKER_00]: We all have to wrestle with the reality that we live in that you are a human being who exists in time and people existed before you and people are going to exist after you.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean for the Godhead to have existed eternally eternity?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my goodness.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it means this as a good place to start.

[SPEAKER_00]: That God isn't just outside of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not just outside of time, God is the architect of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is in and beyond and through all time.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is the creator of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Romans, Revelation 4 8 tells us, He's the God that was and is to come, that he was.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is now and he's going to be all at once.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, importantly, for Trinitarian theology, it is easy to consider God the Father as having existed for eternity.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Scripture actually makes explicit the truth that the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that those two have also existed for eternity.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we see this most clearly in Genesis 1 to 26, where Yahweh, the Creator God, at the beginning of time,

[SPEAKER_00]: make human beings an hour image, to be like us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And who has got talking to alongside himself before creation if not another uncreated being?

[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever the R is, whoever the us is is someone or something else that was uncreated.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it must be someone uncreated, we then go to the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we actually see the Spirit just a few verses prior as a distinct person of that God had.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Genesis 1, 1, 2, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he creates, and now the earth was formalist and empty.

[SPEAKER_00]: Darkness was over the surface of the deep,

[SPEAKER_00]: For Jesus, we see the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: The most famous example of that us in the new testament, John 1, 1 through 3, in the beginning, was the word.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the word, Jesus Christ, and the word was with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the word was God.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was with God in the beginning through him.

[SPEAKER_00]: All things were made without him, nothing was made.

[SPEAKER_00]: That has been made.

[SPEAKER_00]: As for the three equally divine persons in our statement of faith, this addresses what the performers and what the early church would have called the Essence of the Godhead, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are made of the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're made of the same literally the same stuff, the same essence of the Godhead.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Spirit, however, proceeds from the Father in Son we see in Scripture, as the Son of His own will obeys and submits to the Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Son submits to the Father, the Holy Spirit, then proceeds from the Father and the Son yet all three are equal in divinity and power and glory.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see the Spirit proceeding from the Son in that way while also being in the Son.

[SPEAKER_00]: in John 14 16 through seven and I will ask the father and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: The world cannot receive him because it isn't looking for him and doesn't recognize him but you know him because he lives with you now.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know the Spirit of God because He lives with you now and later will be in you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So He's currently with us in Jesus, bodily form, God standing before you yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also Jesus is going to send the Holy Spirit after Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now the Holy Spirit will proceed from Jesus and then live in us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see the Son submitting to the Father in Philippians 2, 6 through 7, Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, the essence of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, so he had it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus has equality with God, but he doesn't see it as something to be used to his advantage.

[SPEAKER_00]: Rather,

[SPEAKER_00]: He made himself nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness.

[SPEAKER_00]: So who made him nothing?

[SPEAKER_00]: He did.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he's being made in human likeness through the Spirit and submission to the Father as he

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we see the clearest picture in all of Scripture of these three distinct persons of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the passage speaking on the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: It would almost be foolish to not go to this passage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is Matthew 3, 16 through 17.

[SPEAKER_00]: After his baptism as Jesus came up out of the water.

[SPEAKER_00]: The heavens were open, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him and a voice from heaven said, this is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you see Jesus coming out of the water, the Spirit descending like a dove and the voice from heaven, the Father, all at once, in time and in space, the God had on display.

[SPEAKER_00]: to try to begin to distill something for this morning, begin making sense of this mystery.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can actually turn to the early church, who wrestled with the very same questions and fought for and defended the exact same truth of scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're gonna go to what's called the Athanasian creed.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was written in the fifth century, I'm gonna read it straight through and it's gonna be three slides, so stick with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this is the Athanasian creed,

[SPEAKER_00]: to defend what is the Trinity, what is our faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: We worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity and unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the Father is one person, the Son is another and the Spirit is still another.

[SPEAKER_00]: but the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Equal and glory, co-eternal, and majesty, what the Father is, the essence.

[SPEAKER_00]: What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Uncreated is the Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: Uncreated is the Son.

[SPEAKER_00]: Uncreated is the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Father is infinite.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Son is infinite.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Holy Spirit is infinite.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eternal is the Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eternal is the Son.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eternal is the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet there are not three eternal beings.

[SPEAKER_00]: But one who is eternal.

[SPEAKER_00]: As there are not three uncreated and unlimited beings.

[SPEAKER_00]: But one who is uncreated and unlimited.

[SPEAKER_00]: Almighty is the Father, Almighty is the Son, Almighty is the Spirit, and yet there are not three Almighty beings, but one who is Almighty, thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God and yet there are not three gods, but one God, thus the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord, and yet there are not three Lord's, but one Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: For you now, I believe is the same question that it was for the body of Christ, 1500 years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not can you understand the Trinity?

[SPEAKER_00]: Not can you fully grasp everything there is to know about what God is?

[SPEAKER_00]: But can you accept who God is?

[SPEAKER_00]: As the Trinity has been revealed to you,

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you accept what God has revealed to you about himself?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you accept that, Trinity?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, after reading this read and by the early church to make clear what our faith is, some of you may have a very logical question.

[SPEAKER_00]: You saw that creep up on the screen and some of you saw fifth century at the top and a logical question follows so the Trinity didn't exist until the fifth century.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you ask that question,

[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of mischaracterizes the entire world that the Old Testament and the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament were written into.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were written into a world where the mass majority of people were not literate.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was written into a world where writing was skilled labor and it was expensive and it was arduous.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a world that was run by oral tradition.

[SPEAKER_00]: Things getting passed down from person to person, from parents to child.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the world it was written into.

[SPEAKER_00]: So,

[SPEAKER_00]: at the turn of the 5th century.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church as the world is becoming more literate as more heresies are popping up.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church writes down in the Athenation Creed.

[SPEAKER_00]: They meet in councils to make canon what is our faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do we believe?

[SPEAKER_00]: They write down what has already been known to be true for hundreds of years.

[SPEAKER_00]: For longer than the United States has existed.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church operated purely with oral tradition and the few letters that had gotten passed two different churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the world is written into.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then the Athenation Creed is written to say, what is our faith?

[SPEAKER_00]: What have we believed for hundreds of years?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we get that.

[SPEAKER_00]: We get to benefit from that as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the Trinity, while a valid question wasn't

[SPEAKER_00]: The Athanasian Creed and other councils solidified what was already known to be true.

[SPEAKER_00]: As long as the church has existed, people have asked questions about these creeds, about these councils, about how we came to the conclusion.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some have come up with ideas for how to explain the Trinity, analogies, for how to understand the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some good, some not so good.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so today I told you we're gonna have a little fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna take a small break, and I have a game for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need drum roll, please.

[SPEAKER_00]: Drum roll, please.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a youth pastor.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, our game is,

[SPEAKER_00]: Guess that, Heresy!

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so this game, I'm going to teach you four main heresies that the church has historically had, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you guys are going to guess, and I do have a prize at the end if you get all five.

[SPEAKER_00]: So be ready.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's explain our heresies, our beautiful contestants.

[SPEAKER_00]: Four heresies we have that these don't capsulate every heresy, but they encapsulate most of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: So first we have modalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: That means where God isn't really three in one.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's really one with three different modes.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the old language, the reformers would use us like he was using three masks.

[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine one guy kind of changing who he is changing what he looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a heresy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we have tri-phiism or polyphiism, that one is simple, just that there are three gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not three and one.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're just three separate gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then we have an Aryanism.

[SPEAKER_00]: This one is the teaching that Jesus and the Spirit, rather than Jesus submitting to the Father and the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the heresy that Jesus and the Spirit are also created beings, that they come from the Father and the Father God is really Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fun fact, you can use this at Trivia.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why Santa Claus punch a guy in the mouth at the council of NICA, that actually happened real fact.

[SPEAKER_00]: Looked at a guy with spout an aeronautism, decked him in the mouth.

[SPEAKER_00]: He lost his priesthood and then they gave it back.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's Santa Claus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Save that for next Christmas.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, lastly,

[SPEAKER_00]: Partialism, that one's easy.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the idea that God is really three parts of a whole, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not three in one, it's just the three-make one you're just doing math.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, modalism, think, modes, partialism, think, parts, tri-phiism, think, three gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, Aryanism's going to be the hardest to remember, but that just means the two kind of come out of God the Father, the God the Father created, then, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: We all got it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Call it up to speed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, question one, our first heresy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have five questions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Water can be a solid liquid or gas.

[SPEAKER_00]: So think on it, think on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Show of hands, who thinks it's motelism?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, all right, who thinks it's tri-theism?

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, a few who thinks it's arianism?

[SPEAKER_00]: Good, okay, who thinks it's partialism?

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I saw a lot of correct hands.

[SPEAKER_00]: The answer was,

[SPEAKER_00]: modalism, congratulations, give yourself a round of applause.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, all right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, it was the first quote not that loud.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, second question, the sun can be seen as a star by its light and by its heat.

[SPEAKER_00]: Think about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who thinks modalism, who thinks tri-theism, who thinks arianism, who thinks partialism,

[SPEAKER_00]: OK, I see a lot, a lot more people like I don't want to answer this one.

[SPEAKER_00]: This one is Arianism.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the light and the heat come from the star, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The sun's the real thing, the other two just come from it.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, question three, a woman can be a mother, a daughter, and a wife, a woman can be a mother, a daughter, and a wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, who thinks motelism, who thinks tritheism,

[SPEAKER_00]: and who thinks partialism?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this one is also modalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: So one woman, three masks, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: She changes her roles or her modes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Question four, two left.

[SPEAKER_00]: St. Patrick's three leaf clover.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this one's interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever seen a picture of St. Patrick or existed in the US on St. Patrick's Day, you know the clover's kind of associated with St. Patrick.

[SPEAKER_00]: The reason for that is this was his most famous illustration of the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you'd explain the Trinity as the three leaves of the clover making one clover.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that is unfortunately St. Patrick, a heresy, which one is it?

[SPEAKER_00]: tri-phiism or arianism.

[SPEAKER_00]: OK, so a lot of good ones there, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: The answer was partialism, of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: The three leaves making one thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, final question.

[SPEAKER_00]: Most important question.

[SPEAKER_00]: Neapolitan ice cream is a totalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it tri-phiism?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it air?

[SPEAKER_00]: There goes an arianism.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it partialism?

[SPEAKER_00]: It is, of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tri-theism.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had to all four had to be an answer, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the three separate ice creams in one tin.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is tri-theism.

[SPEAKER_00]: So did anyone get all five?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I owe you a ten of Neapolitan ice cream in heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so

[SPEAKER_00]: We can quickly lightning round through some other heresies, as well, Billy Graham, one of my preaching heroes, Billy Graham would famously use the analogy of an apple with its skin, the body, and the core.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is, however, partialism.

[SPEAKER_00]: Father, mother, and child in one family is tri-phiism.

[SPEAKER_00]: Three and one body wash is weird and also, modalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then even Saint Augustine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even St. Augustine, he had an analogy that is historically considered probably the best analogy we've got, but even it falls short as partialism and his analogy was a mind with memory understanding and will.

[SPEAKER_00]: One mind with memory understanding and will which works better because it's all contained here and you can't really say where it is, but still three parts of one brain, still partialism.

[SPEAKER_00]: So no matter how we spin it, no matter how we consider, you can't quite nail the mystery of the Trinity with anything our human minds can conjure up.

[SPEAKER_00]: This historically, this image called the shield of the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: The shield of the Trinity historically is our best bet for explaining the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: The issue again though, is this doesn't quite help us understand the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't help us to live it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at this, you still see there are actually in this four parts, and though the words help us to understand what is what and what is not what this helps us.

[SPEAKER_00]: understand it, but you can't experience it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's still four parts and in fact, not three in one, if it were a circle, it would still be three in one.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is four separate and the three R1 and not each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't quite work.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to invite our executive pastor Andrew Miller out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me, explain one more analogy.

[SPEAKER_00]: This analogy was actually shown to me by Pastor John.

[SPEAKER_00]: He sent me this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is originally from Dr. Jeremy Begbe at Duke.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it goes like this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Andrew, could you play us a C major chord?

[SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, that's what the degrees for people.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So,

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you kind of build that one by one again, you can imagine it as the father and then the son and then the Holy Spirit and then all together one.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you really kind of nitpick, this is also partialism, but what makes this analogy a little more unique is that if you close your eyes and you hear that chord, you realize that you actually can't choose to not hear one of those notes.

[SPEAKER_00]: You actually have to, you're limited.

[SPEAKER_00]: you have to hear the entire chord all at once.

[SPEAKER_00]: It takes up your entire auditory space.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas with a visual, you could choose to close your eyes or look at one part or look at another in music.

[SPEAKER_00]: It actually takes up the entirety of your auditory space and you have to hear the whole as one.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is maybe what it would sound like if we started to join in on that harmony.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it sound like when you start to because of the community and the loving community that the father has?

[SPEAKER_00]: You start to live and see people the way that God has seen you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Start to invite other people into this community the way that God invited you with.

[SPEAKER_00]: You start to live out of the love of the Trinity, how shown to you, it sounds like this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Andrew.

[SPEAKER_00]: Appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's beautiful, but what this illustration really shows us is the flip side of what I think is one of the things that breaks God's heart, most, one of the things that grieves him the most when we get the Trinity wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: That for every false teacher or cult or false religion that claims some weakened or withered or false version of Jesus, we lose sight

[SPEAKER_00]: of who our God actually is.

[SPEAKER_00]: We lose side of who our God has actually revealed himself to be and why he's done what he has done.

[SPEAKER_00]: So these are some examples from real false teachings within the United States.

[SPEAKER_00]: So first, if Jesus is a created being, then maybe you, a created being, could be like Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you could be like Jesus, then maybe you could be like God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then if you could be like God, then maybe God or God isn't the real God, maybe he's a God and we can become like him in the cycle continues.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another one is that if Jesus himself is not God, but only a God, that rather than the Word being and the beginning and being God, it's a God, it's another one.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if that true, then Jesus has no right to forgive your sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: He tells us that Himself in Luke 5.

[SPEAKER_00]: If He's not God, the Father, He has no right.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has no stake in forgiving your sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then if the Holy Spirit isn't God, then one John four tells us that we actually, we can't be rightly united to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot be rightly unified with Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can't be indwelled by Christ, because the Holy Spirit is just an entity.

[SPEAKER_00]: But with the Trinity, when it's correct, all of these are true.

[SPEAKER_00]: When it's correct, God does have, Jesus does have the right to forgive your sins, the Holy Spirit does have the ability to end well in you and have Christ end well with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: But most are grieges of all of these falsehoods.

[SPEAKER_00]: The one that changes it the most is that with any of these, it fundamentally changes the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: not just can Jesus say He forgave your sins, but what happened on that rugged cross?

[SPEAKER_00]: Who was there and why did He do it?

[SPEAKER_00]: And what does it matter for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: All changes if Jesus is not who He said He was.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if He is,

[SPEAKER_00]: than he can rightly pray this prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we can be invited in to align ourselves with that Trinity to harmonize with this eternal dance, the eternal loving community of the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Jesus before going to the cross, he sits down with his disciples and he says this.

[SPEAKER_00]: My prayer is not for them alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not for the disciples sitting around him in that moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I pray also, for those who will believe in me through their message.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you know that Jesus before going to the cross is praying about you that he had you in mind?

[SPEAKER_00]: He's praying for you who would someday come to know him by the work that started on that night.

[SPEAKER_00]: The disciples' message spreading would get to you thousands of years later.

[SPEAKER_00]: On continents they didn't even know existed yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's praying for you in that moment that you would believe through their message, that all of them, all of us, may be one father, just as you are in me and I am in you.

[SPEAKER_00]: May they also be in us, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one, as we are one, that they, us, would be one.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jesus' prayer for you, that we would be one, as they are one.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, in them, and you, in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the world will know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory.

[SPEAKER_00]: The glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: that Jesus was there, before it all.

[SPEAKER_00]: You loved me before the creation of the world, righteous, Father, though the world does not know you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know you, and they know that you have sent me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have made you known to them and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and get this.

[SPEAKER_00]: The love you have for me may be in them and that I, myself, may be in them.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's his prayer for you today.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what does all of this mean for us?

[SPEAKER_00]: What do we do with it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Even if we understand that we can't understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we accept that we are limited and we can't fully grasp all that God is.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do we do with it?

[SPEAKER_00]: think the answer that Jesus would give, it's actually really clear, the unity and the loving community of this place.

[SPEAKER_00]: a first-free church, the loving community of this place has to be a reflection of the loving community that we have already received that's already in us, that the people sitting to your left and right, that the community you have with one another would be so loving that it would reflect the eternal infinite perfect love of the Father in the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's his prayer

[SPEAKER_00]: that this place would begin to look like that and many teachers from as far as church history goes back have attempted to refabricate or have rejected the doctrine of the Trinity to find something new to try to find some new or exciting or extravagant way of explaining the Trinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: But y'all I think this is the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Trinity isn't new.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Trinity is really, really old, and we are meant to be made new by it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The community of this place can look new, can look like the love we've received, not by our own power, but by the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can be reconciled to the Father, by the Son, through the work of the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: This place won't begin to look like the perfect love of the Trinity because we will it to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: It will happen when we surrender and you submit to the Father by the Son through the work of the Holy Spirit that He could make this place new.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is how we can rightly say that our God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Send a gust and argue that you can't really say that any non-traneterian God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because by nature, they would have had to create something to give their love to.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had to be a recipient of that love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because before the creation of the universe, he was already living in perfect unity with himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not if something he does, not if something he can do, but something he is.

[SPEAKER_00]: God doesn't just want community for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the community for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by living in you, you can receive and participate and reflect that to the world around you.

[SPEAKER_00]: A world that's looking at us and can see a church so unified, so loving that they see the love of our Father because of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I've got three practical steps today to try to distill all of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: What we do with the Trinity, this isn't everything, but these are three steps to start getting us there, to get this place looking more and more like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So our first step, really simple, you can't be in community alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't be in community by yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just literally, you can't do it by yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're not connected to a group or you're not connected to an adult ministry, my urge for you would be to get connected, live life alongside other people that may disagree with you, that may think differently than you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then because of the love that your father has shown to you, you can love them either way.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can love them and build that community regardless.

[SPEAKER_00]: So get connected to a group.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is my plug selfishly if you'll give me a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our young adult ministry is relaunching this coming year February 5th.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna meet first Thursday every month to the rest of the year.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this adult ministry, I want it to be a place where we can begin to have young people build a community like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to see you February 5th, 6 o'clock, we're meeting in the chapel, bring a friend we want to see you there.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have free food, we're going to have music, and there's going to be teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then most importantly, there's going to be roundtable discussions, because we really believe that the community is the most important part.

[SPEAKER_00]: that living it outside by side with other young people who are pushing and living like you, that we can sharpen each other, that we can grow together, that we can ask questions and seek Jesus together.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, if you're 18 to 30, I want to see you on the fifth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Second, serve somewhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: Serve somewhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then here's a fun plug from my own life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, when I was in college getting a ministry degree, I was known.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was never doing student ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, kids are gross.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to deal with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have not, and I'm not getting anywhere near it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, the youth pastor here five years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: He came to me, he said, hey, what about if you just serve with the fifth graders?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then if you hate it, when they promote up in like a month, you don't have to stay with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can drop them, you can go back to your old thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, pull, to get you off my back, sure, I'll do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was with those guys for three years until we moved to Georgia.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now look at where I am.

[SPEAKER_00]: So my encouragement to you serve somewhere, serve somewhere that maybe you wouldn't even think.

[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously I'm bias, conserve and J age, conserve with the middle schoolers.

[SPEAKER_00]: But even if you don't want to do that, serve somewhere, get plugged in somewhere here at first for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then lastly, this is one of our distinctive values here at first for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the things we want to make this place different.

[SPEAKER_00]: Community is core.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in your heart, continue to pray, be praying, be looking for the people that God would put in your life, the relationships that he would give you, the circles that you could get connected to, where you could show the same community that you've been adopted into.

[SPEAKER_00]: Pray that God would give you people who are far from Him that you could reflect His light to pray that this community would continue to grow would continue to change.

[SPEAKER_00]: That new faces would come here because of the love that you show and most importantly, because of the love that the Father had already shown to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let that be your fuel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let community be the core of this place.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want this place to reflect the perfect community

[SPEAKER_00]: I want this place to look like the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dear Lord, thank you so much for this place.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for the infinite love that you've shown us for what you did for us on the cross that you would step down from glory God, that you would make yourself like us for our sake.

[SPEAKER_00]: Father, we pray that we continue,

[SPEAKER_00]: To give back that glory that you say you've given to us God and pray that it would be shown through the community of this place, that the love and the relationships and the forgiveness and the repentance that is found in this place God, that it would reflect you and how you love us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Gotta pray especially for every single person in this room.

[SPEAKER_00]: that you would continue to grow and give us relationships where we can reach out and show your love, that we would continue to get connected to and grow with people that may not know you get something.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yet so that, Father, they would know you by the love we show them because of the love that you show us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We love you, we praise you in Jesus name, Amen.