Sovereign Grace Bible Church
These are the sermons and teachings of Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Biggsville, Illinois. We exist to fulfill the Great Commission through the Great Commandment within Gospel Community.
Sovereign Grace Bible Church
The Comforting Doctrine of the Trinity
The profound doctrine of the Trinity reveals God as one in essence yet three distinct persons, offering comfort and deep theological insight rather than confusion.
• God's nature as Trinity is explained clearly in the Upper Room discourse in John's Gospel
• Jesus teaches that He and the Father dwell within each other in perfect unity and equality
• The Holy Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son, making home within believers
• One God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—not three separate gods or one God in different modes
• Common illustrations for the Trinity (water, cloverleaf, rope) all fall short and lead to heresy
• The simplest explanation involves seven key statements about God's unified but distinct nature
• God's triune nature proves He is inherently relational, completely self-sufficient, and the embodiment of love
• The Trinity models perfect relationships—where different roles don't imply different value or worth
• Understanding the Trinity transforms how we view relationships, authority, and community
"I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do, and now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed."
Well, I'm the other pastor, Dan. The good news is, when it comes to the Trinity, many churches you'll have a lopsided view of the Trinity, and usually the Holy Spirit's the one that's left out. The good good news for you is that the other pastor, dan, can't stop talking about the Holy Spirit, so you're going to be all right, I promise. Today we talk about the comforting doctrine of the Trinity, and that should be a little provoking to you, because the average individual doesn't think of or look at the doctrine of the Trinity and say, man, that's warm and fuzzy, that's just a big old hug. The doctrine of the Trinity is probably the one doctrine that most Christians have to believe, one doctrine that most Christians have to believe and yet is also, at the exact same time, the one that everyone is terrible at or completely incapable of explaining or defending. It's been well said to comprehend the Trinity, to try to comprehend the fullness of it, you will lose your mind, but to not believe in it fully is to lose your soul. So today we will try and strike that balance of humble dependence on God, saying at some point in time God is God and we are not, and yet truly looking at the truths of Scripture and seeing what God has for us today. The great theologian Francis Turretin he is like a theologian of theologians said the two hardest doctrines for the human mind to understand are the doctrine of the Trinity number one, and then the doctrine of Jesus Christ's dual nature, his humanity and his deity. So we begin with the comforting doctrine of the Trinity today. So if you wanted to know the basics of what we're going to be looking at today, today we're going to look at who God is. Next week we will look at what God is like. So the attributes of God are what he's like Today. The Trinity really is just how we describe God's nature, who he is in essence. Go ahead and turn your Bibles to the Gospel of John. That sounds comforting.
Speaker 1:Chapter 14, one of the most beautiful portions of Scripture that has the greatest theology of the Trinity, is actually the upper room discourse. That is the last things that Jesus says to his disciples before he dies. And you and I would think again of the doctrine of the Trinity and say if Jesus just had one last thing to say to the disciples, I mean it would be maybe this or that. No one offhand would just say, you know, he would probably elaborate the most extensive explanation of the Trinity to these people. And yet the greatest weakness that you and I always have is that we do not know God. The reason that we fail and fall short is that we do not know God well enough, or we do not know God in an aspect of believing in that. Again, it's the idea that I can say with my mouth I believe you, but if I secretly question your integrity, the way that I will act and react is different than if I now experientially know that you have integrity, I will now trust you and respond and react in a much different way. So we'll be in the Upper Room Discourse, we'll take three little outbursts and come back, but you can stay in chapters 14 through 17. We'll poke through some verses in that text.
Speaker 1:We begin with verses 9 through 11 in chapter 14. Also in your binders. So if you are new, there's new binders that have the whole kit and caboodle in it. If you're not new, we have the pamphlets that can go right into your binder, that have all of these slides printed out for you already, as well as sections for notes and the questions for tonight. So we begin with verses 9 through 11, which we just preached on.
Speaker 1:Recently, jesus said to him that's Philip. Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me? Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say Show us the Father. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. So there, at the end of verse 10 and verse 11, is where I really want you to focus your attention.
Speaker 1:Jesus says the Father who dwells in me, that is to make your abode in something to live within. So there is this intimate, intricate unity between the Father and the Son. That goes even further between the Father and the Son. That goes even further where he just says not only does God abide within me, but believe me, I am in the Father and the Father is in me. So it's not just like big Papa is going into the Son and like he lives within him and then the Son's just like oh, thanks, man. And that's the relationship. This is not a one-way relationship. Jesus is just as much in the father as the father is in Jesus, and that's important because you and I, we have a really strong tendency, especially in Western America, to go towards what's called monarchism, and so we believe there's a hierarchy of importance in the Trinity. We're like, okay, obviously God the Father is most important. God the Son is second important, although sometimes in the Gospels you think he's number one and the Holy Spirit is definitely number three. There's no question about that, he's definitely number three and that's not the truth at all.
Speaker 1:What we'll learn throughout this is some very important theological terms that'll give you kind of handles to hold on to. To explain the most basic aspects of the Trinity, one of the things we'll look at is two blurbs from the Athanasian Creed. This is what this creed says from, let's see, 1700 years ago approximately. It says that we worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence, what quality the Father has, the Son has and the Holy Spirit has. And yet there are not three eternal beings, there is but one eternal being, uncreated and immeasurable. So again, these old creeds really give us some really basic sentences that help us to understand these giant theological concepts.
Speaker 1:What is God? Well, god is one God in Trinity, but the Trinity is united in one. So that keeps us from a lot of heresies that would otherwise keep people from actually being saved and understanding the true God. And then it explains how we don't divide the essence either, that the qualities of the Father are the same as the Son and the same as the Spirit. It's not like God. The Father is omnipotent, he's all-powerful, and Jesus is mostly powerful and the he's all-powerful, and Jesus is like, mostly powerful, and the Spirit's like whatever power God gives him. They are all all-powerful, they are three persons in one. They are all uncreated. That's important. They have no beginning and no end. They are uncreated and immeasurable. The idea of infinity that there's not a way for us to quantify.
Speaker 1:God Jesus continues in John 14. Go ahead and skip down to verses 16 and 17. So he just said just right before this that him and the Father are one, they are together. And now he says and I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it. Neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. This is a very important verbiage, because Jesus in the upper room is going to explain that God is going to live within his disciples, and now he's saying that God who's living within you is the Holy Spirit. And so now we see this further connection where, okay, jesus and the Father are within each other, right, so we got this two-person Godhead right. But then Jesus, who is God, references the Holy Spirit as God and it says the Spirit of Truth, which, when we look at the Old Testament, is a reference, almost a direct reference, to God. In the Old Testament you'll see God referred to as God, the Father, you'll see him referred to as Lord, which eventually becomes the title of Jesus, and you'll see him referred to as Spirit. So all three of those titles are actually in the Old Testament. So in the New Testament we're able to see here Jesus is pointing to the Spirit and saying the Holy Spirit is God.
Speaker 1:Now we're going to pause and look at the word Trinity, because this is important, because I don't know about you, but the Trinity is like this kind of thing I know about, and if someone said right things about it, I'd be like yeah, that sounds right. But if someone said find the word Trinity, I'd be like no, I got nothing, I don't have that on me. So the word Trinity comes from the Latin word Trinitas, which means threefold or three in one. So you will not find the word Trinity in your Bible. However, like we learned last week from learning about God's Word, not everything has to be explicitly a Bible verse in the Bible to be necessarily true. This is necessitated off of the truths we find in Scripture. So our one true God exists as a Trinity. God is one in essence, yet three distinct persons. Trinity, that is one in essence, yet three distinct persons. And for the church history buffs, which most of ours, are sick today, Tertullian was the earliest church theologian to use this term, and that was about 1800 years ago. So this has been around for a long time. The Trinity is not new.
Speaker 1:Continuing in John, chapter 14, we have verse 20, 23, and 26. Jesus says In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you. Jesus answered him If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father? Same portion of the conversation.
Speaker 1:We haven't skipped really much of anything here. Jesus is continuing to point to himself as God, god the Father as God and the Spirit as God. Not only that, he's again pointing to the ministry of the Spirit, which we'll talk about in some weeks, where the Spirit is the one that brings to remembrance Scripture Most explicitly in this moment. This is pointing to the apostles and how they'll be able to remember things, to be able to write scripture. And yet you and I are able to also hold on to that and know that today, the Spirit lives within us and, as a part of God living within us, he brings to our remembrance scripture throughout our day. When we're faced with a situation and we've been trying to memorize this verse for 10 years God is the one who brings it to our memory. This leads us to 2 Corinthians 13, 14.
Speaker 1:This is a benediction in the New Testament and it's one of the most beautiful benedictions because it explicitly has all three persons of the Trinity. In the text it says the grace of the Lord, jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. So Paul is writing this and the letters to Corinth are very early in church history. These are very early after Jesus died, so it's not like there's a lot of time to develop this concept of all three of these persons being God. It's really important for us to focus on those that the structure of this verse communicates the absolute equality of all three persons of the Trinity. It would be heresy if God, the Father, actually was number one and Paul listed Jesus as number one. His order of words had a significant impact on this community at this time, so the fact that he puts Jesus first is already showing either a flippancy which we don't believe Scripture's flippant or it's showing an intentionality that you and I are to understand. These three persons are equal, they are co-equal.
Speaker 1:Jesus continues in John, chapter 15, at the end there, towards the end, at verse 26, says but when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. The big thing we're going to focus on in this and I think, yeah, we have a couple more slides so we get to it. The big thing we're going to focus on in this is and I think, yeah, we have a couple more slides so we get to it the big thing we're going to focus on this is that word proceeds. If you're anything like me, that's like the most confusing thing in the entire world. Like, okay, what does that even mean? Like the Spirit proceeds from the Father.
Speaker 1:We also learned from Scripture that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. So the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Okay, then the Son, we learn, is begotten of the Father. So the Father is. He's not proceeding or begotten. The Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. If you're anything like me right now, you're looking at me like you better have a real good answer. You open up a can of worms and I'm expecting this organized. I'll do my best.
Speaker 1:So this is not as if there's three separate entities. This is not three separate gods and God the Father was the first one. Separate gods and God the Father was the first one. And then God the Father says I don't want to be alone, so I'm going to generate or I'm going to get the Son. And then the Son and the Father say you know what. We really need the trio, so we're going to both work together and make the Spirit.
Speaker 1:That's not what happens. What happens is this is an essential aspect of God's nature. Because God is perfect, he's holy in every way, it is necessary that he be in perfect relationship with himself. So of that, then, we have one essence, one God, and we don't have three parts of God where God the Father is like the first third and the second third and the third third. They are all God, and yet there is a relationship, and that is we talk about the word person. This is not on the slide, but this is important.
Speaker 1:We talk about the three persons, and actually I think it was Erica that brought this up, and she was like what does that even mean, three persons? Like what do you think of three persons? And she was like what does that even mean three persons? Like what do you think of three persons? And there's no way. You guys are one.
Speaker 1:Persons does not refer to a distinction as far as existence or even relationship with humanity. The personhood of the Trinity is referring to the relationship between the three. That is the only reason we use that word. We haven't found a better word in 2,000 years. If we find one, we'll look for it, but it's not how you and I think of person. It's, again, more of how they thought about person 2,000 years ago. It is simply referring to the fact that they relate to each other, that there are three persons who relate to each other. And how do they relate? Well, the father begets the son, and the son and the father proceed, have the spirit, proceed from them.
Speaker 1:Those are just fancy words for us to understand that there's a relationship between these three. And, most importantly, what it's pointing to is authority. And, most importantly, what it's pointing to is authority. And you and I again I say that word and people look up. It's pointing to authority, which is important because you and I have fallen for the. It's called the egalitarian lie that's what I'm going to call it when it says if you and I are the same, then we should be able to do the same things.
Speaker 1:Right, and I'm going to tell you right now my wife and I are equal. But if I tell her I'm about to birth that baby out next month, two months from now, three months from now she's going to laugh at me, and that's rightfully so. Why? That didn't make me that way. That's not how it works. Same way, if my child comes up to me tomorrow says, dad, you need to work this job and move us to this house and do these things, I'll look at my child and say, no, you are my child. Now, is my child any less worth than me? Right, if, if I die, or if they die, is that looked at any different in God's eyes or even in the economy of humanity? Answer no, if anything, the world would say the child that dies is more traumatic. That's a bigger deal. So just because the child is the lowest rung of authority here in the family relationship does not mean the child is less than, essentially in their nature, the mother or the father.
Speaker 1:And yet again we see this beautiful kind of picture, this imprint of God. God made us in his image. One of the little imprints we can see is in the relationships between the family. We have Adam, the father, right. And where did Eve come from? Oh, she was pulled out of a rib, that's right. She was pulled out of his rib and made into a woman. So then she came from the man. Okay, where does the baby come from? Does the baby come from just the woman. No, the baby comes from both the man and the woman. So we have this beautiful kind of representation of as far as a finite creation can be. This is what the relationship of the Trinity looks like.
Speaker 1:So we move on to the Athanasian Creed. This is the last aspect of it we're going to go over today. It says there are not three lords, there is but one Lord. Nothing in the Trinity is before or after, nothing is greater or smaller. In their entirety the three persons are co-eternal and co-equal with each other. We must worship the Trinity in unity and their unity in the Trinity. So this is really important because if you look at the cover sheet for your binder for this week, you'll see that Spurgeon is encouraging you to make sure that your heart is growing in love for all three persons of the Trinity.
Speaker 1:Again, we don't have like a human experience that can kind of help us to illustrate that, but you and I have to constantly kind of think about. We usually have a favorite right. You might like the father-like figure, so you're like God, the father's big in my eyes, and Jesus and the spirit are there. Or it might be the other end, where you grew up kind of more experiential and you're like the spirit, is it? And then there's Jesus in the New Testament, and God the father exists somewhere in the background, but he's like. He's like the background player. We always have to be training our hearts to where there is an equal worship, an equal love, an adoration for all three persons of the Trinity, because they are all God and we are worshiping one God, not three gods, one God.
Speaker 1:Jesus continues into John, chapter 16, verses 13 through 15. It says 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. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. The things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. Therefore, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. We're going to follow the mine train here, okay? So the original mine is the Father here, right? All that the Father has. He's the original mine here, in this relationship here, right? All that the Father has. He's the original mine. Here in this relationship, jesus says everything he has, I have Okay, got it. And then he says and the Spirit also? The Spirit has what I have. So now we have this perfect, circular relationship within the Trinity where everything the Father has, the Son has the exact same and the Spirit has the exact same, which, again, all of this is really helping us to get away from that hierarchy that we so easily fall into.
Speaker 1:If you ever wanted the simplest picture of the Trinity, you could possibly get. This is it. If you need to know seven things to explain the Trinity, this is it. This is how you teach a toddler the Trinity. In the center there is one God Okay, got it. The Father is God, the Son is God and the Spirit is God. However, the Father is not the Son and is not the Spirit. The Son is not the Father and is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father and is not the Son. And yet, circling all the way back around, god is one. So you could look at this for a long time. I have it printed out for you, don't worry. We thought ahead. Those seven statements are really the only truths about the Trinity that we know for sure when it comes to their relationship. These are the only things we know for sure. Everything else is like an expansion of these truths, right, like, how do we know the Father is not the Son? Well, they talk about each other distinctly and it says that the Son is begotten of the Father. Okay, so they can't be. Everything comes out of this simplistic picture and you and I again could spend a lifetime trying to understand. But you and I also don't want to lose our minds. So we look at this with a childlike faith from Psalm 131 and say God is God and I am not. The end.
Speaker 1:Jesus then, in John 17, verses 1-5, is praying his high priestly prayer, it says. 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. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do, and now, father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. Okay, this is like Trinity 101, right here in many ways. End of that.
Speaker 1:Jesus says, god the Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you before. All right, that's a big deal. And then he says before the world existed. And you're like okay, this is before creation. The only thing that existed before creation was God. So Jesus in this prayer is calling himself God and God, the Father. God. Not only that.
Speaker 1:In verse 3, he says this is eternal life. That they know you Right, that's eternal life. Salvation is knowing God. Amen, with any expense. Know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, the only true God and Jesus Christ. So now, knowing God in a salvific way requires that I know the only true God and Jesus Christ more than one person in the Trinity. I am God. All of this goes back again to the most basic aspect of God, which comes from Deuteronomy 6, and many other texts Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God. The Lord is one, not two, three, one. This is again the bedrock of our doctrine of the Trinity.
Speaker 1:We end this section of John with 10 through 11, verses 10 through 11 and verses 20 and 21 of chapter 17. Jesus says All mine are yours and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them and I am no longer in the world. But they are in the world and I am coming to you, holy Father. Keep them in your name no-transcript through your word that they may all be one, just as you, father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Jesus is again tying all this into a really big knot and is really trying to drive this home. So I really hope you got this part at the very least. God is one and Jesus and the Father and the Spirit are one.
Speaker 1:There's a really funny math problem that people try to do all the time when they argue with you about the trinity, they're like, okay, yeah, but one plus one plus one equals three. And you're like, okay, the next time someone does that with you I got, I got. You say, yeah, but one times, one times one equals one. There's your math. You're welcome. It's probably the only good thing I've said so far. That's good, the one thing that makes sense. All right Now here is like the tippy top of the mountain of the Trinity.
Speaker 1:How do we know? The Trinity is essential and is the most important doctrine. Well, the great commission again is said for us to go and baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now here's what's really important is that in the Greek, the verbiage in the name is singular. It is one name, and yet I don't know about you, but I see three names. So we see that this one name is ascribed to three different persons, and there are many people who try to dodge and go around and say, well, no, it doesn't. In the Greek text this is one name described to three persons. That proves that the one true God must be three persons.
Speaker 1:The mission of Christianity is based on a triune God. So the doctrine of the Trinity, if we were to summarize the Bible, clearly teaches that God is one and God is three. Each person of the Trinity is distinguished by distinctive characteristics and relations. The primary relation, again, that we're pointing to for personhood is their relationship to each other. The three persons of the Trinity are real and distinct persons. They are perfectly equal, infinite, without beginning, and are one God who is not divided in nature or being so we still, right at the end of this, are still like okay, I feel like I understand more, but also maybe I'm a little bit more confused or my head's busy. Is it foggy in here? It's definitely hot, I know it's hot in here.
Speaker 1:Two things. One, just because the Trinity is hard to understand or to comprehend doesn't mean it's not true. Right, you could explain to your three-year-old why seatbelts works. I'm here to tell you. If you've got the right three-year-old, they'll argue with you for hours about how it is non-essential and you don't know what you're talking about. Just because we cannot comprehend it fully does not mean it's true.
Speaker 1:The ultimate authority of truth we learned last week is the Bible. Bible is the ultimate authority of truth. And another reason why it's really hard to understand is you and I. We really we want the doctrine of the Trinity to be understandable, which is reasonable. Here's where sin plays into it. We want it to be understandable to the degree that we like to understand it, and then maybe we can kind of put handles on it. Right, I want it to be more of like just the relationship of the family. If it was just that and nothing else, I can understand it, maybe not deeply, but I got that. So we, sinfully, can look at this and say, no, no, I demand for an illustration to work to encapsulate the entire truth of the Trinity. Let's talk about some fun things.
Speaker 1:Here is the problem with all this, and these are some of the most popular heresies today. The most popular, probably today within the Christian church or people that call themselves Christians, is modalism, so that would be on the far left. That is, that God appears in different modes as the Father, the Spirit and the Son. The greatest illustration you probably have ever heard for this one is God is like H2O, he is mist and water and ice, and we would say, no, that's water showing up in three different modes or manifestations. God is always God. So if you could find a way to do water with water and water and then to make it, I don't even know, still be water, but then represent the distinctions, sure, this water here, if it was a part of this water, and they relate to each other, you and I. Again, this does not work. Modalism is probably the most popular heresy currently and they'll say things like God, when he wanted to, in the Old Testament, showed himself as the Father. Then, in the New Testament he showed himself as the Son and now, in the Church Age, he shows himself as the Holy Spirit. He adapts to what he needs to be for our benefit.
Speaker 1:The next one's partialism. God is one God, but he's divided into three portions or parts. Again, you've heard people maybe say things like a clover leaf, like God took a clover leaf right, and you're like no, that's three separate leaves. Just because it makes up one clover leaf, it's three separate leaves on a stem. It doesn't work. Or God's like a three-braided rope. It's just three ropes braided together. You're like no, that's a heresy too, because those ropes are separate. They're ropes in and of themselves and yet if you tie them together, they're still separate. Tied together, god has to be one. A rope is not one. It's dividable, and we learned earlier that God cannot be divided.
Speaker 1:Okay, I put a fancy word in there. We're going to go to the fourth one, macedonianism. But you have other ones like Arianism and different stuff. And Macedonianism is where God, jesus, created the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit was necessary for Christians. So out of the love they had for each other, they created the Holy Spirit. Or another one would be like Jesus. Jesus was human and he got adopted into the God family and that's called adoptionism. So he's now a part of God and we say, no, jesus just said that he had glory with God before the creation of the world. No, thank you. The last one is tritheism, and this is the most popular version of this would probably be found in like Mormonism. It's where God is three separate gods who coexist. Right, they're all one essence. They're separate from each other, so they don't. They share like the same DNA. They're three separate individuals.
Speaker 1:And again, we would say this is heresy. This is not true. This is not the God of the universe. This God will not save you. Don't believe in this God. What is the middle here? What is the correct truth?
Speaker 1:And again, you and I, we always have to fight for this because, as I've said at least three or four times over the last couple years, spurgeon taught us discernment is not learning the difference between right and wrong. Discernment is learning the difference between right and almost right. That is Christian discernment. And that's why, when we go through all these words, you might be sitting there like my head's cooked. I got nothing left. I have slides to look over later. You can come tonight and ask questions.
Speaker 1:It is important that we work through these things. God is one in essence and yet three persons. And if you ever get confused or you want to learn more about this, go back to that picture and go through it. What are the seven truths about God? What are the seven necessary sentences? So end here. What are the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity? This is the so what portion we learned all these big words and all these things?
Speaker 1:Okay, number one we see that God is relational. If you and I are made in God's image and God is relational, I don't want to hear none of that. I don't need no man. I don't need no woman. I don't need no, nobody. I don't need people to support me. I can suffer on my own. I'm tough. I got grit. You got nothing. You need people. You need a community to love you and support you and to come alongside you and to be patient with you as we all stumble forward together in sanctification. Number two we learned that God has no needs. God is perfectly content within himself. He needs nothing from you.
Speaker 1:If you and I fail at everything in life, god will still do exactly what he's supposed to do. There's a freedom in that because you and I can do two things. Number one we can look at God like he's like this beggar and it's like God just wants you to turn to him and if you would do that, it would make his heart so happy and if you don't, it's going to break his heart and we're like kind of, yeah, but at the end of the day, if you don't say yes to God, if you are not saved, you're still God. God is not affected in that way on what we do. His perfect plan has started at the beginning and it will come to an end. You and I are just along for the ride, being good stewards, loving God and loving others, which is important, because that leads us to the next thing that God is love.
Speaker 1:One of the things that we see all throughout the Trinity is love. Why is Jesus dying on the cross? Love For you, yes, but primarily for God, okay, why did God send his son? For love, again, primarily for you? No, primarily for his son. So you and I again have to focus our eyes, because you and I are very easily self-focused and we think God just thinks about me all the time. And that's true because he's perfect. So you don't have a thought that you ever think that he doesn't know about. He does care about you intimately, specifically and personally. And yet, like the song last week, and yet like the song last week, right Above All right, he thought of me above all and it's like close. Actually, he did think about us a lot, but above all, it's a little bit inaccurate.
Speaker 1:Jesus was thinking of his own glory, the glory of the Father, and you and I again, because we're sinful creatures, will be like that's selfish. He was on the cross, dying for our sins, and he was thinking about himself. But we forget Romans 8, 28, that everything that is for God's glory is for our good. There's nothing selfish about God and anything we've learned that God has loved, because every person of the Trinity has sacrificed and condescended on our behalf. They have become lowly for us. Number four, our salvation is God's work and God's work alone. God, the Father, prepared it beforehand, jesus Christ executed it and the Holy Spirit is the guarantor and the indweller of us in the meantime. And lastly, god models for us a perfect relationship.
Speaker 1:We hit on that egalitarian lie earlier. This is really important. You and I again can look at the family model. We can look at work environments where things are not fair. We can look at a church where there's pastors who have authority over a congregation and we'll say that whole word authority and use. You would use the word submit, use the word submit in the 21st century and like there's like fangs, there's teeth. It's bad. God himself submits to himself and the glory that the father has is the exact same glory as the son. The glory that my wife receives as a mother, a homemaker and a wife is the exact same glory as me, a church planter in the middle of Henderson County. It's the exact same. There's not a hierarchy of glory exact same. There's not a hierarchy of glory. All glory is equal. So you and I then should see that and then also follow the other steps here.
Speaker 1:The Trinity loves each other perfectly. What should we do? Go home, love your wife and your kids. What should you do? Sacrifice for each other? Why for each other? Why we love because he first loved us. We follow in the footsteps of our perfect God every single day.
Speaker 1:The doctrine of the Trinity is not this academic kind of distant doctrine.
Speaker 1:It is the exact words that Jesus chose to use to comfort His disciples in their hour of greatest need. Let us pray, father, we come before you just honestly speechless at you. Your nature is so above and beyond anything we could ever fully comprehend. So, lord, we ask that you would help us to have a humble, childlike faith, that we would hold our hands open and take whatever we can get today and continue to grow in grace, degree by degree. Lord, we ask that you would bless our efforts here to honor you in this church, to glorify you above all, above everything else. Lord, may your word go forth and not return void. May hearts be changed. May salvation happen to this county where the community around us is transformed slowly but surely, because we are faithful to learn your truth and then to share it with a dying and dark world around us. Lord, if I've fallen short in any area of teaching your nature and your truth, I ask, lord, that you would correct that and, lord, ultimately, that your will would be done here, in Jesus' name, we pray, amen.
