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I want to invite you this evening to turn with your Bibles to .
(Have it say Amen?)
A little context about this text: Jesus is right about to begin the tough road to the cross, and this is probably the most important prayer He will make in his entire ministry.
In this prayer He has his current disciples in mind, his future disciples in mind, and right at the beginning he prays for himself.
And it’s when he begins to pray for himself that he reveals something very important:
Read with me
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
This phrase in verse three is extremely important, because in it Jesus gives us the key that unlocks the door to eternal life.
According to Jesus, eternal life is to know God.
Which means that to attain knowledge of God is the single most important thing anyone of us can do.
For you and for me, living in 2018, we cannot be saved without knowing God.
We cannot be saved without getting closer to God.
Simply put: The first step to eternal life is to know God more.
Commenting on this, the Spirit of Prophecy also puts an emphasis on getting to know God more:
“Having received the faith of the gospel, the next work of the believer is to add to his character virtue, and thus cleanse the heart and prepare the mind for the reception of the knowledge of God.
This knowledge is the foundation of all true education and of all true service.
It is the only real safeguard against temptation; and it is this alone that can make one like God in character.”
Now the reason I begin with emphasizing the importance of the knowledge of God is because out in the world, there are many varying ideas about God.
For example…
Regarding his character, some see God as being hate, others see God as being love.
Regarding his creation, some see God as the force that began the evolutionary process, while others see God creating the world in 6 days.
Regarding his actions, some see God as being absent in our lives, timeless and transcendent, while others see God providentially involved in human life, even every day.
The point is that there are many things that are said about God.
And often times, these difference end up in controversies.
And one of these controversies, specifically among Christians, has to do with the ontological make up of God, in particular, the concept of Trinity.
So tonight we want to explore, briefly, what does the Bible say about the nature and being of God?
Does the Bible support the idea of a Trinity?
Or does the Bible teach us something else?
And to answer these questions, we will do this in three lessons:
The First Lesson: (Monotheism) God is one
So to begin answering these questions, we want to go to the time when the people of Israel were delivered from slavery.
According to the Bible, the people of Israel lived in Egypt for over 400 years, some of these years in slavery.
Now you can imagine what happens when you live among a people for over 400 years.
Eventually, the culture of the people, and even the religious practices of the people, begin to have influence over the way you live your life.
(Example: Think about most of our parents.
Many of our parents came from different cultures and were born in different countries.
But in just one generation, some of us are more American than Mexican, or more American then Salvadoran.)
And the big challenge with Egyptian culture was that Egyptian culture was intricately connected with their religion.
Egyptian religion was polytheistic, meaning it worshipped many gods.
At one point or another, the Egyptian pantheon had over 2,000 deities or gods.
So one of the first things God had to do with his people, straight out of Egypt, was to purge them from any polytheistic way of life.
The first and probably most important lesson was that there are not many gods, there is only One God.
Monotheism: The Belief in one God
Monotheism in the 10 commandments (the first 2):
Monotheism in the teachings of Moses: Monotheism in the shema:
Monotheism in the shema:
All these verses show very clearly that worship should only be directed to one God.
There are is no such thing as many gods, there is one only One.
And this is so important that you see this teaching in the rest of the Old Testament.
Monotheism in David: Monotheism in Isaiah: (44:6-8)
Juan 14:1 Juan 14:7 Juan 14:9-11
And if that were not enough, Jesus himself believed in the worship of One God.
When he was asked what is the first commandment of all, you remember the beginning of his popular answer:
“29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
So the Bible is clear that worship can only be directed to one God.
You cannot worship many gods, because many gods do not exist.
There is only one God, and that God deserves all your attention.
The Second Lesson: Plurality within the Oneness
But although God is one, the Bible teaches us something else as well.
The bible teaches us, from the very beginning, that within the oneness of God there is a plurality.
The best way to understand this is to see this in scripture, at the very beginning, when God is first introduced:
Creation of man: Fall of man: Confusion at the tower of Babel:
You even see this later on as well:
-8
Juan 14:1
Now this sometimes is very difficult for people to understand.
How can God be one, but can also be more than one?
How can we speak of God as one, but also speak of God plurally?
The truth is we don’t know, the Bible doesn’t reveal that to us.
In fact, we see this oneness and plurality as a mystery, something that we cannot explain.
And although many have tried to give explanations, the Bible really doesn’t reveal the science behind this composition of God.
There are two verses that help me make with peace with the
Not all things are revealed - There is no other like God.
All we can confidently say is that God is one, but within that oneness, there is also unity of beings.
Juan 14:7
The Third Lesson: The Plurality is Limited to 3
Now, before we enter into our last point of tonight, there is an important verse that sets the stage for our point number 3.
And that is found in
The reason I point to this verse is for two reasons:
The greatest revelation of who God is, is found in Jesus Christ.
God has spoken to us through the prophets, those who wrote the Old Testament, but now we have received truth through what Jesus taught us.
In other words, we learn a lot from the Old Testament.
But it is with the arrival of Jesus that we learn so much more.
God spoke to us through the writers of the Bible, but has spoken to us even more through the teachings of Jesus.
Juan 14:9-11
In other words, Jesus not only fulfills the Old Testament.
He answers the questions that were left unanswered in the Old Testament.
But to our discussion of the plurality of God, it is with the arrival of Jesus that we begin to see a clearer picture of the plurality of God.
The first thing we see is that Jesus himself is God:
Juan 14:1 Juan 14:7 Juan 14:9-11
And after everything Jesus did in his life, his own apostles declared him God: \
So we have God the Father, and we have God the Son, Jesus Christ.
But Jesus does one more thing.
He reveals to us the truth of the Holy Spirit, something that had not been fully understood before.
And he does this in the most interesting way:
- Talks about another counselor.
And then he eventually puts the Holy Spirit at the same level
“19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
From this point on, the New Testament writers see the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit working together, all for the salvation and the transformation of man.
Our Belief in the Trinity:
“The Trinity There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three coeternal Persons.
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