In a
Sunday sermon recently, Jordan recalled talking to some Muslims
about how the Koran has mistakes in it and their adamant response was, “Oh, no,
no.”
He came back with, “Yeah, it does. It says Christians
believe in three gods and anybody who knows anything about Christianity knows
we don’t believe in three gods.”
He went on to explain, “Mohammed (author of the Koran)
was raised around some Christians who didn’t have a very good view of the
trinity. They basically taught there were three gods. But their view of
Christianity has never been what Christians have believed and certainly not
what the Bible teaches.”
*****
Jordan continued, “I’ve talked to you many times about why the ‘Tri-Unity’of
God is such a critical issue to understand, and it’s not that creation validates
God but that creation reflects God and His nature. That one God in the Bible is
defined in three people.
“Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:18 that ‘through him we
both have access by one Spirit unto the Father,’ and that’s the issue of the
trinity. The trinity is all through the Book of Ephesians. The word ‘trinity,’
though, is not a Bible word; it’s a term of theology coined by Tertullian back
in the 2nd century.
“He took a Latin word ‘tres,’ which means three, and ‘unis,’
which means one, and invented the word ‘triunus,’ which we have as trinity when
you Anglicize it. The word means ‘three-in-one’ or ‘the One that is three.’
“The Bible word Paul uses is the word ‘godhead.’ Paul
uses that word three times (Romans 1, Acts 17 and Colossians 2).
“In theology, they make something about the trinity
harder than it needs to be. There’s only one God. ‘Here O Israel thy Lord thy God
is one God.’ In Ephesians 4, Paul says ‘there’s one God and Father.’
“But that one God in the Bible turns out to exist in
three people who are one in essence, one in being.
*****
“Look around this room. There’s one humanity here
today. God ‘hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on
all the face of the earth.’
“But look at all the different kind of people. There’s
all kind of what we call ethnic groups and we have a whole assortment right
here in this room this morning.
“One of the fascinating things when we moved from
Alabama to Chicago was to learn about the real different characteristics that
different ethnic groups have. It’s still is a fascination to me that the
cultures and the different thinking processes--literally the way people think
is controlled by your culture.
“Look at all the different individuals here.
Everybody’s a separate individual and we’re separate kinds of individuals in the
sense of our ethnic identity, race, male and female, etc. If you can have one
humanity with 200 different individuals in one room, you can have one godhead;
one essence of deity with three people in it.
*****
“John 1:14 is a very important reality to think about
when thinking about who God is: ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,)
full of grace and truth.’
“You see that word ‘Word’ with a capital W? The
all-caps ‘WORD’ is the name for the Lord Jesus Christ, so as the second member
of the godhead, one of His names is ‘the Word.’ He’s the one who’s going to be
the speaker. He’s going to be the manifest person of the godhead. He’s the one
who reveals God.
“Verse 18 says, ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the
only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.’
“You can’t see God in your human essence, but the Lord
Jesus Christ has declared Him. Well, you declare things with a word. If you
want to know who the God, the Creator, of the universe is, you look at the revelation
of God in the person of Christ.
*****
“John 1 says, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.’
“You couldn’t be any clearer than that. Here’s the
Word, here’s God the Father, and there are two distinct people. ‘And the Word
was God.’ The Word, God the Son, was as equally God as the Father was. They’re
one in one sense, that is in their deity, but they’re distinct in another sense
in that there are two people.
“That’s easy to see in the Scripture. People say, ‘Well,
it’s hard to understand.’ It’s not that hard to fathom, frankly. If you can
fathom the fact that there’s all these different individuals in this room and
yet we’re one, that makes sense to me.
“When the godhead manifests itself, you see three
members of the godhead manifested. Matthew 3:16-17 says, 16] And Jesus,
when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens
were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and
lighting upon him:
[17] And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’
[17] And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’
“Sometime people say, ‘Well, this doesn’t occur in the
Old Testament. Look at Isaiah 48:16: ‘Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I
have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there
am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.’
“The ‘me’ who’s talking, if you go back to verse 12, Revelation
identifies the first and the last as Jesus Christ. So here’s the second person
of the godhead talking before He became a man.
“You understand Jesus didn’t come into existence when
He was conceived in the womb of Mary. You didn’t exist before your mother and
dad conceived you. No stork delivered you. You weren’t up there in some
incubating nursery in heaven waiting to find a delivery date and address. You
didn’t exist.
“That’s good old pagan Mormon doctrine, but it’s not Bible.
You came into existence when you were conceived. Jesus Christ already existed.
In fact, ‘He made everything that was made and without Him was not anything
made that was made.’ He’s God.
“So, He’s going to talk to you in verse 16: ‘Come ye
unto me (God the Son) hear this, I (Jesus Christ) have not spoken from the time
. . . and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.’
“Who is the Lord God and His Spirit? That’s God the
Father and God the Spirit. You can do this repeatedly in the Old Testament, but
those three members of the godhead, that’s why back in Genesis it says, ‘Let US
create man.’ From the very beginning in the Bible, there have been three
members of the godhead.
*****
“All three members of the godhead in Ephesians are
seen in action, working the counsel of God. They’re all for you. That’s why in chapter
2:18, when you come there, and he says, ‘For through him, we both have access
by one Spirit,’ it’s not a shock.
“You’ll see it on and on through the Book of Ephesians.
The reason that this is an issue is because the issue is life and the issue is,
‘What kind of life did God give His creation to live?’ And if you want to know
what kind of life (‘He breathed into man the breath of life and man became a
living soul’), that life came from the godhead.
“So what kind of life does God live? If you look at
Colossians 1, notice what he says about what the Father thinks. Colossians
1:18-19 says, 18] And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the
beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the
preeminence.
[19] For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.
[19] For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.
“Why should Jesus Christ have preeminence in all
things? ‘For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.’ It
pleases God the Father that His Son had the preeminence in everything. You know
who the Father lives to exalt and make No. 1? His Son.
“Flip back one book to Philippians 2:11: ‘And that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.’
“When you exalt the Son, he says, ‘Hey, I’m not doing
this! This is the work and the words the Father gave me!’
“So when you try to exalt the Son, you know who you
really exalted? The Father. When you look at the Father, He says, ‘Exalt my Son.’
The Son says, ‘Hey, when you exalted me you’re really exalting the Father.’
*****
“John 16:13 says, ‘Howbeit when he, the Spirit of
truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of
himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew
you things to come.’
“Who’s the Holy Spirit going to glorify when He comes?
If the Spirit of God is working in you, is He going to talk about Himself? No,
He’s going to talk about who? The Lord Jesus Christ. Every member of the
godhead lives to exalt the other members of the godhead. Nobody in the godhead
lives for themselves; they all live spontaneously, intimately, immediately,
consistently for the other members of the godhead.
“The life that God gave His creation was a life that
was designed to live like He lives life. That’s why sin in its most basic form
is not living for the good of others, for the gratification of others, for the
exaltation of others, for the pleasure of others. It’s living for yourself.
“I’ve said for 40 years, the middle letter of the word
sin is ‘I.’ You want to know your problem? Start there, because that’s what
makes your life lived exactly the opposite of the way God designed your life to
be lived.
*****
“There’s one little word in Ephesians 2:18 that’s
critical because all the godhead is working for you. It’s through Christ, it’s
by His Spirit, it’s under the Father, but what you’re getting in the verse is
that little word ‘access.’
“I can’t not help but want to massage that word into
your thinking. The idea with access is the concept of a personal introduction,
and it’s as though it was through Christ, based on what Jesus Christ has done, that
the Holy Spirit literally takes the Believer by the hand and leads you into the
presence of the Father and introduces you to the Father and informs you about
the Father and makes the Father’s will real to you.
“It’s saying, ‘Here, let me take you by the hand and
walk you in and introduce you to Him.’ You know one of the biggest hurdles with
anything in life is to get over that hurdle of being introduced so that you now
have a personal relationship.
“The function of the Holy Spirit is to do that. He
says it’s ‘through Christ.’ That word ‘access’ is used three times by Paul. The
first one emphasizes the ‘through Him.’
“Ephesians 3:12 says, ‘In whom we have boldness and
access with confidence by the faith of him.’ I want you to notice something
about that verse. In verse 9, Paul says his goal in the ministry is to ‘make
all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery.’ That doesn’t mean just make
people see in the sense of making people understand the distinctive ministry of
Paul. He wants you to see the fellowship that the mystery produces.
“What is that? Verse 6 says, ‘That the Gentiles should
be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by
the gospel.’ There’s this wonderful cosmic plan that God has for His Son. We’ve
been studying it all through Ephesians. It’s bigger than just your redemption.
It’s bigger that just your regeneration. It’s bigger that just your life this
afternoon.
“When you get the picture that you’re a part of
something GIGANTIC, something BIG that God’s doing, all focused in His Son, all
of a sudden it’s, ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face.’
And what? ‘The things of this world grow strangely dim in the light of His
glory and grace.’
“Romans 5:2 says, ‘By whom also we have access by
faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of
God.’ How does the Spirit give you access? It’s by faith. How do you get into
personal contact with it? How do you get this personal introduction to it where
it becomes real in your life and your experience? Not just in head knowledge,
but ‘It’s mine!’? By faith.
*****
“What is faith? ‘Faith comes by hearing and hearing by
the Word of God.’ Who wrote the Word of God? See, when you trust God’s word,
who are you really trusting? You’re trusting the Spirit of God. Jesus said,
‘The words that I speak unto you they are Spirit and they are life.’
“Your flesh profits nothing. And as your faith, resting
in an understanding of God’s Word to you . . . that’s why the right division is
important, but it’s your faith depending on what God says is true that allows
that truth to work, to become internalized energy in your life, to renew your
thinking processes and allow your life—the definition of life is the ability to
relate to your circumstances.
“You know what life is? This is it! Look around you!
For His life, HIS ability to relate to your circumstances to become YOUR
ability to relate to your circumstances. How’s that work? That’s the job of the
Spirit. The way you activate that is by faith.”
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