<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Muskegon SDA Church

The Doctrine of God

Kameron DeVasher

The Trinity, Part 1 (The Trinity in the Old Testament)

The Trinity, Part 2 (The Trinity in the New Testament)

The Trinity, Part 3 (Adventism and Trinitarianism)

We're studying this quarter, in fact all year we've been studying certain aspects about God, but this time for this quarter we want to actually study God Himself as a being.

What does it mean when we say the word God?

Particularly Father and Son and Holy Spirit, these different persons, what does it all entail?

And we're going to roll up our sleeves and do a pretty in-depth study of that this quarter.

And today our message is entitled, Come Let Us, and if you notice in parentheses, to Trinity Part 1.

And I was preparing these originally, I had 2 parts to the Trinity series I believe we're gonna expand that to 3 But I figured someone would question only 2 parts to a Trinity series to come on you got after 3 sermons so We're gonna have 3 messages on the Trinity and then move on from that to each Individual member of the Godhead God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and breaking down what Scripture does or doesn't say about these 3 persons of the Godhead.

I'm gonna have an extended introduction today to this message and this series to set the platform for the next several messages.

I would prefer not to be rushed and if I try to cram it into 1 or 2 sermons I'm going to be frustrated and you're going to be sitting there too long and things are going to get said too fast and I'll get emails.

So we don't want any of those things happening.

But in the Seventh-davening Christian Church as a whole, but even in the Seventh-davening Church in particular, there has been recent agitation on the question of the nature of God, particularly about the Trinity or things like the personhood of the Holy Spirit or the divinity or humanity of Christ or the personality of God the Father.

All these different questions are kind of humming around and there's a somewhat significant portion of people inside even the Seventh-Davening Church who are sincerely questioning the concept of the Trinity.

Is this a biblical construct or is it just a tradition of men?

Or yet worse, is it even a part of the wine of Babylon that we're drinking into the pure remnant faith?

The word, for instance, you'll hear things like, well, you know the word Trinity is not in the Bible.

Adventist pioneers, argument number 2, were overwhelmingly anti-Trinitarian, Which is true, they were.

Some would, as I said, even see it as evidence of a move back to Babylon, Catholicism polluting the purity of the remnant faith.

As we begin to discuss this issue, as with every other issue, we need to recognize the limitations of language.

Again, all of this is preliminary, setting a foundation and introduction to our message today.

There's a difficulty, and sometimes even a danger, in language in that it's limited.

Same word can mean different things to different people.

The classic example I like to use is, you know, a child with snack.

And we're both excited, but for different reasons, over the same word.

And the same way the trinity, the term trinity, can mean different things to different people.

But you're using the same language, and you're getting frustrated.

Though you're using the same word, you're saying different meanings.

So we want to break that apart as much as possible.

We have to respect and understand that there's only so much that language can do for us.

We're limited in the fact that we have these words.

And we go back to that idea, well, the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, and that is true.

However, neither are the terms millennium, incarnation, heterosexual monogamy, or investigative judgment.

Yet we have no problem affirming those biblical doctrines because those teachings, even if those specific terms are not employed, the teachings themselves are clearly set forth through the whole of the Bible.

Everything we know about the nature of God, the person of God, His being, comes to us from what God Himself has revealed in His Word.

And I want to emphasize the importance of this.

When we talk about any issue, any issue at all, but particularly 1 that might be debatable or just dialogue might erupt.

When something could be a touchy issue, we need to be sure to use all of Scripture and no more than Scripture.

All of Scripture and no more than Scripture.

We need to go with what God has revealed.

That's why we had Brother Emelander come and present a message on the importance of Scripture.

Because that is our framework for every position of doctrine or practice in our lives must be what does the Word of God say.

And we need to understand how we know what we know.

Everything as Christians that we know about God is revealed by God to us in his word.

Thus, and here's your hundred dollar word for the day, what we're talking about is epistemology.

Already some of you are like, all right, these are big words, I'm done.

Epistemology is simply the study of how you know the stuff you know.

There are certain things that I've been trying to teach my son that he yet does not know, but I know they're in there.

He just won't get it out right, you know.

123, 04:11, 12:13, just skips right past 567, but I know they're in there when I count out to 5, like, oh yeah, he can say it back, but he's not coming out right.

However, there are other things that he, though I've sat there and tried to teach him, 1234567, Nothing there.

On the other hand, there are certain things that he knows I have no idea how he came up with it.

The other day we were riding in a vehicle, and he looks out the side and he sees the shadow of the vehicle against the road or the landscape beside us, and he was moving right along, and he says, look, the shadow of our car is moving with us.

And I've never sat down and taught him with concepts of light and shadow and how you obstruct something and an eclipse is beyond, but somehow he just inherent, some picked it up.

I don't know how he picked up the language, somehow.

How do we know the things that we think we know?

Too many Christians know stuff that they don't particularly know from here.

They might, oh, everybody knows that, it's just common sense, or I grew up thinking that, or I believe this, you know.

For instance, the idea of an eternal burning hell.

It's just common knowledge to most Christians.

And this is why the Bible instructs us to test how many things, all things, and hold fast to that which is good.

The filter for all knowledge, especially the knowledge of God, is in His own Word.

So we have to understand what the Word says and don't go beyond it and don't limit it less than that.

As Bible-believing Seventh-day Adventists, Or we should at least, as Bible believe being 7th day Adventists, arrive at truth by affirming what the scripture actually says, not by merely rejecting what other churches happen to teach.

For instance, if there's a doctrine that is held by some other church, we don't say, hey, we're gonna be different from them, so we're just not gonna believe that.

For instance, take the Roman Catholic Church.

People will say, well, I'm against the Trinity because that's a Catholic doctrine.

But Catholics, for instance, believe in the existence of God.

Because they teach it, we have to be against it, and our goal is to be different.

Friends, our goal as Christians, as Bible-believing Christians, is not to be different.

So whatever the Word says, we want to go there, and anything that goes beyond the Word, we want to stop there.

Back to Menu

Series

The Doctrine of God

The Trinity, Part 1 (The Trinity in the Old Testament)

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2022: Hebrews

03 Jesus, the Promised Son

27m

The Godhead

The Godhead Part 5

1h 8m

Talking Points 4th Quarter 2024: Themes in the Gospel of John

11 The Father, the Son, and the Spirit

30m

Talking Points, 1st Quarter 2022. In These Last Days: The Message of the Hebrews

03 The Promised Son

28m

Foundations for Hope in the Book of Hebrews

03 Foundations for Hope in the Book of Hebrews

56m

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

07 Jesus and Islam

29m

Bible Answers Live 2022

We Have to Make It

58m

The Godhead

The Godhead Part 1

59m

Our Divine Savior

29m

Fundamentally Flawed? Considering Challenges to Truth

Trinity

49m

Sound Doctrine