The Doctrine Of The Trinity

0:05 Surely you remember the time where you jumped off the high dive. You remember that? I mean, do you remember the first time you ever jumped off that diving board that seemed to be 300 feet over the pool? I mean, that was a big step for me, and I'm sure it was a big step for you. Some of us have to think back decades to that time, but don't you remember that? you were kind of nervous and maybe your mother was at the pool and she was encouraging you, you can do it. You can jump off the high dive. And your friends are like making fun of you. You, man, you haven't jumped off the high dive yet. Come on, man. And you finally are like, okay, I'm going to do it. I am, I'm going to jump off the high dive. And so you begin to climb the ladder.

1:04 You have to wait in line to climb the ladder. And you climb it, and people are in front of you and behind you, and they're just jumping off like Olympic divers. And you're thinking to yourself, can I do this? And the higher you get, you're like, this is really high. I had no idea it was going to be this high. and you walk down that board, kind of that sandpaper-esque board, you know, kind of grips your feet and you walk to the end of the board and curl your toes over the end and you look out. You look to your right down there and there's mom. and you're thinking, this is too high. No one told me it would be like this, and you look down, and the waters are deeper than you thought.

1:59 They look hundreds of feet deep. Turquoise, that cobalt blue, you're just staring. It seems like forever. There's a moment of truth. you either step off and go into the depths or you go, I'm not gonna do it and you turn around and you have that walk of shame back down the diving board and your friends are laughing at you and making fun of you and you come down the ladder.

2:37 I'm so encouraged that you guys have assessed the situation and that you've jumped off the diving board into the depths because the subject matter I've been dealing with over the last several weeks is an in-depth study. There's no way we can ever comprehend or ever understand what the subject matter is about. Ever, ever. We can know a little bit about it, some about it, but not totally. It's like I know my wife accurately. We've been married 42 years, but I don't know her exhaustively. But that day, I jumped off the high dive. I stepped off, and it like, ah.

3:30 And I went so deep, I thought to myself, no one told me I would sink this deep. Finally made it to the surface. And I was thrilled. And that started this adventure of swimming. I've done a lot of swimming. I'm not a competitive swimmer, but I've snorkeled. I've even done some scuba diving, though I'm not certified. Don't tell anybody. Thank you for jumping off of the diving board. It is scary. There's a mystery to it. There's something that you just have to go for, and I'm glad you're not playing it safe because we've been talking about really the most important subject we can deal with, the identity of God.

4:23 Who is God? It's a big question because those implications are towering. Who is God? Last week we learned that God is all-knowing. He's all-powerful and all-everywhere. Today we're going to learn that God is a Trinitarian God. Now I'm a pastor, I've heard a lot of people say things about God my entire life. I love God's grace. I love God's mercy. I love God's sovereignty. I love God's providence. but I'm not sure I've ever heard someone say, hey, I love God's Trinitarian nature. I've never heard that. We're going to explore the doctrine of the Trinity. What's the Trinity? The word Trinity is triunity. God is one in essence and three in persons. That's the Trinity.

5:19 Our identity, his identity is in the Trinity. Thus, we have an affinity for the Trinity. Yesterday, Lisa and I were in Houston speaking at a marriage conference, and I'll be talking about marriage a little bit today, just to warn you.

5:41 And we boarded an Embraer. ERJ-135 that had been retrofitted for 30 seats. We fly an airline when we can. I'll just give you an advertisement, although I don't own stock in it. I want to advertise this airline. JSX. Have you ever flown JSX? It's a game changer. No disrespect to any American Airlines employees here. I'm telling you what, It's the way air travel should be. J, a joyful, S, simple experience. It's amazing. And if you price it right, it's what other airlines cost. But you can just walk on 20 minutes beforehand. Bring your dogs. I mean, it's so dog-friendly.

6:35 When the flight attendant starts explaining all of the nuances about the airplane, she'll stop and you'll hear, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. It's in dog language. So we love JSX. Try it. Try it. Try it. JSX. What if I just said, when I was standing there, waiting to board the plane, what if I said, Lisa, I'm not going to board this plane. I'm done because I don't understand flying. I'm not going to jump on this Embraer plane, this 135. No way, because I don't understand it.

7:17 Now, that would be kind of ludicrous, wouldn't it? Because we do things all the time we don't understand. This little thing we carry around called the cell phone, no one here understands it. No one here understands really the law of gravity. You don't understand photosynthesis. You mean you understand it? No, you don't. No, I don't. We trust it. You can take any discipline, any discipline, for example, chemistry, biology, quantum physics, and when you push it to the limit, you're going to end up with mystery. That's why it's funny when people say, well, you know, there's just a lot of mystery in Christianity. There's a lot of unanswered questions. try quantum physics, try chemistry, try biology, try anything.

8:22 When it comes to God, we're talking about the Trinity. It's like what Richard Trent said about God. He said that we can't comprehend God, but we can apprehend. God. Brilliant statement. Well, let's dive into the outline. See, I've provided a little message map. Do you have that out? I hope you do. I'm going to grade all of these papers, so you better get out the message map. And these are for you to collect and keep, because we've worked a long time trying to take something very complex and make it understandable. So you have blanks in this thing, and you're supposed to fill in the blanks. It'll help your learning, because thoughts disentangle themselves when they pass through someone's lips through and to your fingertips. The doctrine of the Trinity. Here we go. Are you ready? Up in the balcony? That's what I thought you said. There is great beauty, awe, and here we go, mystery in the Trinity. A single God in three persons. How many times have you gone through or experienced a situation where words just didn't do it justice? I had that happen to me recently. I started shark fishing when I was 12 years old.

9:53 I didn't know anything about shark fishing really. Just took a little fish, hooked it up, on my Zebco. And I did that when I went to the ocean. I had no idea what I would learn over the decades. I had no idea that I would catch more sharks and bigger sharks, that I would really experience shark fishing, that I would talk to some of the best shark fishermen in the world, that I would fish with some of the best captains in the world. I had no idea this December that I would catch on a rod and reel a nearly 3,000 pound great white shark. No idea. I had no idea that that's only been done 15 times in the history of fishing. I'm not a great fisherman. No, I just fish with great fishermen.

10:41 Someone called me a shark expert. I'm not an expert. I wouldn't call myself that, but I know a lot about shark fishing. I had no idea at 12 years old, am I going too fast? that when I caught first little shark, little sand shark like that, that one day I would catch, I say I, it took several of us to reel it in, this Leviathan. It pulled the boat around for two hours. Finally it tired out, turned over. We brought it in, we tagged her, and this fish has swam farther than any shark in the history of studying sharks that have been tagged. But I've got to tell you something. When I saw the shark for the first time after the two-hour battle, I was like, I thought I knew what a big shark was. No, no, no, no.

11:35 A great white shark will redefine big. You have no idea what a big shark is. You might think you do. Trust me, you don't. Unless you've caught a 3,000-pound great white shark. You don't. I was like petrified. I'm like, no wonder they can eat you. I mean, you see, it's like, oh yeah, I mean, I'd be a little bit of sashimi for that thing. I want you to think about theology and the study of God and learning about God in the same way. I know we don't know a lot. I understand that. We'll never know God exhaustively. Even in heaven, yes, it'll be a different paradigm, but we have to understand there's a mystery to it, and we have limitations. You'll see it there. We're limited by our language. I can't. and we're limited by our humanity, but our limitations, here's the phrase that pays, shouldn't deter our explorations.

12:37 High dive, you gotta go for it, and look what'll happen. Shark fishing, you catch a little one. If you're crazy like I am, you get into it, and then one day, look where it will result. And the same is true about the things of God. Well, everyone here is a theologian. If you said God a couple of times, you're a theologian. No, you might not be an adept theologian, but you are a theologian.

13:08 I want to inspire you to become a theologian. I'm not talking about knowledge. Oh, we can learn all day and night about stuff. I'm talking about doing the stuff. I mean, I could lecture you about the specifics of shark fishing until the cows come home, but I haven't done a thing until I've hit the water,

13:33 rigged the shark gear, and reeled in the shark. That, my friend, is what we're doing in this series. So the Trinity distinguishes, this is very important, one in essence, three in persons, Christianity from all the other world religions. It distinguishes itself from Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam, and Hinduism. Those four are entities that reject the Trinity. And if you look, for example, at Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses, You've got Joseph Smith, who is the founder of Mormonism, and you have Charles Taze Russell, who was the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses. What happened to them was, in their arrogance and pride, they came to a point where they couldn't put God in a box.

14:40 They realized, oh man, we're dealing with mystery here. We're dealing with a massive God. So I better just put God in a box, tape him up, and there's God. And that is why you have so many false religions. And from heresy, that's when a lot of the councils speaking about church history met and formulated these theological and doctrinal statements. For example, the Nicene Creed. That was formulated, and I'll talk about this even in a little bit more detail, in 325 AD, which simply stated what the early Christian church and Christians believed for centuries before they wrote it down. And they wrote it down formally to thwart the people who were off the theological reservation, so to speak.

15:48 So I hope you're following me. The first blank is mystery. Second blank is language. Third blank is distinguishes. If you're following me, just do like that. Okay, you got it, you got it, you got it. Now, the biblical basis of the Trinity, let me say this again. God eternally and necessarily exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God and there is one God. All right? The Nicene Creed, N-I-C-E-N-E, 325 AD, that's just what I described to you in response to heresy. There are even some heresies out there today regarding the Trinity. One that is popular, even there's some churches here in Dallas that are off the theological reservation that believe this, modalism. Modalism, that's a Trinitarian view.

16:42 It's an anti-heretical Trinitarian view. It basically says that God is the actor God. He acts like the Son when he wants to be the Son. He acts like the Father when he wants to be the Father. He acts like the Holy Spirit when he wants to act like the Holy Spirit. Heresy. Heresy. Heresy. We're going to use our minds here. When we think, when we listen to people online, when we read books, modalism, modalism. Polytheism is another one. Oh, they're just three separate gods.

17:16 I mean, the Hindus believe there are 300 million gods. 300 millions. No, we don't serve three gods. Heresy. Then we have another heretical Trinitarian view called subordinationism. Subordinationism. This is not in your outline. Some are looking like, where? Just write this down. It's free of charge. Subordinationism is like, okay, God is the main thing, God the Father. God the Son is the lesser, and God the Holy Spirit is even lesser.

17:56 Heresy. Coexistent, co-equal. Four critical statements. Now we're back to the outline. Are you feeling me? Say yes, Ed. All right. Number one, God is three persons. Number two, each is fully God. Number three, there is one God. Number four, each are co-existent and co-eternal. We have an affinity, as I've been saying, for the Trinity. So many things are Trinitarian. You're Trinitarian, so am I.

18:37 Body, soul, spirit. As I alluded to, the Trinity is implicit, not explicit. You're not going to find a verse in the Bible that says, this is the Trinity. Yet in the book of Genesis chapter one, verse 26, the Bible says, let us, God said this, let us, that's us. What? Let us make man in our own image. Us? You mean a bunch of angels, a committee of what? The Trinity. That's Elohim, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three in one, one in three. We're made in the image of God, and we are Trinitarians. Think about an apple, it's a Trinity. the peel, the flesh, and the core. Consider a clover, three-leaf clover.

19:34 A triangle, three parts. Space, height, width, and depth. Time, past, present, and future. Goes on and on, doesn't it? The Trinity. One in essence, three in persons. Now, there are no differences in deity attributes or essential nature between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father's not more important than the Son. The Son's not more important than the Father. The Holy Spirit's not more, no, no, no. Equal, equal, equal. God the Father, see this, is the creator and sustainer of life. That's his responsibility.

20:15 I'm going to come back to this in a second. God the Son, who incarnates, incarnate, he became flesh, redeems and reconciles. God the Holy Spirit is the comforter, teacher, guide, and empowerer of believers. We pray, we pray to God the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. God created, he spoke the creation into existence. The Son helped carry that out. And then the Bible says the Holy Spirit was hovering over the bodies of water and creation. think about salvation when someone becomes a christian it was the father's idea he sent the son and the holy spirit applies that think about the baptism of jesus jesus was baptized you have three parts of the trinity in play the father saying this is my son whom i'm well pleased you have the son being baptized and the holy spirit descending on the son in the form of a dove the Trinity. Then in Matthew 28, for example, Jesus giving us the Great Commission. Read it there, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. One in essence, three in persons. We're to worship God in a deeper way.

21:42 We're to walk with God in a deeper way. We're to jump off that diving board. It'll open up a whole new world to us because we understand some of the nature of God. Well, so what? You know? Well, there is a so what, and that's why I have this listed on your outline. This is the so what about the Trinity. This is the implications of the Trinity. Number one, it refines our relationship with God. It refines it. You'll never see God the same. Number two, it aligns our understanding of the gospel.

22:30 God doesn't need us let me say it again I think there's this whole in fact I know there's this whole vibe out there oh man God needs me I'm special he needs my voice he needs my talent no he doesn't oh God needs me no he doesn't he's self-sustaining he's complete perfect community and harmony. He doesn't need you and me, but he wants you and me, and he wants us to such a degree. Think about what he did for us. Now, we have this freedom of choice. We either receive what he did for us or not. the trinity also defines the uniqueness of christianity it again is is different than the other world religions it's one of the things that separates christianity from the other world religions now and then you'll hear someone say this they'll go yeah all religions are the same how many times you've heard that are they all lead to the same place. No, they don't. Yeah, there are some virtues and some qualities in all religions that would be similar, but when it talks about the important stuff, the fact that God is a personal God and an eternal God, no other world religion has that. They don't. You can study it again, over and over again. It's the uniqueness of Christianity. We can have a personal relationship with a God who is Trinitarian, who is omniscient, who is omnipotent and omnipresent.

24:40 That's awesome. Awesome. but it continues. Christianity, this relationship we have with God through Christ, gives us this desire. Because I'm made in the image of God, because I'm a trinity, I yearn, and you do too, for unity. How many people are married here? Yeah, lift your hand. and some of us are tired, just like, whoa. I know, this has been a tough season, back to school and everything. But we want to have unity, don't we? Ladies, you want unity in your family. Guys, you come home, you want unity. I don't want to hear any drama. I want unity. Then we OD on football, and we say, man, I'll tell you one thing, them cowboys look good.

25:38 They were playing as a unit. They were playing as one. You don't realize it, my man, but you have that yearning for unity because of the Trinity. No one likes dissonance. It's unity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Perfect unity. So we have a yearning for unity. And then we have a drive, wouldn't you say, for diversity? We love diversity. Aren't you glad that everyone's not you? Have you ever thought about that? What if God made everyone like you? How horrible would the world be? Oh, there's me over there and me. Oh.

26:26 Diversity. Diversity. The Father is diverse from the Son. The Son's diverse from the Holy Spirit and so forth and so on. Yet there's unity. Lisa and I are different. I'm male. she's female. And now that's a big time statement in our crazy world. She has gifts that I don't have. I have gifts that she doesn't have. I defer to her and her strengths, and she defers to me where I'm strong. I'm the leader. So are you guys, even though you might not want to be. You're the leader of your home.

27:19 Oh, everybody's equal there. I'm just saying you've been given the leadership role. It's diversity. And what happens, because so many men aren't leading, and we're scared to lead, well, a woman will just pick up that leadership mantle, and she'll lead. I know. but we're made to lead.

27:42 So there is unity in diversity. I'm so glad that the body of Christ, our church is so diverse. We have people who don't have much. We have some who have a lot. We have different people from different parts of the world. That's a beautiful thing. God loves diversity. And also, we can engage in equality. You've never, ever, ever locked eyes with someone who does not matter to God. You've never locked eyes with someone who is not made in the image of God. Everybody matters.

28:29 I can tell now you're putting up your outlines. This is just part A. We have part B that our ushers will give you right now. Not true. Next week, though, I'll tell you what we're going to do. I'll give you an advertisement. Next week, we're talking about the doctrine of the Bible. And let me just teach on that just for about a minute.

28:52 The Bible is the Word of God. It doesn't just contain the Word of God. It is the Word of God. It was written by 40 different authors. This is free information. over 1,400 years on three different continents. God revealed himself to these writers. He used their personalities, their insights to write the word of God. That is our standard. We believe in the word of God. We believe the word of God is the word of God.

29:27 Now sometimes, and I know we've heard this before, people will say, well, I wish I could believe the Bible, but, you know, it's been changed and tweaked, people copying it over and over. You ever heard that before? You can lift your hand. Yeah. Well, here's what you have to do when someone asks that or says that. So you're asking me, has the Bible been copied a lot? Yeah, okay, so there's been changes. Well, what are those changes? Duh. No, no, seriously, I just want to know where have you studied and what are the changes? Hmm. Hmm. So the Bible reveals to us, it's a love story about how much we matter to God. The Bible reveals to you and me the person of Jesus. It has one hero, Jesus, one villain, the devil, and one message, Jesus rescues.

30:27 Jesus rescues. That's next week. You don't want to miss it. I do, though, want to wrap today's talk up with doing something out of 2 Corinthians 13, verse 14. And this is a Trinitarian blessing. I want to make this a blessing in my life and in your life. So what I'm going to do is, and you can pray with your eyes open, I hope you know that. we're going to read this together and this will be our prayer and then I'll turn the service over to one of our pastors if you're married would you just take your spouse's hand and make that a point of contact or maybe you want to take your child's hand and let's just say this together 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 14 the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

31:38 Amen. Walk to the end of the board. Jump in. And God will take you to depths.