THE TRINITY V
Is it THAT Important?
10/28/12
What some of you may not realize about me is that at I am an introverted person. That is not to say I do not like to be around crowds or visiting with people, it does mean that it is something I have to work at.
I will say that being an introverted person I don’t like small talk with people I do not know. I find it very awkward. I am not at all fond of talking with people I do not know, it is just uncomfortable for me.
“So nice weather.” “Yeah” “Suppose to rain tomorrow” “O really”, “Yeah, Yeah” and so it goes.
However if I discover something about the person that we have in common than the whole conversation takes on a different feel. If for example they are a Christian. Or they hunt, or like fire arms, or military history. If something is found that we both have in common, the conversation is much easier. That is because while I may not know the person, I know something about that person.
But the thing is, is that we can know a lot ABOUT a person, but not know a person. For example there are lot of historical figures that I know a lot about. Take Abe Lincoln for example, I know a lot about him, but I do not know him. Why don’t I know him? Because I have never experienced any kind of relationship with him.
That is why historically Christians have talked about knowing God, not just knowing about Him, but knowing, experiencing a relationship with Him. You see people can know about God, they can read the Bible, study theology and know all kinds of things ABOUT God, yet never know God. They have never experienced God, they have yet to encounter God as it were. I like the way Alister McGrath says it, “Knowing means encountering and experiencing someone.” And that is what the Christian means when he or she says, “I Know God”, “I have had an encounter with Him”. It is through the encounter with God, through that knowing God, that we love God.
I point that out because today I want to talk about the command we have to know God, to encounter God. You see the Scripture teaches that when God does encounter us, when we experience Him, for the experience to be true according to the Scriptures, it will involve the Triune God of the Bible, it will involved the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. So then it is important for us to learn of the Trinity, because that is the way in which God as revealed Himself to us, and that is the only way in which we can truly experience Him and may I add, to experience God is to experience His love. Thus as I have been saying in this study of the Trinity, at the core of it’s teaching is love.
Today we will begin to look at four specific Scriptural reasons as to why the study the Trinity is so important. I remind you of our definition of the Trinity, that is “Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
The first Scriptural reason as to why the study of the Trinity is so important is that we have the command to know God.
The Scripture reveals to us that it is of utmost importance for us to understand (obviously not fully), and to know God. In others words we must understand and know the which God has revealed to us about Himself. I fact Scripture reveals this is the most important thing that we can do. It is to take precedence over all we do.
Listen to Jer. 9:23-24 “Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”
So we can see that it is not wisdom that God delights in, it is not our strength, it is not our stuff, but what God delights in our “understanding and knowing” Him. But this brings about a problem. How can we know a being that is totally separate from creation? Totally unique?
As God states in Isa. 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” How do we reach up to know God?
One of the problems with knowing God is that there is nothing here on earth to compare God to. This is why so many folks struggle with the Trinity. Because in the teaching of the Trinity we have a God that is bigger then our little brain’s can imagine.
To quote Dr. White, from his book “The Forgotten Trinity”. “That is really what Christians have always meant when they use the term “mystery” of the Trinity. The term is never meant that the Trinity is an inherently irrational thing. Instead, it simply means that we realize that God is completely unique in the way He exists, and there are elements of His being that are simply beyond our meager mental capacity to comprehend.”
God we must understand is like nothing else in creation. There is nothing we can hold up and say, God is like this. It just will not work. God is infinitely beyond His creation. There is nothing we can compare Him to.
And not only do we have a great gulf of being between us and God that prevents us from knowing Him, we also have sin problem. As Rom. 3:10-11 states, “as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”
Two effects that our sin nature has on us mentioned there in Rom. 3. First it prevents us from even beginning to understand God, but it also has the effect of us not even wanting to. We will not even seek after that understanding.
We can see our hopeless state, again we looking back to Jer. 9:23-24, and say, well how can we do that which God delights in and understand and know Him? How can we in our state reach up to God? The thing is we can’t, God must reach down. And He has, we see that God, through the Second person of the Trinity, enters into His creation, that is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Because there is nothing in Creation by which we can say look, that is what God looks like, God must enter into creation, and He has through Christ, the eternal Son of God. And it is through Him that we can understand and know God.
Well of course it is one thing to say that that it is another to proof in from Scripture. We will be looking extensively at passages that show the deity of Christ at a later date, I want to here look at some passage that demonstrate that we can know God, by knowing the Son.
First passage I want us to look at is John 17:1-3, “When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Here we have the beginning of what is called Jesus high priestly prayer. Jesus speaks of the fact that the Father has given all authority over all flesh, to GIVE ETERNAL LIFE, to those whom the Father had given to the Son. But notice something very important there, that eternal life is to “know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” So to have eternal life is to know both the Father and Son.
I believe this reveals to us why it is that God delights in us understanding and knowing Him, because those that understand and know Him, have eternal life. There are His children, these are the ones He has given to the Son.
So then Jesus states to have eternal life is to know the Father and the Son. But we must also understand that the Bible teaches that we cannot know that Father or the Son, but by the Holy Spirit.
1 Cor. 2:14 “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
And also 1 John 2:20; “But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.” That is of course Spiritual knowledge.
This bring us back to the fact that we can know God, by knowing the Son, through the Holy Spirit.
Let us look now at two verses from John that say the same thing. Both demonstrating that to know the Father is to the know the Son, and to know them is to have eternal life.
First, John 8:18-19, “I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”
And also John 14:6-7, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Let me point out some truths from this these passages. First, there are two who bear witness to the Son. That is the Son and the Father. The both bear witness to the truthfulness of the message of Christ’s gospel, they bear witness to the truthfulness of what Jesus is saying.
Second we see that no one comes to the Father, except through the Son. We can put this another way, and that is to say that you cannot know the Father, unless you know that Son. Which bring us to the third truth, I want to point out, If we know the Son we also will know the Father. I believe it helpful to go back to that quote by McGrath at the beginning of this sermon, “Knowing means encountering and experiencing someone.” What it means to know God is not just to know about Him, but to have a relationship with Him.
So again we go back to the fact that we can know God, by knowing the Son and add to that by saying there is no other way of knowing God, but through the Son. I would further put forth that that is only possible if Jesus Christ is in fact God. For to know God we must know that which is not a creature, but creator.
Another verse that is important, Look with me to 2 Cor. 4:4-6 “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Notice that it is the “god of the world” that is Satan who blinds the minds of unbelievers. They are blinded and in darkness, that cannot see the light of the gospel, which if the “glory of Christ” who is we are told the image of God.
Now look closely at vs. 6, it is God who shines light out of darkness. He shines that light into the heart of the believer, so that they have the knowledge of the glory of God which is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. That is to say that the glory of God is seen in Jesus Christ. I find it interesting that Paul uses the phrases here “glory of Christ” and “glory of God” and connects the two. I believe he does this because He wants to us to know that to have knowledge of the glory of God, is to have knowledge of the glory of Christ, because it is the same glory.
We go back to, to know the Son is to the know the Father, and to know the Father is to know the Son.
And how does the Father shine this light into our hearts, through the Holy Spirit, 1 Cor. 2:9-10 “But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”–– these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”
To Quote the famous 19th century Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge in his commentary on 2 Cor. 4:6, “It is the glory of God as revealed in Christ that men are by the illumination of the Holy Ghost enabled to see. There are two important truths involved in this statement. First, that God becomes in Christ the object of knowledge. The clearest revelation of the fact that God is, and what he is, is made in the person of Christ, so that those who refuse to see God in Christ lose all true knowledge of him.”
So then, we can see from these passage the first Scripture reason as to why the study of the Trinity is so important and that is because we have command to know God. And knowing God is seeing that He is indeed One being that exists as three coequal and coeternal persons, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
That first specific Scriptural reasons as to why the study the Trinity is so important ties in closely with the second, and that is we are command to WORSHIP God in Spirit and in Truth.
Look with me to John 4:21-24 “Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Here Jesus is speaking to the Samaritan women at the well. Jesus is telling her in essence that God is not confined to one mountain or another, God is not in a place. He is to be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth.
As I have stated in a prior sermons just because we call something God does not in fact make it God. And idol is anything that we worship, whether made with our hands or make with our minds.
To worship anything other then the true and living God as REVEALED IN BIBLE is to worship an idol. In order to truly worship God in Spirit and in Truth we must know God, or in others words have the right knowledge of God.
Let us look closely at what Jesus states. Jesus tells us that we are to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. I want to say that the only way that person can indeed worship God in spirit and in truth, is by the Holy Spirit of God.
Listen to what Paul states in Phil. 3:3, I think this really help in understanding what Jesus is saying, “ For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh––“
Worship is a spiritual thing not a fleshly thing. Worshipping God is not about the position our body is in, it is about what position your heart is in. It is a spiritual exercise, directed by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.
But worship is also about truth. This again points to the Holy Spirit of God, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. John 16:13, our Lord states, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”
Our worship must be from our heart and it must be in harmony with the truth that God has revealed in His word, truth that is revealed to us through the Holy Spirit. That truth being, as we shall clearly see in the coming weeks that God is one being existing coequally and coeternally in three persons to whom the Scripture reveals as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Friends you cannot worship God in spirit and in truth if you are worshipping the wrong god. Thus our understanding of the Trinity is of vital importance to us worshipping in spirit and in truth.
When one denies the Trinity, one will fall into the error of exulting one person of the Godhead over the other. When we enter into this building to worship God, we must come with an understanding that we are here to worship the Father, worship the Son, and worship the Holy Spirit. All are equally God, all are worthy of worship.
When we fail to do that we fail at worshipping God in spirit and in truth.
Today we have looked at two of four specific Scriptural reasons as to why the study the Trinity is so important.
The first was that the study of the Trinity is important because we have the command to know God. The second the study of the Trinity is important because we have the command to worship God in spirit and in truth. We can obey neither of those commands until we acknowledge the triune nature of the living God.
In closing my prayer is that you indeed know God, not know about God but know Him. I pray that you have encountering and experienced God. That you have a relationship with Him. A relationship that involves the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For as we shall see next week, to faithfully proclaim the gospel is to proclaim the Trinity.
May your faith be in the eternal Son of God. Believing through the Holy Spirit, that the Son was send from the Father, to die for your sins, only to raise again, and return to His place in glory at the right hand of the Father. May God grant you the grace to believe in the gospel.
LET US PRAY.
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