Stories of a God who is Three in One
—God’s character revealed through stories
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- Andrew Fountain – July 7, 2013
tylenol
- People make a big deal with the ‘Trinity” but actually we deal with things like this all the time.
- We are happy to interact with things we don’t understand
- headache? take a tylenol —do you need to understand it?
“Cell phone”
- app for my phone. You’re listening to music and don’t know what it is...
- little man inside?
Law
- There is one legal system—you have either broken the law or you haven’t
- O.J. Simpson —did he break the law?
- one law, but criminal & civil (contract, property etc.)
“Abigail & Brittany”
“Abigail & Brittany 2”
Genesis 1:1
- In the begining, God created
the heavens and the earth.
- b’rêshîth bārā ĕlōhîm
’êṯ hashāmayim w’êṯ hā’ārets.
- Hebrew makes things plural by adding îm to the end
- Tom is one Tom Tomîm is many.
Genesis 1
- Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness…
- God created humankind in his own image
- Right from the very first recorded events, we see that things are not totally simple
- Main statement of Monotheism:
1. One God, but his unity is complex.
- Deu 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
- one echad —general word for one
One (echad)
- Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen 2:24)
- Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. (Gen 11:1)
- Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.” (Exo 24:3)
- Pharaoh has two dreams. Joseph tells him it is one dream. (Gen 41:25)
- There is a word yachid which can be used if you want to say “only one”
- “Now she was Jephthah’s one and only yachid child; besides her he had no son or daughter.” Judges 11:34
2. God begins to show his complexity
- God is Spirit
- But actually we learn that this is the Father, God can appear as a man:
Genesis 18:2–19:1
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2. Full revelation caomes in the New Testament
NT Trinity Scriptures
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Definition
“One God who eternally exists in three different persons:
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
all of whom are fully God,
all of whom are fully equal.
“Trinity”
- Errors:
- modalism
- three gods
- subservience
- Most analogies are not helpful
- importance
- death of Jesus no help otherwise
- community
- the very nature of God
- the hug
John 3
- “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Live in unity Eph 4
- making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
- There is one body and one Spirit, just as you too were called to the one hope of your calling,
- one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
- one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
John 17
- The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,
- I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.