Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Framework - God is not an egg
There are three parts to an egg, just like God. There are many such things in creation that have three parts like God; and yet none of these are like God at all!
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament Framework. Today a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2:But first of all, god is one. What this means is that God's persons are mutually exhaustive of one another. Let's explain that further. This means he can't be divided into parts. It's typical for people to say, well, god is like an egg. You got one egg and it's got three parts shell, yolk and albumen or whatever. Or one light particle, or is it a wave, whatever? Break light apart into three parts and say, well, that's like God. Or a pie. You take a pie. This is the easiest one. Here comes Thanksgiving in a month Hopefully, I have some pies and you cut the pie in three parts.
Speaker 2:You get a piece, I get a piece, and my wife gets a piece. That's a big piece. Okay, that's not God. God is not like a pie and you split it. You have Father, son and Spirit, and together they're all God.
Speaker 2:Because what would that mean? That would mean the Father is not God, the Son is not God, the Spirit is not God. In fact, the Father is less than God and the Son is less than God, and the Spirit is less than God because each one of them are only one-third, see, okay, that is not what God is like. So if that's your idea of God, that's what we call an idol. Did you catch that? Why? Because this concept of God as a pie is a created concept. It's created, it's functioning in the categories that God made, and you can't take God as the creator and subject him to our categories. So what this is saying is that God's persons are mutually exhaustive of one another. In other words, if you were thinking of the pie and you got Father, son and Spirit as three pieces of the pie, what this is saying is that each piece of the pie is mutually exhaustive of every other piece of pie, but we're like well, that doesn't make sense to me. I don't see how that can be. There are three separate pieces of pie, but not in the model of the Trinity. That's not the way it works. The three persons are mutually exhaustive of one another, such that in one sense, they're all the same pie, the entire pie. So what people do, and the reason people tend to think this way and draw analogies with God and say God's like an egg or God's like a pie or whatever, is because that's the way things are down here in creation and that's the only way they know how to think, and so they tend to borrow this idea from creation and then project it onto the creator. This is where all idolatry start. Okay, that won't ever work. Okay, as two saint used to say stanley, two saint, that dog won't hunt um. So that's trying to capture god and bring him into created categories.
Speaker 2:And let's go to Isaiah 40, verse 18. Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 18. Let's see why you can't do this. The Bible explicitly says you can't do this. Isaiah 40, verse 18. To whom, then, will you liken God, or what likeness will you compare with him? Isn't that what you're doing when you say, well, god is like an egg, god is like a pie. God is like the three parts of music melody, harmony and rhythm. That's what you're doing. You're saying god is like this thing, but the bible says, well, who are you going to compare him with? Okay, to what then we liken him? And then the very next verse is talk about what subject? Idols, because once you begin to compare him with something else, that is the beginning of idolatry. That's how it gets started. So it's actually. Everything is exactly the opposite.
Speaker 2:We don't have these categories down here, and then we project the categories on God and put him in our categories. The reason we have categories is because of who he is. They're derived from him. In other words, why do we have a concept called time? Is that a category? I mean, for us it's a category, because some of you are saying I've got to be out here at 12 noon, so you have a concept of time. Why do we have, is that a concept, that we then take and we say, well, god must be in time, he's limited by time. You know this is. There's a whole theology called process theology that is built on this idea that God is subject to time, process theology. So this is endemic to people's thinking, to bring God into our categories. Here's the reason we have time, though Time is a finite derivative of eternality. God is eternal, he's not subject to time. He doesn't experience the passage of moments, so to speak, as we do. But time exists because it is a finite replica of eternity. It's eternity shrunk down in size, so to speak. Now we also have concept of space in geometry. Right, geometry is basically the study of spaces. Why do we have that? I mean, is that just something that exists?
Speaker 2:Verne Poitras wrote a very interesting article in around 1978. He was a mathematician, also a theologian, and he wrote a paper about mathematics and whether God was silent about it. In other words, is math math whether or not God exists? Can you have math whether or not God exists? And he has a proof. And he has a proof. He has a proof that shows that math is not neutral, that math itself is derivative of the nature of God and you can't just go about doing your geometry, doing your calculus, doing your physics, doing all your little formulas for friction and whatnot. You cannot do those without assuming God is actually there. It's a formal proof and it's been very difficult for people to answer.
Speaker 2:As a result of that, james Nicol wrote a book it's about almost half the thickness of our Bible called Mathematics is God's Silent, by James Nicol, very interesting textbook to show that the categories and things that we enjoy, like space, time, math and concept of number time, all these things, the only reason we have these categories to function in, is because of the nature of God and these things are derivative of his nature by means of creation. So fascinating stuff. But the point here to notice especially is that God's persons, the Father, son and Spirit, are mutually exhaustive of one another. And you say but that doesn't fit my category. Right, I get that, but he's infinite, we're finite and the categories we have, we can't shove him into. It won't work.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app, and until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.