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Chadron SDA Church

Eric Walsh

1 Defending the Trinity

Colossians 2, 8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ for in him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily and you are complete in Him which is the head of all principality and power so for our Bible study for Sabbath school this morning we're going to talk on the defending the Trinity let's pray Father God we thank you for this opportunity to study Your word Lord I'm just asking for Your Holy Spirit now Lord let Him lead us into truth and Lord be with all of our presentations today as well Lord be with those who are on their way and we're just asking Lord for you to really speak to us.

1 of the big things, and talking about Aiken out of our Sabbath school lesson, the church is in many ways at a crossroads.

There is an influx of ideas and thoughts and doctrines now that we have to stand up and teach truth around.

And before the day is over you're going to see why this is such a highly contested doctrine, the doctrine of the Godhead of the Trinity and really try and unpack its importance for us here in the last days.

So our scripture, the first scripture I want to show you is this 1.

This is, I'll be heading to CORE in Pennsylvania when I leave here to teach for CORE, which is 1 of the evangelism training programs for the Pennsylvania Conference, and I do the class on apologetics.

I have found that apologetics, we have to do more and more of it.

If you can't give an answer for what you believe, it cracks your beliefs.

So someone says to you, hey why do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?

If they say, well, you know, those Bible stories, they're just made up.

And you can't speak to the extra biblical, historical writings of people who confirm that Jesus really existed and was crucified, we have to get to a level, the word I want to use is sophistication.

Each of us has to become proper students of the Bible.

And what Peter says in 1 Peter 3 15 says, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

And so our church, we have a lot of homeschoolers.

And so we started having a monthly homeschool chapel since they don't go to chapel at Academy.

So every Monday night, and the church actually has a lady who makes really good vegan lasagnas and stuff.

The kids love that stuff and we have chapels and the kids participate and do this and our curriculum is to go through these truths.

I don't want the kids to, especially to go to college and not know what we believe.

If you don't know what we believe you're in trouble.

When you get to college especially and I wish I could say this wasn't true but even some of our own institutions you have to know why you believe what you believe as much as you know what you believe.

So Peter kind of sets that up and 1 of the doctrines where this is important is this 1.

That's really the word I like to use for it more than the word Trinity.

The word Trinity is not in the Bible but Godhead is as we read in the scripture reading.

And this is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And if you can understand this, it does a few things.

It's deeper than just a philosophical idea.

Understanding the Godhead helps you understand saying a salvation.

It actually helps you understand salvation.

It also helps you to understand how to protect yourself from the wiles of the devil.

More and more as I travel around, there are more families that come to me and they're young people, they're children, they're teenagers, they're young adults are falling away or having really serious issues and what we are told as you're going to see is that the way to fight that is with the truth and what I mean by that is it is the Holy Spirit that leads us into truth it is the Holy Spirit that defend your house against the works of Satan the angels are the foot soldiers but the Holy Spirit is like the general So when people try to reject the Holy Spirit, when they try to push away the importance of the Holy Ghost, and this is the way I always say it, they try to make the Holy Spirit like the force from Star Wars.

An impersonal, not quite divine, but somehow all-powerful thing that just is around the universe that you can tap into it for good or you can tap into the force for evil.

It comes it goes back some people argue as far as Egypt and so of course the words Trinity doesn't appear in the Bible some argue there's an inherent conflict of 3 being in 1.

Atheists and other religions especially Islam, Islam really does not like this doctrine.

Inside the church is often an ignored doctrine.

A lot of times inside the church we don't like we don't really peel into it and there's good reason for that.

It's not an easy thing to explain, not easy to understand, and I'm telling you before you before we're over with today you're going to see that Satan particularly wants this doctrine destroyed.

In essence Satan wanted to join the Trinity.

This is why even TV shows like Lucifer that are very popular now, and even some other religions make Jesus and Satan brothers.

This is a a terrible lie, a terrible false doctrine that they have in the TV show Lucifer.

Lucifer and Michael the archangel are brothers which would make him Lucifer brothers with Christ.

Satan wants to be inside the Trinity and so he works to destroy this doctrine.

I've heard people tell me that Mary the mother of Jesus is actually one-third of the Trinity.

So some say they claim pagan origin and so you can look at the the Egyptian gods here Horus and blanking on all the names Isis and there's 1 more what's the other the son but he's the 3 of them here so some of you say well that was the first Trinity if Satan was in heaven and he was wouldn't he know how to counterfeit what he saw in heaven on earth if he understood the Bible wouldn't he know after he read that Jesus would be born of a virgin, wouldn't he know in the ancient world to say that some of these false gods were born of virgins so that later on people say, see, Jesus is 1 of these 20 something gods that did this.

And here's the thing, he, if you know basketball, he runs a full court press.

Satan is attacking before you know an attack is coming so so it's like a puzzle right there's a line I guess is if infinite if if a finite man could fully explain the infinite God, would God really be God?

If you try to explain the Trinity, you will lose your mind, 1 man said.

Then he said, but if you deny it, you will lose your soul.

This is an important doctrine so what here's what the Trinity is not Christians don't believe in 3 gods that's a heresy called tritheism so we don't believe in 3 gods this would be just you know 200 and some odd million gods short of the Hindus right we don't believe in 3 gods they believe in like 3000000 gods we believe in 1 God the Trinity nor do Christians believe that the Father Son and the Holy Spirit are 3 forms of God like steam, water, and ice.

We do not believe that there are 3, God goes through these 3 forms.

And then also we do not, we don't believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are parts or pieces of God.

That would imply that Jesus is one-third God, the Father is one-third God, and the Holy Spirit is one-third God.

So the first thing to establish from the Bible is that there's just 1 God.

This you go back to the Old Testament Isaiah 44 6 Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel and his Redeemer the Lord of hosts I am the first I am the last and beside me there is no God there's no other God there's no Zeus Jupiter all these mean nothing Deuteronomy 435 unto thee it was showed that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God there is none else beside him.

Deuteronomy 6 4 Hear O Israel the Lord our God is 1 Lord.

Second, 1st Timothy 2 5 jump to the New Testament for there's 1 God and 1 mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

James 2.19, you believe that there is 1 God, you do well, the devils also believe and tremble.

Genesis 1.1 in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Ultimately what the world wants to do is attack the belief that God created the world.

This is 1 of the main things the devil wants to do.

Because if God is lying to you in the first 2 chapters of Genesis, why would you believe him anywhere else in the Bible?

And if God didn't create you, what Satan wants man to believe is, man created himself.

And with that, you take away the need for absolute morality if man evolved then you can just kind of behave and do whatever you want So Genesis 126 and God said let us make man in our own image so first you see that there's 1 God but the second lesson this is number 2 is that there is plurality to God how do we notice plurality to God Genesis 126 and God said let us make man in our image He said us right here it is in our 2 plural words after our likeness and let him them have dominion over the fish in the sea over the fall of the air.

I mean in verse 27 so God created man in his own image in the image of God created he him male and female created he them and here's where it gets interesting you go back to the Hebrew of Genesis 1 in the beginning God created heaven and earth verse 26 and God said let us make man in our image the word for God here is Elohim The noun Elohim is plural so this is a plural word.

That word there it doesn't look like it but it is always used with a singular verb when it speaks of the true God.

So when Elohim, the plural, speaks of the God of heaven, the verb that follows is in the singular sense, right?

This indicates a unity and diversity within the nature of God.

This unity and diversity is revealed in Scripture as the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Hebrew Elohim does not end with an AIM which is dual but an I am which is 3 or more.

The word specifically tells you from the beginning that there is a plurality to God yet that there's just 1 God in the beginning God created then he says let us now I remember taking a class at Loma Linda and the professor brought in some Muslims to teach us a marriage and family class and the Muslims to me they were more trying to convert us to Islam than they were teachers about marriage or anything but and I remember challenging the this Muslim scholar and saying even in the Quran doesn't it speak of Allah in the plural And the lady that was there with him, the Muslim lady was there, really got angry at me.

I don't believe Allah and the God of the Bible are the same God.

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