Sermon Tone Analysis

Yahweh - God as Christians understand Him

If we were to fully unpack this you would need to have brought with you meals for two or three days and your pajamas.

I know that you didn’t so today I are going to give you a quick run through about who God is.

At Soundfaith.com you will find suggested resources for further investigation.

Your ability to answer the question Who is God is central to your ability to understand not only God, but who you are as well.

A. Trinity

To understand God we must first start with gaining a better understanding of the Nature of God.

God as we understand him in the Christian Faith is a Triune God.

John Piper in his book Desiring God wrote this.

The doctrine of the Trinity is foundational to the Christian faith.

It is crucial for properly understanding what God is like, how He relates to us, and how we should relate to Him.

But it also raises many difficult questions.

How can God be both one and three?

Is the Trinity a contradiction?

If Jesus is God, why do the Gospels record instances where He prayed to God?

While we cannot fully understand everything about the Trinity (or anything else), it is possible to answer questions like these and come to a solid grasp of what it means for God to be three in one.

By John Piper.

© Desiring God.

Website: desiringGod.org

The first thing we need to remember is that in the final analysis the Trinity is mystery.

Our God is not a super human being.

Other religions attempt to understand God from a human level.

We human beings have always tried to anthropomorphize God - bring him down to our level.

Make him in our image.

Have him conform to our finite understanding.

However, God says to us...

Stop and think about it for a minute.

Isn’t it rather pompous and arrogant and audacious for us to make God in our image and then put him in charge of things.

That is what other religions have done, but from the very beginning, Scripture has told us that we need to start with God because everything started, the whole of creation started with God.

So we should not look at ourselves and then try to deduce who God is and what he is like.

We need to start with God and allow him to explain to us who he is.

Gen 1:2 Begins with these words - “The earth was formless and void.”

We need to get this firm in our minds - nothing existed as we know it except God.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing.

The rest of Genesis chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2 tells us that everything was brought into being by him.

Before anything - there was God.

Unlike the creation stories of most other religions including Islam which describe other gods and creation happening out of their fighting and bickering, Christians understand that before the beginning there was God and in the beginning of all things it was Yahweh God who created.

This is the first thing we as Christians need to understand.

We do not create our understanding of God from our image.

It is God who created us.

We need to stop trying to shape him in our finite understanding and allow him through scripture to help us understand who he is.

Scripture helps us to understand that there is only one God, not a pantheon of Gods.

But Scripture also helps us to understand that who God is in his being is different from us.

This one God is within himself 3 persons.

We use the term Trinity.

You will not find the word Trinity or the phrase triune God in the Scriptures, but you will find the concept explained.

We simply gave a name to it.

So what does this mean when we say God is one being in which co-exist three persons.

Very simply we are saying God in his very being is perfect community, in perfect harmony in perfect love.

We say that God is love.

True Love takes an I - you relationship.

This is important to realize.

It takes at least two to demonstrate self giving love.

Before creation, God is love because in his very essence there exists the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in which love moves and which breaks forth in Creation.

God does not need us to be complete him, because of his essence and personhood he is complete without us.

However, it is that love that brought forth the universe.

Not in a sexual sense like many creation myths of other religions, but in an innate desire of self giving and relationship.

Not that God required us in order to be in relationship because in his being he is in relationship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

At the heart of Christianity’s revelation of God is a trinitarian form of monotheism.

That the living God is triune—that three eternal persons coexist within the one divine essence—is the distinctive Christian affirmation about deity.

Alongside the proper names of God and his perfectional names the Bible arrays the personal names Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The doctrine of the Trinity is Christianity’s unique declaration concerning the divine being and is definitive for Christian theism.

(Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 5 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 191.)

a.

Why is the Concept of the Trinity is important

It gives us the example of how we are to live with each other.

We are created in the image of God.

We are not God.

We are created beings, but created to live in a special relationship with God which defines our relationship with each other.

Here are some basic keys that will unlock you understanding about who God is.

Key 1 - Christianity is the only Faith where God wants to have a personal relationship with humanity.

Key 2. Christianity is the only Faith in which God as we understand him does not wait for us to be good enough to be in his presence, but takes the first step and comes to us even when we don’t deserve to be in relationship with him.

Key 3. Christianity is the only Faith where God does everything necessary to make it possible for us to be in relationship with him, right down to entering into human history as Jesus - God incarnate, to pay the price of our rejecting him.

Romans 5:8 (NASB95)

8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners (while we still rejected him), Christ died for us.

Key 4. Christianity is the only Faith where God offers forgiveness, renewal and new life right at the beginning of our love relationship with him.

No waiting until we are good enough, no having to go through certain ceremonies or religion acts.

We simply need to say we want a relationship with him and he begins to pour his love into us.

Key 5.

He does all this and then says that he will help us to become all we were created to be by being with us and in us.

We don’t have to do it alone.

He knows it will take time and he is willing to give us the time.

Philippians 2:12–13 (NCV)

12 ...Keep on working to complete your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 because God is working in you to help you want to do and be able to do what pleases him.

Key 6.

He invites all who enter into this love relationship with him to come home to him here and in eternity.

Friends this is the God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit who we love, worship and praise.

This is the God that we want to tell others about.

This is the God to whom we want to pass on the keys of life to all humanity.

For Follow up

Understanding The Trinity

YouTube

TEACHING: The Trinity Beautifully Explained by Dr. Ravi Zacharias: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=788hMI1Lc-s

Nabeel Qureshi explaining the Trinity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0JpwOSKRC0

Nabeel Qureshi answers a Muslim's Questions on the Trinity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6q_c_CQPnM

Nabeel Qureshi's Powerful Closing Statement - Is God Tawhid or Trinity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUQb6EtVTaE

Web Articles

Understanding the Trinity by John Piper: https://www.cru.org/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/core-christian-beliefs/understanding-the-trinity.html