The Trinity

We started off in week number one talking about the spiritual nature of God. If you recall, we gave a brief interview about what theology is to begin with, right? Theos is a Greek word, it means what? God, exactly right. So theology is the study of God. And we talked about the ten major headings of theology and how they all relate back to what we call theology proper. The doctrine of God is what we're learning about right now, God's nature and His attributes. So if you're studying, say, a later topic like soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, you can't really grasp that until you understand the doctrine of God, who He is. Why would you need to be saved if you don't understand that God is holy, right? Why would the impetus for God to save us be there if not for God being a God of love? So it all comes back and touches on who God is and His nature and His attributes. So that's why we're doing this study here tonight.

In the first week we looked at the spiritual nature of God, and by that we meant that God is immaterial. He doesn't have a body like us, He is spiritual in nature, so He's invisible, He's incorruptible, He's immortal. And those who worship Him, Jesus said, must worship Him in what? Spirit and in truth, exactly right. He cannot be ascertained by physical means. We can't weigh Him, we can't measure Him, we certainly can't see Him, right? So rather than depending on our own imaginations to think about God, what do we depend upon to know God and to hear His voice?

His word, His revelation, His Scripture, exactly right. So we know Him by spiritual means, and we have the word and the Spirit, and the word and the Spirit work together to show us the person of Christ. So that was week one. Week number two, we looked at the Lord being the one who is the living and true God. All the gods of this world are nothing but idols, right? They're dead pieces of stone, dead wood, they can't act, they got to be propped up, they got to be carried around, but our God is a living and true God. He acts, and He hears, and He rescues, and He wants us to know Him. And so when we worship that God, we worship a God who's able to rescue us, who's able to hear our voice, who's able to come down and bring fire and consume the sacrifice on the altar like we studied with Elijah, right? Because He's the living and true God.

And then last week we looked at the personality of God, that God's very name I Am implies both personality and presence. He's a God who wants to be known, He's a God who reveals Himself to us, He's a God who is self-conscious of Himself, He thinks and reflects on both Himself and His creation. He's a God who's also self-determining, He thinks, acts, and wills freely from within, and His plans cannot be thwarted at all. And because of that, God is the one that we must trust all of our plans to, right? Because He is the one who is in control, and we can know God's plans again through the Holy Scripture. So it brings us tonight to lesson number four. We'll be looking at the triunity of God, but before we get started, let's go to our prayer, okay?

Heavenly Father, we thank You for the privilege of calling You Father. Thank You that You have adopted us, Lord. Adoption is not something that we can purchase, it's not something that we can earn, but it's something that's freely bestowed upon us, and it's freely bestowed upon us in Christ. Lord Jesus, we thank You that You perfectly pleased the Father. You were the perfect Son, and it is in You that we have the Father's pleasure. Because we are in You, because we're united to You, we have all the blessings, all the favor of the Father that He's poured out on You is poured out upon us, and because of You, we're co-inheritors of God. Holy Spirit, we praise You that You are the one who speaks within us and tells us that we are indeed the children of God. I pray that You would help us to live up to that calling, help us to live holy lives that honor and please You. And God, as we worship You tonight, Lord, we just want to say back to You the words of the great doxology, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise God all you creatures here below. Praise Him above the heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." Amen.

We're going to be looking at the triunity or the Trinity of God tonight. Caleb sent me a little meme this morning and it was a picture of a soldier or police officer wearing bomb disposal gear, and he's taking apart a bomb, and he says this is me trying to explain the Trinity without becoming a heretic. The Trinity is very mysterious in many aspects, but we can know the God who is the Triune God. He has revealed Himself to us in the Scriptures, and over the next 30 to 45 minutes we're going to do a brief overview of what it means for God to be the Triune God.

Look on your handout. Number one, the first Bible truth that we're going to look at tonight is Scripture tells us that there is only one God. So that's the blank, there's only one God. Deuteronomy chapter 6 is the first Scripture that we have tonight. It's verses 4 through 5. It's called the Great Shema, and it's the first verse that Hebrew children would commit to memory and be able to recite. Hebrew boys would learn to sometimes age three or four, very young, because they viewed this as the defining thing about God. And would someone read this for us? Deuteronomy 6 verses 4 through 5.

Amen. Wonderful job. Yes. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one." When Christianity first broke onto the scene in the first century, it arose out of the Jewish synagogues, right? And the Jewish synagogues often opposed Christianity greatly. If you recall the book of Acts, they chased Paul from one place to another, right? He would think that he's fine there at Thessalonica and then they would follow him there. He would go on to Berea. And the synagogues did not take very kindly at all to the Christians, because they viewed Christians as being tri-theist, worshiping three gods, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They viewed that as rejection of the principle that God is one. And when they would read this in the Jewish synagogues and they'd say, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one," the crowd would often shout continually for several minutes, "One, one, one, one," as a rebuke to the Christians, because they were stressing that they had the true religion and those Christians were tri-theist. They worshiped three different gods.

The irony of it is that the Trinity is all throughout Scripture, both the Old Testament and also in the New Testament. When you look through the Old Testament, you see it in the narrative passages of Scripture time and time again. You'll see the Holy Spirit being mentioned in the same breath as Yahweh, the Spirit of the Lord. And the actions that are ascribed to the Holy Spirit, those same actions of deliverance are ascribed to Yahweh. We see the same thing in regards to Christ. Throughout the Old Testament, there are narrative passages of God manifesting Himself in physical form, a pre-incarnate, if you will, Christ. We often refer to that as the angel of the Lord. We think of passages like Jacob wrestling all night with the angel of the Lord, but who does he call that angel? The Lord, right? Oftentimes, this angel of the Lord is referred to as God Himself, right? And so we see three different entities that are all referred to as God in the Old Testament.

We see that in the narrative passages. We also see that in what we call the didactic or the teaching passages, the instructional passages of Scripture. In fact, this passage that we just read here, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, shows us the same thing. He says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord," — notice the Lord there is in all large block letters. When you see that, that's referring to Yahweh, His name I Am. He says, "The Lord our God." God there is another name for the Lord called Elohim. And what do you know about Elohim? Is it a single or plural word? It's plural. It's a plural word, but it's used in a singular manner to refer to God, but it is plural there. That's why when you see in Genesis 1, it says, "And God said, let us make man in our image." Now, some scholars would say, "Well, that's talking about a plurality of majesty." It's like an echo, because God is so great and He's infinite in His nature. I believe that every word God placed there is there for a reason. And this is just a little bit of a hint that our God is plural here. He is one God that exists in three persons. There's both singular essence and three persons.

And then he says, "The Lord our God, the Lord is one." One here is in the Hebrew, a word that we would call echad, or try to pronounce as echad. And it does mean one, indeed it's one, but it is a compound one. It is a compound unity. Let me give you a couple of examples of that. In Genesis chapter 1, and I think I know you were there when this was written — of course, so I'm reading this humbly in your presence. Genesis chapter 1, verse 5, it says, "God called the light day and darkness He called night, so evening and morning were the first day." In Hebrew, evening and morning were one day. We refer to a day as being both evening and morning, right? If we say, "I've got some great news this past Thursday."

It doesn't matter if that news came Thursday night or Thursday morning, it's one day, right? We see this also in verse 9 of Genesis chapter 1. "Then God said, 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear.'" Again, we see that same word, a compound unity, echad, being used here. We see that if you flip over to Genesis chapter 2, most beautifully, at the wedding where God provides a bride to Adam. And in verse 24 it says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh." It's the same word that's being used here. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one." It's a compound unity.

So that was right there in their great proclamation that God is one. We see this speaking of more than just a singularity. There were words, for example, for using one in an absolute sense. If you recall in Genesis chapter 22 verse 2 where God tells Abraham, he says, "I want you to take your son, your one son, your only son, and take him up to the mountain, and there." That is a different word altogether. It's not echad, but it's yachid. And yachid is one that is absolute oneness. So God could have used that word here to describe Himself in Deuteronomy 6, but He didn't. Instead, He used a compound oneness to describe Himself.

But we do see the unity of nature proclaimed in the Old Testament, and we also see it proclaimed in the New Testament. Look at the next verse, Acts 17:23. "For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship," — this is again Paul on Mars Hill — he says, "I even found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God. Therefore, the one whom you worship without knowing Him I proclaim to you." So we see the unity of God proclaimed in both the Old Testament and the New Testament with hints of being a diversity of persons. The application is simply this: love your God with all that you are. That's the application for number one. Love your God with all that you are. Remember, he says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God." He's our God, right? And He has revealed Himself to us, and we're to love Him with everything that we have. Matthew 22:37 through 38 is the great commandment. Does someone want to read that for us, please?

Amen. Flip over on the back, we're going to look at in the New Testament, Paul writing to the Corinthian church. He says in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 verses 4 through 6, "Therefore concerning things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in this world, and that there is no other God but," what? "But one. For even if there were so-called gods, whether in heavens or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, Father of all things, and we for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we live." This was pretty radical. It was radical in Old Testament Israel times that there is one God because they lived among a plurality of gods, right? When God rescued and delivered Israel out of Egypt, and He sent the ten plagues, those ten plagues were all rebukes of the Egyptian gods. They had gods for everything under the sun, and each one of those plagues was rebuking a specific god. It's been pointed out by many scholars and pastors. The same in the New Testament. The whole area of Macedonia, the Roman culture was steeped in polytheism, right? A multitude of gods. And so, to claim that there is one God was a pretty radical thing. Even as Paul says here, he mentions Jesus Christ. So he is mentioning there are several persons within the Godhead, but there's one God.

Let's look at number two. Bible point number two. Scripture represents God as one undivided essence, but three eternally distinct persons. Scripture represents God as one undivided essence — that's the first blank for number two. The second blank is three eternally distinct persons. One undivided essence, but three eternally distinct persons. Yes, God is one, but there are four facts of the Trinity, and these four facts are pretty clear. There is one God, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

And if you can affirm those four things, you are a good Trinitarian, right? It's when we go beyond those things that it can be tricky. Yes, sir, Jimmy. Yes, love your God with all that you are. That's the application for number one. Love your God with all that you are.

So Scripture represents God as one undivided essence, but three eternally distinct persons. Paul writes to the Ephesian church, and he says there's one body, meaning the church, and one Spirit, being the Holy Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, that's our Lord Jesus Christ, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. So here he's referencing three different persons, and they're all ascribed as deity, right? The application for number two is the Father, Son, and Spirit are God. The Father, Son, and Spirit are God.

We see this again, not just in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament. Isaiah 11, a beautiful prophecy about the coming Messiah. This was again written 700 years before Christ was incarnate. Isaiah, the prophet of the Lord, said, "There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse." There had not been a king on David's throne for 600 years, right? It appeared to be dead, but there was going to be a rod, a shoot, a new growth coming. "And a branch shall grow out of its roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him." Let's talk about the Messiah, and who would rest upon the Messiah? But the Spirit of the Lord. That's the Spirit of Yahweh. The Spirit is ascribed several different ways here. The Spirit of Yahweh, the Spirit of wisdom, Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord. That's a symbol of complete perfection, of completion. The Spirit is often referred to in a sevenfold sense throughout Scripture. And here we see that the Messiah would come and that the Spirit of Yahweh would rest upon Him. That's in the Old Testament. Again, we see three different mentions of the deity of God, but in three different persons, right?

John chapter 1 verse 2, of course, is a passage we can't — in fact, let's flip over to the back where we have the complete passage. John chapter 1 verses 1 through 3 and verse 14. This is on the back. It's reference number two on the back of your sheet. "In the beginning was the" — what? — "Word. And the Word was with" — God — "and the Word was" — God. "He was in the beginning with" God.

"All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." Verse 14, "And the" — what? — "Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." So we see here the pre-existent person of Jesus Christ, who before the world began, was with God forever in eternity.

Flip back on the first page. Luke chapter 1 verse 35. These are words that were spoken to Mary at the annunciation. "And the angel said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you. Therefore also that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God." So again, we see all three persons of the Trinity here referenced in just one verse, and that all takes place in the Incarnation, right? Because Christ is Yahweh with us. He is the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Messiah, the Anointed One. Flip over on the back.

Pastor stole a little bit of thunder earlier, and that's A-OK. That's the Great Commission, right? Every one of us who've been baptized most likely have been baptized in a Trinitarian formula. It says, "Then Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo I am with you always, even until the end of the age. Amen.'"

Point number three, the three persons are equal in glory and honor. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are equal in glory and in honor. God's glory is a big subject, but to give you a nice shorthand for it, God's glory is the sum of all His attributes. Everything that we're studying in this study — God being holy, God being loving, God being truthful, God not changing, God being omnipotent, God being always present, God being all-knowing — you add all those up and that's the vast weight of His infinite glory. His infinite perfections are rolled up. That's what His glory is. It's who He is, right? He is glorious and incomparable, and all three persons are equal in glory. And what we mean by that is that God the Father has all these attributes that we're studying. God the Son possesses all these attributes, and God the Holy Spirit possesses all these attributes because they are very God of very God, right? Jesus doesn't just have some of the attributes of God. He has all of the attributes of God. He is the Word of God made flesh. The Spirit — when we talk about walking in the Spirit, that's nothing more than walking in the character of Yahweh, right? So all three persons of the Trinity are equal in glory, and they're equally worthy of our honor, right?

Let's look at John chapter 20. We of course know that God is worthy of our worship, but remember Thomas, who was not there in the room when Christ appeared to many of His disciples, and he had not seen Him with his eyes, and he was doubting whether Christ had really risen from the grave. In John 20:28, we find where Jesus reveals Himself to Thomas, and He tells him, "Hey, you want to touch me? I'm real. I'm here." And what does Thomas say? The Bible doesn't say he put his hands in the side and on His palms or anything like that. That's all speculative. I don't think he did based upon this. It says, "And Thomas answered and said to Him," said to Christ, "My" what? "And my" — it's a posture of worship. He recognized Jesus as the living God, as the one who has the keys of death and Hades in His hands, the one who's the everlasting God, and he worshiped Him there.

In Acts, as the new church is being birthed because of Christ, and the Holy Spirit comes down at Pentecost, and the blessing of the gospel is going forth, and God is adding daily to the church the numbers who would be saved. They were meeting, they were worshiping, they were freely giving, and we know there's a story of a husband and wife who sold an asset. That was their asset to sell, and they could have given whatever they wanted, but they represented it as giving everything to God when really they hadn't. They were bearing false witness, right? They were lying. And listen to what Peter says in Acts chapter 5 verses 3 through 4. "But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back a part of the price of the land for yourself?" So he's saying, "Why have you lied to the Holy Spirit?" He's talking about a personal God, the Holy Spirit, right? Third person of the Trinity. He says, "While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this sin in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God." He's calling the Holy Spirit God here, right? So all three persons are equal in glory, and they are equal in honor.

The application is that we magnify God who alone is glorious. We magnify God who alone is glorious. When Mary heard the words that she'd be bearing the Christ child, that the power of the Almighty would overshadow her, and the Spirit of God would create this life within her, what does she say but the Magnificat? She says, "And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord," right? And we are to magnify the Lord. We are to worship God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. If you flip over to the back, reference number three on the back is 2 Corinthians 13:14. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." Again, that title itself points to Trinitarian theology here. This is the Lord, which Kyrios, or the Lord is Kyrios, which is used in the Septuagint for Yahweh, okay? So he's calling Christ the Lord, and Jesus the one who is the Savior, and then Christ the Anointed One. And what are you anointed with? But He's anointed with the Spirit of God, right? "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." So we're blessed to worship and honor and magnify a Triune God.

Number four, God is incomparable. Our analogies always fail. God is incomparable — first blank. Our analogies always fail — that's the second blank. Just as we can't see God and He's invisible, and we're not to depend on our imagination but on His revelation, in the same way, we're to depend on God's word for Him to describe Himself. All throughout history, going back to the early church, people have used analogies to try to explain and to grasp this concept of the Trinity. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing in our finite human experience that compares to God, nothing that we can relate to. And every time you do it, as Caleb was pointing out, you step on a landmine, right?

You may have heard, for example, people use H2O as an example — how H2O can be both a liquid, a solid, and a gas, right? Well, what that is is what we call modalism, which is an error, and it's denying the one essence of God, right? And in truth, it's also denying the three persons of God at the same time. Another one that's commonly used was declared as heresy by the early church, it's called Arianism. It's the idea that the Spirit and the Son of God were created by God and separate from Him. And that analogy is often pictured with the sun. And so you have the sun, the star up there, and it produces light, and it produces heat, right? But again, that's denying the essence, right? Sometimes people will refer to God as a law firm partnership, right? Where you have Huey, Dewey, and Louie, the three partners of the firm, and they can all sign on the dotted line and they act as one. But is that really unity of essence? No, that's just maybe unity of cooperation or operation, but not a unity of essence. Another one that people use goes way back, and it's the shamrock, supposedly St. Patrick's approach, right? That's an error known as partialism. God doesn't have parts, right? The Holy Spirit, Christ, and the Father are equally God, and they're indivisible, right? So anytime you try to use a human analogy, it fails.

But what we can depend on to learn about God is to look at Scripture, and there's lots of Scripture that illustrate this. And this is not in your notes, but the first thing that you can look at is this: without the Trinity, there is no salvation. That's how critical it is. Without the Trinity, there is no salvation. When Adam and Eve first failed, when they fell away from God, sin came and corrupted them totally, right? They needed a mediator. They needed a perfect man to perfectly obey God, to be their substitute, to be the propitiation for God's wrath.

And no man can do that, because in Adam's sin, we all sinned, right? But Christ came into this world. He took on human flesh, but without sin, and He lived a perfect life for us, and He did that through the power of the Holy Spirit. Did He not?

Not only was He conceived by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, but remember His ministry — who drove Him actually into the wilderness in His temptation? The Holy Spirit did. When He came out of the wilderness, He came out in the power of the Holy Spirit. When He performed His miracles, He did it by the Holy Spirit. The book of Hebrews says that He was able to offer Himself up as a sacrifice for us by the power of the Holy Spirit, right? And it was the Holy Spirit who quickened Him from the grave, right? The same resurrection power that resurrected Christ from the grave is that which works within us as His children. So without the Trinity, there is no salvation, okay? So think of it in terms of what is necessary for our salvation.

"Deuteronomy 29:29, beautiful promise: "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but these things, those things which are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." Some things we're never going to be able to grasp, and it's beyond our comprehension to grasp the very nature of God. But what we can grasp are the guardrails: that there's one God and that He exists as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? The application is we can surely trust God's revelation. That's the application for number four. We can surely trust God's revelation.

The Trinity, number five, is best explained from Scripture. That's number five. The Trinity is best explained from Scripture. Just mentioned about salvation being the purpose or the way that we can understand the Trinity is looking at salvation, and we see that in the introduction to Romans. A lot of times when we read through an introduction of a letter, we kind of read through it really quick, okay? I know this is Paul, and he's writing to the Romans. But look at the Trinitarian nature of his introduction, and look at the end result of that Trinitarian thought. "This is Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel or the good news of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning His Son Jesus Christ, our Lord." So he's saying I'm writing to you because of the good news of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was promised by God beforehand through the prophets and in the Scriptures. He says, "Who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead." It's the summation of what Christ did. He was born of a virgin, lived a perfectly pleasing life, died as a substitute, and He rose again, and now He sits at the right hand of God the Father. The Trinity is what secures our salvation.

Application is remember that the Father loves and gives. The Son loves and gives. The Spirit loves and gives. Loving and giving always go hand in hand. We know John 3:16 by heart: "For God so" what? "Loved the world that He gave His only Son." Then Jesus said, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his brethren." That's what Christ did for us. He gave Himself for us. And is not that what the Holy Spirit does? Romans 5:5 says that the love of God is shed or poured out in our hearts by the Spirit. So loving and giving go hand in hand, and we see that in the baptism of Christ. Matthew 3:16 through 17. Would someone read that for us please?

The baptism of Christ is the first place I'd point someone to if they wanted to understand the Trinity. Because here you see that Christ came up immediately from the water, and behold the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending on Him like a dove. John testifies that he saw this too. I believe this was seen by every person that was there. It says, "And alighting upon Him, and suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'" God is affirming His Son. He's saying, I love Him. This is my beloved Son, and again, loving and giving go hand in hand. So what does He give, pour out on His Son? But His Holy Spirit, as an expression of His love. The Father loves the Son by pouring out the Spirit upon Him, right? The Son loves the Father back by obeying the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit expresses love by coming down on Christ and empowering Him and blessing Him in His humanity and giving Him the power to perfectly obey the Father. And then He loves the Father by taking Christ and exalting Him back to the Father's right hand, right? So we see this loving and giving going back and forth.

And this goes back before the foundation of the world. If you flip around to the back of your sheet, John chapter 17, verse 24 says, "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world." Funny how that goes back. We don't know if this is true or not, but supposedly there was a seminary student who asked his professor, "What was God doing before time began?" And he said, "Son, He was creating hell for young people who dare ask such questions."

But we know what God was doing before the foundation of the world. We just read it here. Jesus says, "For You loved Me before the foundation of the world." Before we were even created, God is love, right? And that means He must relate within the persons of the Trinity, right? That's why He created us, to amplify and magnify His love. When you look at some of the other creation accounts, they're so sad and pathetic. You go and you look at some of the Babylonian creation accounts — Marduk created his people because he needed workers. He created them to be slaves. When you look at other religions, they're not based upon the Triune God, and therefore they can't be religions of love.

Last week we talked a little bit about the Hindu religion. And if you remember, their main deity is Brahman, and Brahman is unknowable. He doesn't have a person, so to speak. He's one with the universe. And the way that you can achieve salvation is to lose your personhood and become one with him. Well, without personality, there are no relationships. That's what we talked about last week, right? God as a person is relational. Muhammad is no better. Muhammad is worshiped by many, many people in this world.

In the Quran, when you read through it, there are 99 descriptors of his attributes. He's not a Triune God. And one of those attributes could be described or interpreted as love. But Muhammad is not a Triune God. So when you ask a Muslim scholar, "Well, who did God love before the creation of the world, before He created anything?" They'll give you two answers. They'll say, one, he loved his Quran. He loved his word. But that's a thing. That's not a person. Things can't love you back, right?

The more creative ones will say, "Well, he loved those whom he would create down the line."

It may sound reasonable at first, but when you think about it, does not that make Muhammad dependent on his creation to be a God of love?

Our Triune God was a God of love before we were ever created. The perfect love of the Father and the Son and the Spirit has existed from all eternity. And that same love is shared with us. That's the glory of the gospel — that Christ came down here to this world to redeem us, to unite us to Him, that through Christ, we can share in the Triune love of God. We can share in this perfect fellowship, this perfect self-impartation, this perfect communication, this perfect transparency that's existed from all time in the Godhead. We can share that in Christ because through Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live within us, right? And Jesus said that if we trust in Him, that not only He would live within us, but the Father would live within us as well. So it's through Christ, by the Holy Spirit, that we are brought into the life and fellowship of the Trinity. That's amazing. That's a higher status than Adam had in the garden. In the garden, Adam would walk with God in the coolness of the day, right? We have Christ in us, the hope of glory, right? We have the Holy Spirit, God the Father and God the Son, abiding within us as Christians, and nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Nothing whatsoever.

I want to show you a couple of passages on the back while we have time. Reference number five, two different passages I want to show you from the Old Testament. In Isaiah, there is a series of songs about the Messiah called the servant songs. Earlier this summer, I preached or spoke on Isaiah 61 and 62, the fifth servant song. The first servant song is Isaiah 42:1, and here in the Old Testament we see this wonderful fellowship of the Trinity. He says, "Behold My servant." God's perfect servant, again, would be Christ. Originally it was Israel who was the disobedient servant, and the Messiah would be God's perfect servant. We call them the servant songs. He says, "Whom I uphold, My elect one, in whom My soul delights." The Father is perfectly pleased with the Messiah. He says, "I have put My Spirit upon Him." Here He's pouring out His love upon the Son, "and He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles." Keep reading there in Isaiah 42, and you'll see that that's not judgment on the Gentiles, but He's bringing light to the Gentiles. He's meant to be the light of the world, to show the love of God to all men, both Jew and Greek.

Isaiah 61:1 should be familiar to you because we actually read this a few months ago when we looked at the fifth servant song. These are the same words that Christ spoke in His very first sermon in Luke chapter 4 in His home synagogue in Nazareth. He says, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound." So here we have this Trinitarian love. The Spirit of God is upon Him. He's anointed, overflowing — to whom God gives the Spirit without measure to His Son. And through the Son, we are invited into that Trinity, into fellowship with the Trinity. We don't become a part of the Trinity, but we become united to Christ, who is the second person of the Trinity.

Lastly, Mark 14:36, before we get to point six, it says, "And He said, 'Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.'" This was on the night, of course, where He was going to be betrayed in Gethsemane. Christ calls upon the Father. He says, "Abba, Father." It's Aramaic, a very tender name for God. He says, "All things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will." That intimate fellowship that Christ has with the Father, we're invited to have as sons of God, as daughters of God. Are we not? Because we are in the Son, and the favor of God rests upon us, just as it rests upon His Son. So we can call God our Father because of Christ, and that's how we enter into fellowship with the Trinity.

Number six, only the Trinity gives us reconciliation with both God and man. Only the Trinity gives us reconciliation with both God and man. We've talked about how the Trinity provides us reconciliation with God. That's providing us salvation. Galatians 4:4 through 7 says, "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, 'Abba, Father!' Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." So we can call God our Father. We have the inheritance. We're very heirs of God because of what Christ has done. We, again, are invited into that Triune fellowship.

Ephesians 2:18 says, "For through Him, Christ, we both have access by one Spirit to the Father." Not only are we individually reconciled to God because of what Christ Jesus did for us, but through Christ, peoples can be reconciled with one another. In Ephesians 2, that verse where he says, "For through Him, we both have access" — he's talking about both Jew and Gentile, right? We often talk right now with presidential debates like tonight about what's the peace plan? How would you define peace in Ukraine? How would you find peace in the Middle East? What would you do to orchestrate that? There's only one way that we'll ever have peace on earth.

That's through knowing the Prince of Peace, right? That's through the Gospel. May we pray that the Gospel, like a little mustard seed, grows and grows, that all the birds of the field come and nest in its branches, right? That's the only hope for peace — is Christ. So the Trinity points to salvation in Christ, and it points not just to reconciliation with God, but reconciliation with our fellow man. The application is this: "Let the glory of Christ radiate from you."

Ephesians 2:22 says, "In whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit." It means in Christ, you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit, because you have the Trinitarian presence within you. You have Christ in you. In Christ, His presence is given to you by the Holy Spirit, and that also, of course, gives you access to the Father. You are a dwelling place for God wherever you are. So let the glory of God radiate through you. Be a true peacemaker. Point to the Triune God who alone can reconcile God to man and man to man.