Core #1: The Disciples Heritage
November 06, 2021      |     By: Sam McVay, Jr.      |      Category: Equip S of D      |      Location: Wichita
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Core #1 The Disciples Heritage

Session 1: Who is God?

I. Introduction
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
...Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.”
A.W. Tozer

The most neglected subject in the kingdom of God is - God.

The foundation upon which stands the whole structure of our faith is our Theology - or what we believe about God.

In this session I hope to answer these questions:
• Why do you believe what you believe about God?
• Can you explain biblically why you believe what you believe?
• How do I resist Satan who is working hard to distort right understanding of God?
• Is the understanding of the Trinity in the Old and New Testament?
• Has the Church always believed in the Trinity?

II. The Biblical Witness to God

A. Knowing the Unknowable

1 Timothy 1:17 (ESV)
17 “To the King of the ages (eternal), immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Romans 11:33-36 (ESV)
33 “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

“Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man that can comprehend the Triune God.”
John Wesley

B. The First four Words of your Bible are the Headwaters of your Faith

Genesis 1:1 (ESV)
1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

C. Names of God in Old Testament
The question must be asked though, in the midst of a world full of gods - "What god is the Bible talking about?"

The God of the Bible is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - i.e., the God of the Jews.

In about a dozen places in the Bible, the Lord God is referred to as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (e.g., Genesis 50:24; Exodus 3:15; Acts 7:32).

This name of God emphasizes the covenant that God made with Israel and the Israelites’ special place as God’s Chosen People.

Elohim: Elohim is the Hebrew word for God that appears in the very first sentence of the Bible. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

It literally says, "In the beginning Elohim, Elohim created the heaven and the earth.” The term "Elohim" means “supreme one” or “mighty one”.

Yahweh (Jehovah) is the name revealed to Moses.

Exodus 3:13-15 (ESV)
13 "Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob — has sent me to you.’ “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation."

Description Names:
· Jehovah Jireh: The LORD our provider (Genesis 22:14)
· Jehovah Rapha: The LORD our Healer (Exodus 15:26)
· Jehovah Nissi: The LORD our Banner (Exodus 17:15)
· Jehovah Shalom: The LORD our Peace (Judges 6:24)
· Jehovah Raah: The LORD our Shepherd (Psalms 23:1)
· Jehovah Tsidkenu: The LORD our Righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6)
· Jehovah Shammah: The LORD is Here (Ezekiel 48:35)

III. One, But Plural in the Old Testament
One God (Monotheistic)

Deuteronomy 6:4 (ESV)
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

One God (Plural)

Genesis 1:26 (ESV)
26 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...

Genesis 11:7 (ESV)
7 “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

Isaiah 9:6 (ESV)
6 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

“Beyond the identity of Jesus and the Father, there are also “seeds” of a full-blown Christian Trinity planted in the Old Testament. Texts such as Isaiah 63, Psalm 78 and Ezekiel 8 hint at a, “shadowy” relationship between YHWH, His Angel, and His Spirit.”
Heiser

IV. New Testament Witness to Trinitarian God
A. The deity of the Man Jesus in the gospels:
John 1:1-14, John 8:48-59, John 20:28, Acts 2:33-36, Colossians 1:15-19, Philippians 2:9-11, Hebrews 1:3-4

B. Deity of the Holy Spirit:
Acts 5:3-4, 1 Corinthians 6:19, 1 Corinthians 2:10

C. Trinitarian passages in the New Testament:
Matthew 3:16-17, Matthew 17:1-6, Matthew 28:19, John 17, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, 1 Corinthians 8:6

V. Church Witness for Trinitarian God

The apostles obviously believed that there was one God in three distinct persons. And they taught the next generation this truth. But still this had to be battled for in centuries to come.

Nicene Creed - 4th century
Written in Greek, the Nicene Creed, or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, was penned during the fourth century. At that time, the Christian Church was confronting the heresy of Aryanism, which denied Jesus Christ's divinity. The effort to proclaim and support the divinity of Christ is evidenced in the Nicene Creed by the lengthy text devoted to Jesus' identity as fully God and fully man.

The Nicene Creed affirms the Christian church's belief in the Trinity, that God is one being but is manifest in three distinct persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The text of the Nicene Creed describes each person of the Trinity, considered a divine mystery and a core belief in orthodox Christianity.

Importantly, the Nicene Creed stipulates the equality and eternity of each member of the Godhead, a central tenet of Christianity.

VI. Trinitarian Basics
The word “Trinity” isn’t found in the Bible, but the word captures a number of biblical truths very well. There are actually seven statements that go into the doctrine of the Trinity:
1. God is one. There’s only one God.
2. The Father is God.
3. The Son is God.
4. The Holy Spirit is God.
5. The Father is not the Son.
6. The Son is not the Spirit.
7. The Spirit is not the Father.

If you get those seven statements, then you’ve captured the doctrine of the Trinity—what it means when we say there’s one God and three persons.

Christians are monotheists. We don’t believe in many gods or a pantheon of gods but just one God, and this God expresses himself and exists as three persons. That language of “persons” is very important.

The early church wrestled with the appropriate language, and “persons” aptly speaks to the personality of the three members of the Trinity and also their relationship with each other; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “co-inhere” as one essence, and yet there are distinctions. One isn’t the other, but they’re equal in rank, equal in power, equal in glory, equal in majesty. Just as Jesus sends out the disciples to go baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we see this doctrine of the Holy Trinity woven throughout the Scriptures.

That the New Testament church believed in God as Trinity is reflected on virtually every page of the New Testament, but it fell to the church of the following centuries to put it all together in precise theological statement. And the statement they eventually gave has been enthusiastically embraced by the entire church throughout of all the centuries.