Sermon Tone Analysis

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”[1]

You have undoubtedly heard the story of the little boy who was colouring at the kitchen table.

When his mother asked him what he was drawing, he informed her that he was drawing a picture of God.

“But no one knows what God looks like,” his mother remonstrated with him.

“They will when I get through,” the lad responded.

Whenever we speak of God, we must be cautious that we don’t attempt to reduce God to a concept we can handle; we must avoid recreating Him in our own image.

The Psalmist Asaph charges those who supposed they were worshipping God with a dreadful sin when he writes, “You thought I was exactly like you” [*Psalm 50:19*].[2] The professed worshippers of God attempted to make God after their own desires.

Of course, such an attempt is foolish.

God is not at all like us.

In fact, it is fair to say that God can only be described as “Other.”

However, there are aspects of His character to which we can relate.

The most distinctive facet of the divine nature is perhaps His Triune nature.

God reveals Himself as the Triune God, a concept that is difficult for people to grasp.

It is doubtful that any of us can say that we actually understand the concept, but as Christians we accept the revelation.

Though we see the reality presented in the Word, we nevertheless grapple with the implications of this doctrine—attempting to find models or analogies, only to see each effort end in futility.

It is important to acknowledge that the triune nature of the Godhead is not a concept that man could envision—it is revealed by God Himself.

Closing the Second Letter he wrote to the Christians in Corinth, the Apostle to the Gentiles referred to the Triune Godhead when penning a benediction.

It seems apparent that this truth permeated the Apostle’s mind because it flows so freely from his pen as he pronounces a blessing on those first readers.

* The Triunity Presented* — It is fascinating to discover that the Bible does not attempt to provide a definition of the Triune Godhead.

One cult makes much of the fact that the word “Trinity” does not occur in the Bible.

This should not be worrisome to any serious student of the Bible.

The word “rapture” does not occur in the Bible, but we still look for the Blessed Hope.

Likewise, the word “millennium” is not found in our English versions of the Word.

Nevertheless, the Word makes it clear that we shall reign with the Master for a thousand years.

The terms “natural depravity” and “eternal security,” though evident from what is revealed in the Word, are not found in our English versions.

Doctrinal terms are used to identify biblical truth; they are not the biblical truth themselves.

The term that speaks of the Triune Nature of God which we commonly use is “Trinity”; this is likely the term that you will have heard used most often by pastors and theologians.

I prefer to use the term “Triunity,” which though less familiar is somewhat more descriptive.

Whether we use the term “Trinity” or “Triunity,” we need to know that we are speaking of the nature of God as revealed in His Word.

Let’s admit up front that the passage we are focused on in this hour does not conclusively teach the truth of the Triune Nature of God; however, it is evident that the Apostle assumes the Triunity to be an accurate representation of the Godhead.

Today, we have the advantage of looking back to this verse with more understanding than the first readers could have had because we have received the entire revelation of the Word.

Thus, it is obvious that our understanding is retrospective; we are privileged to have the full revelation of the Word to guide our understanding.

Consequently, contemporary Christians are able to see the nature of God in the degree He has chosen to reveal Himself to mankind.

Throughout the Word of God, the Triunity is accepted as factual by the writers.

Consequently, they expend no effort in defending this truth—one either accepts the doctrine as true, or one rejects it as fanciful imagination.

Thus, the doctrine is revealed, and not assumed.

Pause for a moment to weigh that thought—the nature of God could not be discovered through man’s effort, for if we were able to discover what God is like through our own ruminations and cogitations, we would be greater than God.

God’s nature is known by revelation, and not through man’s search to know God.

For us to know what God is like, it is necessary for God to reveal Himself.

As God reveals Himself to us in the written Word, we are amazed to meet One God, but in three expressions.

We do not meet three gods, for that is nothing short of paganism.

We do, however, meet God in three Persons comprising the Godhead.

When God began revealing His will and His character, He did not immediately provide a complete revelation.

The Spirit of God progressively revealed the nature of the Living God.

Until the canon of Scripture was complete—over four thousand years after the first words of Genesis were written, it was impossible to have a full revelation of the character of God.

Even then, our humble state compels us to confess that the revelation we have is complete only so far as God has chosen to reveal Himself to man.

It is fair to say that we will not have a full revelation until we have been transformed into the image of Christ.

When, at last, we are changed into His image we will stand complete in Him before the Father.

At that time, as the Apostle has written, “I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” [*1 Corinthians 13:12*].

Throughout the Creation account recorded in the first chapter of Genesis God is referred to by the Hebrew word “*/elohim/*.”

*/Elohim/* is a plural noun, but it is used as though it were singular.

In the early verses of the first chapter of the written Word, the pronouns are all singular.

*/Elohim/* appears in conjunction with singular verbs, and the pronouns referring back to the word are also singular.

We accept that this is a means by which God at once emphasises that there is but one God alone, though there is a plural dimension to His being.

I acknowledge that this information is not sufficient to definitively declare the Triunity of God, but it does suggest this great doctrine from the first chapter.

Those who are knowledgeable of New Testament Scriptures know that *Genesis 1:26, 27* is strongly suggestive of the triune Godhead.

The truth would have been more difficult to comprehend at an earlier time in the history of the Faith.

“God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’

“So God created man in His own image,

in the image of God He created him;

male and female He created them.”

Scope in on the 26th verse: “Let */us/* make man in */our/* image, after */our/* likeness.”

This is one of the very few places where a singular pronoun does not occur.

In *Genesis 3:22* we again witness the use of the plural pronoun as God speaks following the rebellion of our first parents.

“The Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like */one of us/* in knowing good and evil.’”

The Lord God—*/Yahweh Elohim/*—reasons that “the man has become like one of us.”

Whom did the Lord God address when He reasoned as He did?

Some Bible teachers—but no Bible scholars—endeavour to teach that God spoke to angels in our text.

However, such a view appears fatally flawed in light of *Isaiah 40:14*.

“Whom did he consult,

and who made him understand?

Who taught him the path of justice,

and taught him knowledge,

or showed him the way of understanding?”

If Scripture teaches anything, it teaches that God need not invite the angels to enter into His grand work of creation.

Moreover, the Lord God would have no need to ask the angels for advice about how to respond to the sin of mankind.

Since the Living God presents His Son as “a lamb … foreknown before the creation of the world” [*1 Peter 1:19, 20*] and as “the Lamb that was slain” [*Revelation 13:8*], He would have no reason to invite mere creatures to share in either the glorious work of creation or to provide for the redemption of his fallen creature.

We are informed that angels are ignorant of salvation since the angels long to look into matters concerning salvation [*1 Peter 1:12*].

Bear in mind that the angels are themselves created beings.

Therefore, why would the Creator ask the very creatures He created to serve His redeemed people [see *Hebrews 1:14*] to give Him advice concerning how He should respond to man’s sin?

There are liberal professors who consider the wording of *Genesis 1:26* to be superfluous; they treat it as though it were meaningless.

There are yet other Bible teachers who in their ignorance of the Word have taught that in that passage God is addressing wisdom personified.

They base this thought upon the words of Solomon recorded in *Proverbs 8:22-31*.

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work,

the first of his acts of old;

Ages ago I was set up,

at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth,

when there were no springs abounding with water.

Before the mountains had been shaped,

before the hills, I was brought forth,

before he had made the earth with its fields

or the first of the dust of the world.

When he established the heavens, I was there,

when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,

when he made firm the skies above,

when he established the fountains of the deep,

when he assigned the sea its limit

so that the waters might not transgress his command,