Attributes of Goodness (5) The Triunity of God

We are nearing a transition in our study on the doctrine of God or what the Bible teaches about God. We've been for quite a while now looking at the attributes of God, qualities or characteristics that help describe who he is, define his character, and we are on the last one of those that we're going to look at. We've looked at 14 and tonight we will look at God as merciful, which is the last one that we will look at. And then we will look, start looking for a few weeks at the Trinity. We're going to introduce it tonight and then we're going to further define it, describe it, so forth. Next time and then we'll spend some time talking about the Trinity in the Old Testament, Trinity in the New Testament just exactly what that is all about. You actually see on your outline tonight's not a misspelling, it's triunity and we're going to make a case for that being a better term than Trinity to combine both the unity and the threefold personhood of God. But that's for a little bit later. Let's talk first of all about the mercy of God. Just a bit of a review. Last time we introduced the concept of the fact that God is merciful by defining what mercy means. And we saw that it is a very rich and broad concept in the Bible. There are at least five words, three Hebrew words and two Greek words, so three Old Testament, two New Testament, that are used to describe the mercy of God. And it is a very broad concept. We saw that it includes tenderness, compassion, pity, kindness, goodness, loving kindness. The basic idea, however, in mercy is a tenderhearted compassion. It really does have to do with the moving of the heart and then corresponding to that, the reaching out to do something because one is touched by what he sees. And so God is touched. He is moved by compassion with what he sees. And then he does something about it. He acts to alleviate hurt and heartache and misery and so forth. We used an example, saw an example in the Gospels, the feeding of the 5,000 where Matthew's account says that he was moved with compassion and began healing the sick among the crowd. And Mark's Gospel said he was moved with compassion and began teaching. So he is moved by both spiritual need and physical need. So he teaches, but he also heals. So both are important in our Lord's heart and how he responds to human need. Okay, let me pause just before we get into the scriptural basis for understanding the mercy of God. See if you have any questions, anything you want to ask about just by way of definition of mercy. All right, we're going to look at a few passages that describe the mercy of God. We'll begin with Deuteronomy chapter 4 and God's mercy is mentioned in verse 31, but I want to read a few verses leading into that so that we get the flow of thought and the concept of what's being talked about here with the mercy of God. The law of Moses is reiterated in Deuteronomy. The second giving of the law it really is, it's a new generation has grown up in the wilderness. They are ready to go into the land and so Moses gives the law a second time to really a whole new nation, a new generation that has grown up. That's what Deuteronomy is all about. And in chapter 4 he's reminding them of the covenant that God is made with them. And basically if you obey this covenant then you receive blessing and you will prosper under the good hand of God. If you do not obey God and do not obey his covenant then you receive judgment. And he's been talking about this judgment that is promised to Israel if they do not obey. Look at verse 25 of chapter 4 if you will please. He says after you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time. If you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. And by the way that's exactly what happened isn't it? I mean this is hundreds of years before it would happen but that's exactly what happened to Israel. They would go into the land they would rebel against God they would become idolaters and over a period of about 800 years they would go further and further and deeper into that and finally God would drive them into captivity. Verse 28 there you will worship man-made gods of wooden stone which cannot see or hear or eat or smell but if if from there you seek the Lord your God you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. Now here's verse 31 for the Lord your God is a merciful God he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors which he confirmed to them by oath. Now we've seen earlier that the fact that God doesn't forget his covenant that he made with Israel first of all with Abraham then Isaac Jacob and on down through the leaders of the nation of Israel and the covenant then he made with the whole nation at Mount Sinai through the law we've seen earlier that the fact that God will keep that covenant is a symbol of his or an evidence of his what. Goodness kindness yes all of those things and something else I'm thinking too he keeps his covenant because he is faithful yeah faithful God is faithful to his word he will keep his covenant and so you might you might think well that's what would be stressed here God is not forgotten the covenant that he made even though Israel's broken it and he's had to judge them you might think he would say for your Lord is faithful or your God is faithful but he says the reason God will not forget his covenant because he's merciful and here the emphasis is upon his his heart faithful is simply he is rock steady and will not forget his covenant but here the the idea is his heart is moved and he is compassionate toward you you see God keeping his promises is not just okay I made a promise got to keep it you know just hard-hearted cold by the book you know keep the promise no no God also is moved by the cries of his people and so even if they deny him and they go into captivity if he says there you seek me with all your heart you'll find me why because my heart moves toward you you know I'm compassionate I'm merciful and I'm I'm moved by what I see of Israel carried away into Babylon and Israel carried away into a Syria and that moves and touches the heart of God so God remembers his covenant not only because he's faithful but also because he's merciful and his heart is moved by what happens to his people okay comments or questions there before we look at another one all right let's look at Psalm 86 Psalm 86 and verse five I think you're actually getting there before me there it is you Lord are forgiving and good abounding in love to all who call to you the abounding in love is one of the words from the Old Testament that describes mercy it's the word it's the general Hebrew word for compassion and and and mercy and actually it's the the most commonly used word in the Old Testament for mercy it's the Hebrew word to Kessed and it's a very rich word it's translated probably ten or twelve different ways in the Old Testament and basically all the words we used earlier this Hebrew word covers all of them yes pity he's he's tenders loving kindness mercy all of those and many others are involved in that that very rich word so God is abounding in love or in mercy to those who who call out to him and and the Psalmist goes on to say hear my prayer Lord listen to my cry for mercy when I'm in distress I call to you because you answer me isn't it good to know that that when we cry out to God his heart is moved isn't that there's there's something amazing to me about that tender response it's like a child crying out to a parent and what parent is not deeply moved in spirit and in heart when they hear their child cry for them you know it's just that's the heart of God too we cry out to God and his heart is moved it's moved for us okay look at Psalm 103 and I reference this passage whenever I can it definitely is one of my favorites verse 13 is the verse we're looking for but really the thought is all the back to verse seven he made known his ways to Moses his deeds the people of Israel the Lord is compassionate and gracious slow to anger abounding in love he will not always accuse nor will he harbor his anger forever he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities for as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those who fear him for as far as the east is from the west so far as he removed our transgressions from us as a father has compassion on his children so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him there's the idea of mercy that tender heartedness compassion he has compassion as why verse 14 for he knows how we are formed he remembers that we are dust God understands and his heart is moved by our very humanness our very weakness our mortality our our likeness to dust you know that we are not very strong he's moved by that and he has compassion on us like a parent does on a child all right one more second Corinthians chapter one and verse three just to give you a flavor a taste of the flavor of some of the verses in the Bible on the mercy of God second Corinthians one three praise be to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ the father of compassion if you have King James his father of mercies and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God so he is the father of compassion the father of mercies he is he is the father who is characterized by compassion tender heartedness but he's also the one who fathers that the one who is the originator of tender mercy and compassion and if we are like him we exhibit tender mercy and compassion to others and thus receiving that from our father we are like him all right those are just a few of the verses in the Bible about his compassion his mercy any comment or question about those what yeah okay that's a great question the fear of the Lord or fearing God how does that fit with mercy and compassion it doesn't seem to fit and I think it's it's because our concept of fear is so overpoweringly in one direction our concept of fear basically is is a dread to be afraid of to to feel like someone might hurt us you know and that kind of fear that harm will come to us that's what we associate with the word fear but that is not at all what the Bible word is talking about the Bible word is talking about basically a respect and a respect and a an awareness of who God is to the point that we are in awe of his greatness and we know we can trust him the two-word definition that's often given it's often used you'll find and study notes sometimes your Bible is reverential trust is what the fear of God means and that's a pretty good short definition it does include the idea of reverence which understands who God is his awesomeness his greatness his holiness also his loving kindness and tenderness and recognizing who he is we are in awe of him but we also recognize he's so big and so good and so merciful and so kind we can really trust him with our lives that's the biblical concept of the fear of God it's not the coward in the corner because we think you'll harm us it's to come to him knowing that he's so great you'll take care of us and he loves us and we can trust him that's the fear of God in the Bible so to fear him really is is to recognize who he is and respond accordingly and to trust him okay that accompanies a genuine fear of God if we truly fear him we recognize who he is part of that is we recognize his holiness his righteousness and and coupled with the fact that we recognize how much he's done for us and he loved us we don't want to disappoint him and so yes we we are in that sense afraid to let him down as a good relationship between a child and a parent would be a child doesn't want to let his parent down disappointing for her that's included it's not the over it's not the driving force of the fear of God but it is involved it is included did I see a hand back yes right yeah that's that's an excellent point that that God's mercy at least in those two passages is dependent on some kind of response from us and and I think I think the way we we look at that we can go a wrong direction with that and that is that that God is not merciful or compassionate to us unless we measure up and and certainly we don't want to say that and I'm sure you're not right but the I think the way we want to look at that is is God does not demonstrate his his love or his a response of mercy unless we are obedient it's always there God has a heart of compassion toward us but if we're disobedient to him we see the other side of his character which is holiness righteousness judgment anger even the mercy is always there but we bask in the glow of that when we're in a right relationship with him and so yes yes it does it does hinge on our fearing him being obedient to him that's when we we bask in the glow and the warmth of his mercy although he is always compassionate toward us when we're disobedient we we're experiencing more the wrath and judgment side yeah good observation okay anything else all right very good I want to just mention three ways in which the mercy of God manifests itself and there are many of these but just again to give us a little touch a little feel for what this is like God's mercy manifests itself first of all in in caring for all of his creatures there's a fascinating passage in Psalm 145 that that deals with this side of God's mercy Psalm 145 and verse 9 the Lord is good to all he has compassion on all he has made and then verses 15 and 16 the eyes of all look to you and you give them their food at the proper time you open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing and the mercy of God is seen in this passage even including the animal kingdom all of his creatures he cares for and he cares for not just in parsing out provisions for them kind of coldly and harshly but he cares for them with a tender heart God loves all of his creatures and they all look to him for for provision it's amazing if you study the animal kingdom in here know anything about the world of animals and and there's a there's a program on on television that I enjoy on PBS called nature and it does a lot of it deals a lot with God's creation not necessarily from a creation is perspective but certainly I can filter through the evolutionary stuff and see the wonder of God's creation and especially the animal kingdom and it is amazing how God provides for his creatures and provides for them in incredible ways by putting them in environments where their needs are cared for by giving them instincts to migrate and move to where their needs are cared for God but God takes care of them it's amazing to see with individual species and animals how God does provide for them but he cares for them in those aversion proverbs that that says something to the effect that a godly or a wise person will be tender-hearted toward his animals and I think that's to some degree a reflection of God's character and God's concern even for all of his creatures okay now I'm not going to quite go to the extent of starting to have a blessing of the animals service here at Johnson Chapel but but certainly God is concerned and loves all of his all of his creatures and so taking care of them rather ray is a high and holy vocation it's a part of a part of the creation mandate okay also a second way God manifests his mercy is in helping his people when we don't deserve it we've already seen that but God helps us even when we don't deserve it there's another passage in in Nehemiah that speaks to this in Nehemiah chapter nine verse 16 says but they it's recounting the history of Israel says but they are ancestors became arrogant and stiff-necked and they did not obey your commands they refused to listen and fail to remember the miracles you performed among them they became stiff-necked and they rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery but you are a forgiving God gracious and compassionate slow to anger and abounding in love therefore you did not desert them even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said this is your God who brought you up out of Egypt or when they committed awful blasphemies because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness by day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path or the pillar of fire by night to shine in the way they were to take you gave your good spirit to instruct them you did not withhold your mana from their mouths and you gave them water for their thirst for 40 years you sustained them in the wilderness they lacked nothing their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen now obviously there was judgment at times when they were rebellious against God but what what the people here in Nehemiah's day are recounting is that even when Israel rebelled and complained over and over again because because God is gracious and compassionate or merciful slow to anger abounding in love he didn't give up on them he didn't desert them he continued to provide for them now obviously again that's balanced with his judgment you know when they when they were bell against him in the matter of the 12 spies and would not take the land that he had had to commanded they take then he said okay this generation will die in the wilderness but even in those 40 years he still provided mana for them still took care of their clothes so they didn't wear out even in the midst of his righteous judgment he was still merciful too so our God is truly amazing in his mercy and then the greatest manifestation of God's mercy what would you think that would be I heard two things sending his son treaver sending his son and I would agree I would I would say that the greatest manifestation of God's mercy is is in our salvation by sending his son Paul says it this way in Ephesians 2 verse 4 after talking about us being in sin he says but because of his great love for us God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions it is by grace you've been saved and in describing our salvation Paul highlights the love of God the mercy of God and the grace of God and all three of those certainly are highlighted in our salvation he saved us because he loved us it is by grace were saved but it also because he's rich in mercy it's because he has a tender hardiness toward us and wants us longs for us to spend eternity with him so that tender hardness is also a factor in our salvation okay how do we apply God's mercy to us what does it mean to you how does it affect your life to be responsive to him in the right way yes and and certainly for one who demonstrates such loving tenderness compassion toward us it brings forth a response in fact I want to touch on that one I don't want to mess up the sequence of some verses I've got here for the screen but that's one of the ones I've written down to okay what else a couple of three things I've jotted down one is that God's mercy demands a corresponding mercy from us Luke 636 is on the screen be merciful just as your father is merciful that's the sermon on the mount in Luke's gospel and and Luke says that we are to be merciful just like our father is merciful think about that for a moment if God is tender-hearted toward us if God has compassion toward us if God gives us what we don't deserve then he's saying we're to be the same way toward others tender-hearted compassionate demonstrating mercy toward other people here's here's the one Audrey mentioned God's mercy is a motivation for us to give ourselves to him to respond to him it's a motivation for our own dedication to the Lord Romans 12 1 the familiar verse therefore I urge you brothers and sisters in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God this is your true and proper worship in light of God's mercy which Paul here uses to summarize everything he's talked about in the first 11 chapters the whole plan of salvation summarized in that word mercy again it's such a rich word it communicates it doesn't it communicates his love his grace his compassion his tenderness is pity all of that so in view of God's mercy him him showing mercy to us then our response should be to give ourselves totally to him in dedicating our lives to him putting our bodies on the sacchar on the altar as a living sacrifice and then Philippians 2 God's mercy is a motivation for us to show unity and self-sacrifice Paul says it this way therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ if any comfort from his love if any common sharing in the spirit now here it is if any tenderness and compassion then make my joy complete by being like-minded having the same love being one in spirit and of one mind do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit rather in humility value others above yourselves not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others this is that great passage on selflessness and and being willing to accommodate others and strive for unity rather than my way and and what I want self-sacrifice looking out for the interests of others and one of the motivations for that is if there is any tenderness or compassion he's talking about God's tenderness and compassion toward us if if he demonstrates mercy toward us that's a motivation for us to show mercy to others and and not be combative or demanding our own rights or our own way but to bend over to show mercy to others okay that's that's another application of the truth anything else before we move on to introduce the Trinity okay all right there's so much more that could be said about the attributes of God but we've we've spent a good bit of time on that so let's turn our attention to a whole new direction in this study of what the Bible teaches about God we're gonna spend several weeks on the Trinity at least three maybe maybe six I'm not sure depends on what kind of discussion we have but we're gonna talk about the Trinity and then we will finish up our study of the doctrine of God by talking about God's works his plan creation just briefly touch on creation not get into the whole creation evolution debate but briefly touch on the fact that God created and then his his providence and his sovereignty and those kinds of things okay but let's introduce the concept of what I will sometimes call the Trinity but more accurately I believe should be called the triunity of God and you'll see why not tonight but at another when we get into it a little bit deeper let's begin by talking about the importance of this doctrine the doctrine of the Trinity is first of all a distinctive doctrine it is distinctive to Christianity it is truly one of the one of the unique doctrines of Christianity other religions do not believe in the Trinity as we would believe in the Trinity most if not all of the cults would deny the Trinity for instance Jehovah's Witnesses say the Trinity is a satanic deception to keep us from the truth about Jehovah in their mind Jehovah is God Christ is not Holy Spirit is not God only Jehovah is God and so they call it a satanic deception the idea of the Trinity Mormons basically say the Trinity means you worship three gods Christian science says that we worship heathen gods by having concept of a Trinity and Armstrong is him the radio church of God says it is a pagan idea a pagan idea the Trinity is the liberals also deny the Trinity liberal churches and liberal preachers may talk about a lot of wonderful things and they'll talk about God but they deny the Trinity back in the 1920s when the fundamentalism liberalism debate was raging in the United States of America the most well-known spokesman for liberalism liberal theology was a pastor in New York City the pastor of Riverside Church which was built by the Rockefeller family by the way his name was Harry Emerson Fosdick and he wrote some books his most familiar book in the 20s was shall the fundamentalists win and the fundamentalists in that day are not what we think of necessarily as fundamentalists today the fundamentalists when they first got started in the teens and 20s were people who just wanted to believe the fundamentals of the Bible and believe what the Bible taught it later would shift toward splintering over so many different issues that it became so so divisive but in the early days fund up to be a fundamentalist meant that you believed what the Bible taught that's basically what it meant and in that good sense of the word we are all fundamentalists but Harry Emerson Fosdick said this he said the Trinity is a contradiction in arithmetic one God three persons who are God you can't do that it's a contradiction in arithmetic he said and so he denied the deity of Christ he denied the deity the Holy Spirit and was one of the foremost leading voice and he was a very eloquent preacher too and had a radio program that was nationwide in fact one of the greatest one of the one of the greatest slip-ups even though the guy announcing it did not know it the guy who was introducing Harry Emerson Fosdick one time on the radio was trying to build him up as this great religious leader and great radio speaker and he said now I want to introduce to you the prince of the power of the air and he was more right than he realized that's obviously a biblical name for Satan but Fosdick was an out and out liberal denied all the basic truths of the Bible and the liberals do deny the Trinity it is a distinctive doctrine to biblical Christianity but I also want to say that it is a fundamental doctrine it is it is one of the fundamental fundamentals of the Christian faith it is one of the basic cardinal foundational truths of the Christian faith it is absolutely critical to understand and believe the Trinity if we do not believe the Trinity then we don't believe in the deity of Christ you have to throw that out the window you have to throw the deity of the Holy Spirit out the window so the Holy Spirit becomes not even a person just some kind of force or power if there is no Trinity there is no incarnation you understand if there's no Trinity if there if Christ is not God existing eternally then there is no God coming to earth in human flesh if you don't believe in the so there's no incarnation if you don't believe in the Trinity then Jesus could not have saved us by his death on the cross the Trinity affects so many other things that it is it is one of those foundational basic doctrines now I since we're not going to get to the definition really tonight let me just because I want to I want to talk about the difficulty of the doctrine tonight and then and then we'll talk about the unity of God and the Trinity and put them together unity and triune nature of God into one basic definition of the Trinity which emphasizes both the unity and the Trinity but but so that we don't get too confused about what we're talking about let me just say this basically what the Bible teaches about the Trinity is there is one God but he exists eternally in three separate persons all of whom are equal so there's three God there's one God it but who exists and manifests himself in three separate persons all of whom are equally God now when you when you start thinking that through you can almost understand why Harry and Harry Emerson Fosley said what he did that's a contradiction in arithmetic there's one God but he exists in three equal persons how can that be and that is the difficulty of this doctrine the reason why this doctrine is so difficult the reason why most who rejected do reject it the reason is it's difficult to understand it does not make logical sense it is not logical the Trinity is not logical and what we need to understand is first of all it is incredible to think that we can fully understand God anyway it's incredible to think that we could fully grasp and parse out and define and put on paper everything there is to know about God anyway there are some things about God that are mystery and that we cannot fully grasp so the question with the Trinity is not can I make it make sense to my mind the question with the Trinity is this is it taught in the Bible and if it is taught in the Bible then whether or not I can explain it logically and wrap my mind around it a believing heart accepts it what is what is in the Bible to demand rational proof of the Trinity to demand that that it has to fit my thinking is really to doubt and even deny the word of God and that's how many people overthrow or leave the doctrine of the Trinity because it doesn't make sense logically they say it can't be true it's very important and this is so basic we are never to approach the word of God to make it fit our reason we are never to approach the word of God and make it fit my thinking okay because if that's what we're doing then my mind my rational thinking my logic becomes the authority and God's word becomes subject to that so the real authority is no longer God's word but my mind because I'm going to take the Bible and fit it into my mental constructs and my ability to logically reason things out and so really my mind becomes the authority and see the great shift in the Western world happened when rationalism became the God of mankind in other words everything had to be subjected to rational thought and logical reasoning if it could not be proven scientifically then it was not true and when rationalism became the the test for everything in truth that's when the human mind became God and the Bible was made subject to it now the key to accepting or rejecting any doctrine is our attitude toward the Bible and I'm trying to lay a foundation for where we're going to go next so what we're going to do in the next few weeks I will not be here next week I'm going to be a pastor's conference next week but in the next few weeks when we come back to this what we're going to do is we're going to see very clearly what the Bible teaches I mean we're just going to look at verse after verse after verse after verse and we're going to see that there is evidence first of all for the unity of God that there's one God but there is also evidence clearly in the Bible for the Trinity that there are three persons who are equally God equally divine in their essence and nature we're going to see the evidence for the Trinity in the Old Testament and we're going to see the overwhelming evidence for the Trinity in the New Testament and by the time we get done with that we will have looked at so much Scripture that we're going to be saying okay okay I get the idea get the picture this is in the Bible and it is clear it is foundational okay now when we see that then whether or not we can fully grasp it illustrate it explain it make it make logical sense whether or not we can do any of that if it's clearly seen in the Bible we believe it okay and that's where we have to come to so that's going to be our approach in the next few weeks within the one Godhead there are three eternal equal personal distinctions God the Father God the Son God the Holy Spirit one God eternally existing in three persons that's the Trinity and we're going to see it clearly seen in clearly demonstrated in the Bible and that's going to be our rule for what we believe not whether or not it makes logical sense to me I would agree with Faustic that the Trinity is a contradiction in arithmetic but since when is arithmetic my God that tells me what I'm going to believe since when is my logic the overwhelming authority for everything I believe I'm not going to live that way my authority is going to be the word of God so we'll look into the Bible to see if the Trinity is there and I think you'll agree overwhelmingly the Bible teaches the Trinity okay times up but any quick questions before we go all right let's pray Father we thank you for your marvelous word thank you for how it describes you in ways that we can begin to grasp who you are Lord we know that to understand who you are is a lifelong pursuit even an eternal one as we will continue to learn about you throughout eternity so what helps us not to be discouraged by the overwhelming nature of the task but help us to be encouraged that you open up through your word windows into your character so that we might learn about you we pray that we will rejoice and revel in the fact that you are a merciful God thank you for your mercy toward us may we have it it's that toward each other we pray in Jesus name amen