Doctrine of God: Impact Sept. 13

Teaching: Trinity (2 days)
Objective: to learn about God and to be drawn more intimately into knowing him

Trinity 1:

Lesson 1: 10:15-11:30 - 1hr 15mins : The purpose of our lives is to know God, knowing God is a different from knowing a book.
Lesson 2: 11:45-13:00 - 1hr 15mins : God's essential nature. Father, Son, Spirit
Lunch: 13:00-14:00
Lesson 3: 14:00-15:00 - 1hr : The Trinity revealed in scripture
Lesson 4: 15:15-16:15 - 1hr : The work of the Son
Lesson 5: 16:30-17:30 - 1hr :

Lesson 1:

Your life has purpose and dignity:

• In the beginning God is seen as the one who brings beauty out of chaos and meaning out of nothing.
• Creation account: Darkness and chaos into light, beauty and order.
• Psalm 139. Genesis 2. You have been handmade by an intelligent mind and given dignity and honour.
• Since you're 'designed' then there must be intention in mind. The tragedy is when people live their whole lives and never discover what that purpose is. Frodo & Sam at Mt. Doom without the Ring - oops, can't go back now. You're not just 'taking a walk', you have a destination to arrive at.

Activity: what is the purpose of your life?
Answer: to know God.

Your life's purpose is to glorify God

• Westminster Catechisms put it like this:

'The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.' John Piper restates it as 'to glorify God by enjoying him forever.'

• What does it mean 'to glorify'? 
• To show off, to magnify, to exult in, to honour and lift high. 
• We glorify him by enjoying him. 
• More you enjoy something the more you'll glorify it: favourite films, football teams, lovers. 
• Joy in the Christian life matters:
• George Muller quote. Martin Luther 'it is pleasing to God when thy laughest from thy heart.' and accompanying picture.
• Paul: Phil 4:? 'I have learned the secret of being content in every situation.' Contentment = happiness. How had Paul discovered happiness? His secret of happiness - I know God and am known by him.

Your life's purpose is to know God

• God invites us to know and enjoy him: Psalm 34:8 taste and see that the Lord is good. 
• Jesus reveals that his desire is to this end when he prays in John 17:3
• Paul sums up his life's perspective when he says 'i consider everything else rubbish compared to knowing Christ.'
• Jer. 9:23 - if you're going to boast in something let it be that you understand and know me.
• Hosea 6:6 'I desire... the knowledge of god more than burnt offerings' 
• knowledge of God is what we have been made for:

Packer quote: What are we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is the 'eternal life' that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God...What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and contentment, than anything else? Knowledge of God.  

• knowledge of God is deeper and bigger than simply intellectual understanding. 
• There is a difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone.
• Knowing God is different from knowing a recipe or a mountain. It is more complex as the object of our knowing is infinitely more complex. 
• What it means to know God from the Bible: 
• Metaphors: Marriage, friendship, family, 
• Activity: walking in the cool of the day, hearing him speak, speaking to him, worshipping him, crying out to him, being heard by him, dancing, trusting, clapping... 

• How do we assess how well we know God?
• Packer: We must learn to measure ourselves not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us. 
• how do we work out what God is like? is it a case of deducing things about him from the world around us or a case of receiving revelation.
• 1) Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing (difference between knowing about a girl and actually knowing her is huge).
• 2) Knowing God is a matter of personal involvement, in mind, in will in feeling. 
• 3) Knowing God is a matter of grace. 
• Marvel at the cost God paid to bring us into this knowledge and intimacy: 
• In the next session we're going to look at God's essential nature as he exists in himself. Relationship with God is the call to which we've all been summoned. Being a Christian involves following Christ but following is only a means to an end. Being a Christian involves more than being forgiven of our sin. As wonderful as it is, forgiveness is only a means to an end. That end, the end to which we've all been called is to know him and live in relationship with him. God invites us into relationship with him and he has done so at a great cost. He has done so at the expense of turning his face away from his son, of allowing his son to take upon himself the sin and evil of the world. He was stricken of God in order that we could be friends with God.
• Consider this: if you were to leave today and say that you hated me and that you never wanted to see me again, I would be upset but in a day or two I wouldn't be too affected. If my wife was to say 'I hate you and I never want to see you again.' The pain would be immeasurably worse. The depth of relationship and then length of time a relationship has been deepening correlates to the pain of rejection when rejection comes.
• God the eternal Father, Son & Spirit has existed for all time and been in perfect harmonious intimate, committed relationship with one another for all time. On the cross the Father turned his face away from the Son, rejected him as he bore the sin of the world. He broke intimacy with the Son in order that we might have intimacy with him, in order that we might be able to come to know him. Remarkable. 

Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down;
fix in us thy humble dwelling;
 all thy faithful mercies crown!  

Lesson 2

God's essential nature

• Having begun today by looking at ourselves, we've begun in a place the Bible doesn't. The Bible opens with revelation of who God is and what he's done and we would do well to take careful consideration of that. It (life) is not about you, it is about him. The Bible is about him, your life is about him, the world is meant to honour and glorify him and we find our bearings only as we get centered on him. The often used line is true: I am a tree in a story about a forest.
• God exists. The Bible assumes his existence and doesn't once try to offer an argument for his existence. 
• discuss in pairs - how did you come to believe in God? How would you try to convince others that God exists?
• Typically the various arguments can be summed up as:
• Kalam Cosmological Argument - Aristotle c350 BC: cause and effect : every known thing has a cause and therefore the universe must have an 'uncaused cause' or 'unmoved mover'
• Cosmological Argument from Contingency - 
• Teleological - argument from design first described by Plato and hen developed by the scientist William Paley with an illustration of a watch.
• Ontological - 
• Moral argument - argument from conscience.
• Arius and Athanasius: stories from church history (slide), printed pictures of each opponent and biographies. 
• Arius: what can we know about God from the world around us
• Athanasius: 'if the whole world is against Athanasius then Athanasius is against the world.' what can we know about God from looking at Jesus
• And the winner is... read Nicean Creed
• 'not one iota of difference'
• homo-ousios - same substance
• hetero-ousios - other substance
• after revision Arian's followers made allowances: homoi-ousios - similar substance. 
• Activity: in pairs read Genesis 1-3 and report back what we can learn about God from it.
• Athanasius' point: 
• From creation = creator, ruler, judge etc.
• From Jesus = God must be in himself Father. He has always been Father. Jesus is the beloved of God, God must be love. God is not on his own.
• God's essence is not ruler, creator etc. his essence is Father.
• If Father then life giver. If Father then love
• 1 John 4:7-8 Dear children let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
• Love is not one bit of God or a mood of his, it is who he is in his essential being. 
• A fountain by definition must overflow, so a Father must give life. 
• 1 John 4:9 'This is how God showed his love among us; he sent his only son.'
• What is the Father like? Paul says that he is the one from whom every earthly Father derives his name/title. We are copies, he is the blueprint.
• activity: in pairs go through the list below and write down what each verse tells you about what the Father is like: Then discuss 'which one do you find hardest to believe and why?'
• Psalm 139:1-18
• Psalm 103:8-14
• Romans 15:7, Zephaniah 3:17
• Isaiah 40:11, Hosea 11:3-4
• Hebrews 13:5, Jeremiah 31:21
• Exodus 34:6, 2 Peter 3:9
• Jeremiah 31:3, Isaiah 42:3
• Lamentations 3:22-23, John 10:10
• Hebrews 4:15-16
• Psalm 130:1-4, Luke 15:17-24
• Hebrews 4:15-16, Luke 15:11-16
• Psalm 130:1-4, Luke 15:17-24
• Romans 8:28-29, Hebrews 12:5-11
• The Son must always have existed in eternity past with the Father or else the Father could not have been 'Father'.
• John 17:24 'you have loved me since before the foundations of the world...'
• Therefore the Son must be eternal along with the Father.
• Hebrews 1:3 'the radiance of the glory of God.'
• Gregory of Nyssa: as the light from the lamp is of the nature of that which sheds the brightness and is united with it (for as as soon as the lamp appears the light that comes from it shines out simultaneously), so in this place the Apostles would have us consider both that the Son is of the Father and that the Father is never without the Son; for it is impossible that glory should be without radiance as it is impossible that the lamp should be without brightness.
• Lamp. 
• The Father loves and empowers the Son by giving him the Spirit.
• The Spirit is not a force but a person. As a person he (individual work sheet):
• speaks and sends Acts 13:2-4
• he chooses Acts 20:28
• the teaches John 14:26
• gives (Isaiah 63:14
• can be tested and lied to (Acts 5:3,9)
• can be resisted (Acts 7:51
• grieved (Is. 63:10, Eph. 4:30)
• blasphemed (Mt. 12:31)
• 'spirit' (pneuma) is neuter (gender neutral) but the NT uses male pronouns for him (see John 16:8

Lesson 3:

God is Triune

• Video clip: God's essential being is outward, giving, loving and overflowing. If we 'puree the members of the trinity' into one or isolate them out into three different 'moods' (or modes as per modalism and Bruce Almighty), it becomes impossible to taste the gospel. God is the overflowing fountain and the radiant lamp. God is 3 in 1. 
• Yet we mustn't reduce God from 3in1 to God on his own (on his todd). 
• God on his own is not a God worth worshipping. He is a God who needs us in order to be love and without us he'd be lonely. He creates to meet a need in himself perhaps or to have subjects that would serve him.
• The one thing that separates the Christian faith from any other faith on the planet is... Trinity.  
• It is what distinguishes the God of the Bible from everything else and yet it's rarely something that is taught or explained or celebrated in our churches: why? 
• Robert Parry: For many Christian the Trinity has become something of an appendix: it's there, but they are not sure what its function is, they get by in life without it doing very much, and if they have it removed they wouldn't be too distressed.'
• God the Father, Son & Spirit is so radically different from anything else on the shelves. We can't simply fit F,S,HS into our own understanding of God. Instead we need a complete overhaul of our ideas about God.
• Mike Reeves: Can we rub along with just 'God'?The temptation to sculpt God according to our expectations and presuppositions, to make this God much like another, is strong with us. You see it all down through history: in the middle ages it seemed obvious for people to think of God as a feudal lord; the first missionaries to the Vikings thought it obvious to present Christ as a warrior God, an axe-wielding divine berserker who could out-Odin Odin. And so on. The trouble is, the triune God simply does not fit well into the mould of any other God. Trying to rub along with some unspecified 'God', we will quickly find ourselves with another God. 
• That, ironically, is often why we struggle with the Trinity: instead of starting from scratch and seeing that the triune God is a radically different sort of being from any other candidate for 'God', we try to stuff Father, Son and Spirit into how we have always though of God. 
• Greg Haslam: The Bible does not give us exhaustive information about God's inner life, but it does offer substantial and authoritative glimpses of God's triune self, though much still remains mysterious to us. 
• The word Trinity doesn't appear in our Bibles. for a prize who can find out where it comes from? 
• How would you conclude from scripture that God is Triune?
• Although the word doesn't appear in the Bible it's thoroughly Biblical. Let's look at some of the evidence for it:

What we learn about God from the Bible: 

• God is one:
• OT maintains: Deut. 6:4 - The Shema - God is one
• NT reaffirms: Mark 12:29 - Jesus quotes the Shema, Eph. 4:6 there is 'one' God
• The Father is God 
• Gen. 1:1 in the beginning God created... 
• Hos. 11:1-3 (if 'son' then he must be parent and we see from elsewhere that God has revealed himself as 'he' and so 'Father' he must be.)
• Mt. 6:9 - 'Our Father in heaven...'
• The Son is God 
• John 1:1, 8:58 (he is eternal)
• Col. 1:15-19 (exact representation of God), 2:9 (fullness of deity dwells - written approx. AD63, put that in your Da Vinci Code pipe and smoke it.)
• Mt.9:2 - he forgave sins, something only God could do (bypassing the temple).
• The Spirit is God
• Hebrews 9:14 (he is eternal)
• 2 Cor. 3:17 (the Lord is Spirit)
• Acts 5:3-5 ('you have not lied to men but to God).
• Examples from scripture where we see the tri-unity of God: throw it open
• OT:
• Creation (hinted at in the 'us' and 'our') 'Elohim' is a plural noun,
• Is. 63:7-10 (YWH, Angel of his presence & HS mentioned)
• Is. 48:16 (ask aj is God the speaker here?)
• Ps. 33:6 'by the word of Yahweh... by the breath of his mouth)
• Haggai 2:5-7 (Yahweh, his Spirit and the 'treasured of the nations') 
• shadowy and mysterious, but surely highly significant as well 
• NT:
• John the Baptist (although technically an OT prophet) - Mt. 3:2 (repent toward God), Faith in the Messiah (Mt. 3:11), Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Mt. 3:11)
• Jesus' birth: God sends Gabriel to promise conception by the HS of the child 'Son of the Most High (on the throne of David). Lk1:32
• Jesus' baptism, Mt. 3:16-17
• Mt 28:19 - baptised into God (singular) but with 3 persons. One God, three persons.
• 2 Cor. 13:14 - Paul's blessing is Triune in distinction
• Rev 1:4-5 - blessing from 'him... seven (perfect) spirits, and Jesus
• 1 Cor. 12:4-6 (Trinitarian gifts to the church) 
• Illustrations of who God is (and what's wrong with them):
• Fire/Heat/Light, Ice/Water/Steam, Core/Flesh/Skin
• Cube
• in the Western church we've got all logical and confused about this: 1+1+1=3(!)
• Acceptable diagram - Grudem/Reeves's book
• God as represented in art: show slides
• Pic 1 - what do we learn?
• Pic 2 - ?
• Pic 3 - ?
• Eastern mysterious 'perechoresis' in dwelling one within the other, enjoined in unity and relationship, and indwelling dance.
• John 17: 'I in you and you in me...'
• Statements about who God is that we can conclude from the Bible's teaching on the Trinity:
• 1. There is only God
  2. God eternally exists as three distinct persons
  3. Each of these persons is fully divine
  4. Each of these person is distinct from the others
  5. The three persons relate together eternally as Father, Son, & Holy Spirit
  In short. There is one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
  Or less grammatically. There is one God who are Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They is God. 
• John Calvin: if we try to think about God without thinking about the Father, Son and Spirit, then  only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God. 
• St Hilary of Poitier (St Hilarious)  saw that trying to define God without starting with the Father and his Son, he saw, one would quite simply wind up with a different God.