Slide 1
Old Testament: One God

Slide 2
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Slide 3
Isaiah 45:5
I am the Lord, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God;
I equip you, though you do not know me

Slide 4
The Bible is adamantly monotheistic. There are not three gods. There is one God.

Slide 5
Yet, the Old Testaments has these hints:
· God says, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26).
· You have “the Angel of the LORD” who speaks as God. (Christophanies)
· You have the Spirit of God active in creation and in God’s people.

Slide 6
New Testament: Three Persons

Slide 7
Matthew 3:16-17
And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Slide 8
One scene, persons:
· The Son in the water
· The Spirit descending
· The Father’s voice speaking love over the Son

Slide 9
Matthew 28:19
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Slide 10
One name… three distinct Persons.

Slide 11
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 
2 Corinthians 13:14 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

Slide 12
The Bible says:
· There is one God.
· The Father is God.
· The Son is God.
· The Holy Spirit is God.
· They are not the same Person.

Slide 13
The Trinity is confusing!

Slide 14
Bad Analogies:
· Water: God is like water: sometimes ice, sometimes liquid, sometimes steam.
· The Trinity is like an egg: shell, white, yolk.
· Like a three-leaf clover—three leaves, one clover.
· The Trinity is like the sun: the Father is the sun, the Son is the light, and the Spirit is the heat.

Slide 15
All of those analogies are heresies:
· Modalism: God is one person wearing three different masks (Father, Son, Spirit) at different times. (Water)
· Partialism: Each person of the Trinity is one-third of God, like three pieces that assemble into one whole. (Egg, clover)
· Arianism: Treating the Son and Spirit as created forces that come from the Father but are not equal with Him. (Sun)

Slide 16
The Nicene Creed was never meant to replace Scripture. It’s a guardrail summarizing what Scripture teaches about God, and especially that Jesus is no less God than the Father, and that the Spirit is no less God than the Father and the Son.

Slide 17
In the early 300s, a pastor named Arius began teaching that the Son of God (Jesus) was not fully God, but a sort of exalted creature. In his view, there was a time when the Son did not exist. Jesus was “like” God, but not truly equal to the Father.

Slide 18
The Council of Nicaea comes together in A.D. 325. That council condemned Arianism as heresy and declared that the Son is “of one substance” (homoousios) with the Father: fully and truly God.

Slide 19
What we believe about the Trinity:
There is one God, who eternally exists as three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each Person is fully and equally God, sharing the same divine nature, and yet there is only one God.

Slide 20
Deuteronomy 29:29  “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever…”

Slide 21
The first part of the Nicene Creed:
“We believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.”

Slide 22
Researchers have found that many people’s concept of God parallels their experience with their parents, and especially their fathers. This is often called the correspondence model: if dad was loving and present, God is often seen as loving and present; if dad was harsh, distant, or absent, God is often viewed the same way. 
- Dr. John Bowlby

Slide 23
My toxic trait is saying “I’ll be there in 5” when I haven’t even left my house… 

Slide 24
My toxic trait is waiting to respond to a text and then replying three weeks later with “sorry just seeing this!”

Slide 25
My toxic trait is doing one productive thing and then acting like I just finished a 14-hour shift in a coal mine.

Slide 26
My toxic trait is assuming every authority figure will eventually hurt or disappoint me the way my dad did.

Slide 27
My toxic trait is acting like my dad’s choices didn’t affect me, while my whole life is quietly shaped around avoiding his patterns.

Slide 28
My toxic trait is keeping people at arm’s length so they can’t reject me first.

Slide 29
· Some of you had a great dad.
· Some of you had a harsh dad.
· Some of you had an absent dad.
· Some of you had a complicated dad: some wonderful things, some deep wounds.

Slide 30
God is not just a slightly-better version of your dad.
He is the perfect Father your heart was created for.

Slide 31
Jesus says:
“I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

Slide 32
Romans 8:15
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Slide 33
Why our view of God as Father matters:
· It shapes our identity
· It shapes our security
· It shapes our intimacy with God
· It shapes our healing
· It shapes our community 

Dr. Ben Carson is one of the most famous neurosurgeons in the last a hundred years. He really pioneered so many things in that field of medicine. He's got an amazing story. He went to Yale Medical School, then he was the, the youngest director of a division at John Hopkins. He was 33 years old when he took over a pediatric neuroscience, amazingly brilliant guy. And yet he would tell you that so much of his success goes back to an 18 month period between fourth grade and fifth grade. At that time, he was raised in Detroit. He had one brother. They were raised by a single mom, and he and his brother were both struggling mightily in school. He, he was almost failing out of both fourth grade and fifth grade. Mom got to her wits end. She said, okay, something's gotta change. I don't like the trajectory that my boys are on. 

So she made a pretty sudden and drastic decision. She got rid of tv. She said, all right, no more TV boys. Instead, I'm gonna take you to the library and I'm gonna require you at home. Not part of school, but at home to do. Took two book reports every single week. And so the boys would have to go rent a book and then from the library, and then they'd read the book, and then they'd do a book report. Mom would take those book reports and she would grade 'em. She would take a highlighter and she'd highlight certain sections, and then she'd give different checkbox, and then she'd turn it back into their kids. And then if they did a good job with those two book reports, then she started rewarding them by letting them watch on the weekend, a little bit of tv, but only documentaries. 

Now, something amazing happened in those 18 months, Ben Carson said that all of a sudden he learned two things. Number one, he learned that he loved to read, he learned that he loved to learn new things. He learned about just how knowledge worked and just fell in love with the idea of learning more. The second thing that he figured out is that he was actually really, really smart. All of a sudden, he and his brother both started doing really well at school. What's fascinating to me about the story though, is that years later, he would learn something about his mom, Sonya, that she was illiterate, that she could not herself read. And now I want you to imagine they were turning in book reports to their mom. She was taking a highlighter and highlighting different sections, and then she was adding check marks here and there, and she was turning it back into them. 

Little did they know, she had no clue what it was that she was looking at. What an amazing woman. She, she did eventually learn to read and, and had two sons that were very successful. But the way that she interacted with their book reports to me describes largely how often inside the church we interact with the concept of the Trinity. Like, we've got this book report and we have no clue what it says, but we got a highlighter and we're just kinda highlighting some things, and then we're checking some check marks. We're like, yep, sounds good. But in truth, oftentimes when the topic of the Trinity comes up, we, we really don't understand it. 

It's a complex 

Deep end of the 

Pool theological 

Truth, and it's something that we're gonna unpack over these next 

Three weeks. This 

Year is one of the anniversary years of the Sing Creed. The ING Creed 

Was created 

In the year 3 25. And then icing Creed, if you wanna just summarize 

What 

Is it, it 

Would be what we call Orthodox 

Christianity. Now, some of you have never heard of the icing creed before. 

If you grew 

Up either Anglican or Lutheran, you're probably very familiar with the ING Creed because they 

Regularly read it as a part of their liturgy. 

But it, it's one document written in the year 3 25 by some amazingly 

Godly church fathers. 

And what they 

Tried to do is, is put 

Pen to paper. 

This is what the Bible teaches us about 

The Trinity. It talks 

About God, the Father, God, 

The Son, 

God, the Holy Spirit. 

And so any denomination or 

Church out 

There, if you wanna know, do they believe in orthodox Christianity? In that the, the very simple litmus 

Test would be, do 

They affirm the ING creed? And any religion or any denomination or any group of people that 

Would say they 

Don't affirm the ING creed? Well, we 

Would 

Say that they are not part of 

Orthodox 

Christianity. Orthodox simply meaning 

This is true. This is what is right. This is what we believe. And so we're gonna 

Unpack something that's very complex. We're gonna go somewhat quickly and look at what 

Does the Bible say about 

Trinity. I I will 

Give you 

This one caveat. 

The 

Word trinity is not in your Bible. 

And if you go back 

To the back and look at the index and say, well, where, 

Where does it talk 

About Trinity? It, 

The word 

Trinity is not in there. It's a Latin 

Word, 

Tertullian. It 

Crafted the 

Word. It simply means threefold. 

And it's 

The term we use 

To describe God. 

And so let's unpack 

It together. When we look at the 

Old Testament, here's what's 

Really clear about 

The Old Testament, that 

There is 

One God. 

Here's a couple verses 

That point us to that. The Shema, which is 

A prayer that Jews would pray, 

Is in Deuteronomy chapter six, sermon 

Verse 

Four, it says, hero 

Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 

One, one. 

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 

And with all your might. Now, at the time that the book of Deuteronomy was written, most 

World 

Religions at that time believed in multiple gods. So there's 

A God of 

This and a God of that, a God of son, a got of love, 

A got of war. 

And then all of a sudden you have the nation of Israel that's birth. And they have this very 

Different 

View. They say, well, no, there's not a whole bunch of different gods. In fact, there is only one singular God. 

Look 

What it says in Isaiah 

45, 5. God says, 

I in the Lord, and there is no other beside me. There is no God. 

I equip you though you 

Do not know me. So here's something that's under important to understand about what the Bible says. The Bible is adamantly monotheistic. That means that the Bible's very clearly not pantheistic, not well. There's a lot of Gods polytheistic. Oh, all these gods. No, it's one monotheistic. There are not three gods. When we talk about the Trinity, gotta understand that distinction. There are not three gods. There is one God. And yet the Old Testament has these hints of, of, of something else, something more complex than what is seen on the surface. So like in Genesis chapter one, verse 26, it says, let us make man in our image. So there's one God, and yet he's referring to himself in the plural. So that makes you start to scratch your head. You're like, well, I I'm not sure what that means. And then you've got these moments where the angel of the Lord speaks not on behalf of God, but speaks as God. 

Then you've got these other moments where the, the, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, indwells either a prophet or in the creation account, the spirit of God is hovering over creation, hovering over the earth. So the Old Testament's very clear that there's one God, and yet there are these shadows that are pointing ahead to something that would be revealed in the New Testament. So the New Testament comes and with this progressive revelation that happens from the beginning of the Bible towards the end of the Bible, meaning we're learning more and more and more about who God is. So the New Testament reveals that there are three persons, one God, but three persons. We first see this at the baptism of Jesus. That's Matthew chapter three at the baptism of Jesus. Here's what we find. It says, when Jesus was baptized, immediately, he went up from the water, and behold the heavens were open to him. 

And he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. So you have this one scene, and yet in this one scene, there are three persons present. So you have Jesus, the Son who is in the water getting baptized. You have the Spirit who descends onto Jesus', the Son. And then you have the father's voice that is speaking love over His son. We, we see the same idea concept of persons at the very end of Matthew. We hear it in the Great Commission every time we baptize where we're speaking these words, where Jesus says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name. Now, now, notice that it's singular. It doesn't say in the names, it says in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 

So it's one name, 'cause it's one God. But there are three persons. So, so we, we see, also see this fleshed out a little bit more in the New Testament, in other spots. John one, one would be an example of that. John one, one says, in the beginning was the word, it's talking about Jesus. And the word was with God, and the word was God. So Jesus doesn't come later. Jesus has always existed. He's always been one with God, the Father. It says in Second Corinthians 1314, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. So, so here's why it's slightly complex. Here's what the Bible says. When you just start turning from page to page and and highlighting the, the, the spots that are talking about God or the Trinity, the Bible says that there's one God. 

The Bible says that the Father is God. The Bible says that the Son is God, that the Holy Spirit is God, and that they're not the same person. So to, to summarize the Trinity is confusing. Like it's very confusing reading in the Old Testament. In the new testimony, you're starting to scratch your head, say, Hey, I'm, I'm trying to understand what is going on and I'm not fully understanding it. So here's what you often hear us do inside the church. So it's very complex. We don't understand it. So we decide what if I use a metaphor, an analogy of some sort to help you, to help me to better understand it. So probably if you've been around church, especially if you've worked in kids' ministry, you've heard one of these bad analogies used to describe the trinity. The first is water. So, so you'd say something like this, well, God is just like water. 

And that water's one thing, but it can exist in these three different forms. So sometimes it's ice and sometimes it's a liquid, and sometimes it's a steam. So you've probably heard someone use that. That's heresy. That's what that is. Heresy would be something that claims to be true, claims to be Christian, but is false biblically wrong. So, so that first analogy that is heretical, that does not work to describe Trinity. Second one is that the trinity is like an egg. Well, so you got one egg, but there's got a shell and then there's a egg yolk. And there's an egg white that is also heresy. Yeah, that doesn't work either. So, so then you hear people say, it's like a three leaf clover and a, we have one clover, but it's got these three different things. Yeah, that's, that's heretical as well. And then the other one is, well, it's, it's like the sun, and then you have one son, but then you have light that comes from the sun, and you have heat that comes from the sun, like, like the sun is the father, and then the light is the sun and the the heat is the Holy Spirit. 

'Cause He makes you warm and fuzzy. And that, that, that analogy would be heresy. Yeah, they're all heretical. There. There's not a, a analogy that you can use that accurately biblically accurately describes the trinity. Why? Because there's these three different, well, there's more than three different heresies, but here are those three specific heresies of why they apply. The first is modalism, this idea that, well, there's one God and he exists in three different modes. Sometimes you'll hear somebody say, well, I'm Kurt, I'm one, there's one Curt. But sometimes I'm a pastor and sometimes I'm a husband, and sometimes I'm a father. And so I have these three different modes. Yeah, that's, that's heretical. That is modalism. Another is Partialism. That would be the egg in the clover that, well, there's one God, but he has these three different parts. That's not what scripture teaches us either. 

That's why it's a heresy. Then Arianism was a big heresy. And the idea behind Arianism was that the son and the spirit were created by the father. They come from the father. When you use that son analogy, that's, that's what camp it falls into because the sun and then the heat and the light are coming from the father. But, but that's not biblically accurate either. So you can understand it's complex. It's really challenging. When we think about the ING creed, why does it exist? It exists because the Trinity is hard to understand. It's very complex. And so in order to, to kind of put some guardrails around our understanding of the Trinity, the ING creed was invented. They got together in the year 3 25. And just to put it in, in historic context, these were amazingly godly people to get together. That it was the edict of Milan that made Christianity legal. 

To, to clarify, sometimes falsely people say that the edict of Milan made Christianity the official state religion. That's not true. It just meant that Christianity was no longer illegal. So the people that got together, the Council of Nasia in the year 3 25, most of them history would tell us, had something physically wrong with them because of torture. So you have people that were missing limbs, people that had limps, people whose eyes had been gouged out because they were a Christian. That's the group of people that gets together and they say, there's these false teachings that exist. We wanna help clarify what does the Bible say about the Trinity. Now, now here's what I want to make sure that we're all on the same page about. That the nice Andre was never meant to replace scripture. Instead, it's a guardrail that summarizes what scripture teaches about God. 

And especially that Jesus is no less God than the Father, and that the Spirit is no less God than the Father and the Son. So what's happening in history of the year 300 that causes the importance of this thing is there's a guy named Arian. And what Arian does, or s Arianism is what his, his teaching became known as. But s starts teaching. He, he doesn't understand exactly who Jesus is. And what he starts teaching is he says, well, Jesus really didn't always exist. Instead God the Father at one point in time creates Jesus. And so Jesus is not exactly equal with God, but he's exalted similar to God. That that was the false teaching that that starts spreading like wildfire in the year 300 around the year 300. So 

The 

Year 3 25 in naia, you 

Have all these people that get together 

And they say, we're gonna craft 

A creed that helps clarify who we are 

And what we believe. We would now today say, 

This is orthodox 

Christianity. So the Council of NAIA comes together and they condemned the Arianism as 

Heresy. They declared 

That the son is of one substance. We'll get into that next week when we 

Talk about Jesus with the Father fully 

And truly 

God. 

Now if you wanna summarize in a very short, 

Succinct way, what is it that we believe 

About the Trinity? Here's what 

I'd 

Say. 

There 

Is one God 

Who 

Eternally 

Exists as three 

Persons, distinct persons, father, son, and Holy Spirit. 

Each 

Person is fully and equally God, sharing this same divine nature. And yet 

There 

Is only one God. 

And 

If you can't wrap your mind around it, here's the good news. Here's what Deuteronomy chapter 29, verse 29 says, 

The 

Secret things belong to the Lord 

Our God, 

But the things that are 

Revealed 

Belong to us and to our children forever. 

Here's 

What it's saying, that there's a part of the Trinity that no matter how 

Much we 

Struggle to understand it, and we look at the Old Testament, we look at the New Testament, 

There's 

A part of the trinity that we do not comprehend and we don't understand. There's a mystery 

That exists, 

And that's 

Okay. That, 

That if you and I ever fully comprehended God, then he wouldn't be God. 

But God is 

Bigger and greater than us, and there is some part of the trinity that that will be a mystery. That 

This side of, 

Well, even on that side of 

Heaven, we, we won't ever fully 

Comprehend God because 

We 

Are not 

God. 

So the nice creed comes out, and here's what matters 1700 years later, 

Is that it still does a really good job 

Of helping us understand these 

Are the core beliefs of what 

We have 

About who God is. 

Now, let's look at 

The first part, very short 

Section. That's the first part of the nice cream that deals with God 

The Father. It says this, we 

Believe in one God, 

The 

Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. Next week when we get into Jesus, 

Or the following 

Week, when we get into the Holy Spirit, 

That's, that's 

More complicated to understand, but at a 

Surface level, because we 

Trend towards thinking about God 

As the Father, that that part is a little bit 

Easier to understand. 

God is our heavenly Father 

Who's sovereign. 

He, 

He's in total control. 

He's bigger 

Than we can understand or comprehend. That is God. Most people when they think about God, even if they're agnostic, that's kind of their view 

Of God. 

And yet, you know, with the terminology and the feelings of, of what it means to have a 

Father, that there are 

Some feelings that that idea of having a heavenly Father start to elicit in our heart and in our gut. Some of those things, healthy, some of those things unhealthy. Dr. John Bbe in the seventies, he did a lot of research that found this. Researchers have found that many people's concept of God parallels their experience with their parents and especially their fathers. And this is often called the correspondence model. If dad was loving and present, God is seen as loving and present. If dad was harsh, distant, or absent, God is often viewed the same way. How many of you know that your family of origin, your parents, the environment that you were raised in, it affects you today? Some ways, you know, in some ways that you have no clue that the way that we are wired, there's a, a popular thing on the internet right now that's my toxic trait is, and then fill in the blank. 

And some of them are humorous and some of 'em are not so humorous. Like, like here's some that I, I thought were kind of funny. One is my toxic trait is saying I'll be there in five when I haven't even left my home. That probably describes some of you. And if it doesn't describe you, it describes someone that you know really well because you're always waiting on that person and you know that they're 35 minutes away and you text them, Hey, where are you? And they say, I'll be there in five. That was my mom growing up. My mom does not ever want to hurt somebody's feelings. And so what she would do is she would chicken out of telling you, Hey, I'm gonna be an hour late. And instead she'd be in her home putting on makeup and she'd be calling you saying, I'll be there in five minutes. 

And so for the next hour, you're calling. And her always answer was, I'll be there in five minutes. I'll be there in five minutes. Well, or here's another one. My toxic trait is waiting to respond to a text. And then replying three weeks later with, sorry, just seeing this I know friends, that that's, that's my relationship with him via text message or, or here's this one. My toxic trait is doing one productive thing and then acting like I just finished a 14 hour shift in a coal mine. And, and that sums up my children really well, when they have to do chores, my, my children, they'll for an hour before chores, like, why do I have to do chores? This is gonna be the worst day of my life. Why do I have to Then, then they do chores for seven minutes. That's how long it takes them to do the things that are on their list. 

And then afterwards, you would've just thought that they had climbed Mount Everest. It's like, wow, man. So much work that I call, I probably need a break and a snack and I need to sit on the couch and watch TV for the rest of the day. 'cause I deserve some me time. , that's my kids at least. And, and so maybe, maybe if you think about what is your toxic trait? Maybe there's some funny things that are, some tendencies that you have or some unhealthy habits that you have, but then there's some that are really more deep and meaningful, especially as it pertains to our relationship with our dad. Like, here's one, my toxic trait is assuming every 

Authority figure 

Will eventually hurt or disappoint me the way that my dad did or, or maybe it's my toxic trait, 

Is 

Acting like my dad's choices didn't affect me while my whole life 

Is quietly 

Shaped around avoiding his patterns. Or maybe it's this one that my talk to trait is keeping people at arms length 

So they can't 

Reject me first. Here's what I know in a room this size, 

There were 

Lots of different experiences that 

People had with their fathers. 

And so maybe you are in here that some of you, you had 

A great dad. 

And, and so in some ways 

You, your view of our heavenly father 

Is naturally 

Positive because you 

Had a wonderful dad that modeled that. 

But, but 

There's also some of you in this room that you had a harsh dad and unintentionally we can sometimes project that harshness onto 

God. 

And some of you had an absent dad, or you, you had no father figure 

At all. Or some of you, you had a complicated dad. 

Like there were some wonderful things and some amazing memories, but also there were some very 

Deep 

Wounds that happened as a result 

Of it. 

Here's what I know about my relationship with my dad, is you kind of go through these 

Different stages. 

Like my dad was awesome. I, I, I now know as an adult how 

Blessed I was 

To have the dad that 

I had because 

He was a loving and caring dad. And when you're a 

Little kid, 

You think your dad 

Is perfect. 

Like you think he's 

A superhero. You 

Think he could do anything, which is 

Why kids have 

These conversations when they're really young where they go to school and they think their dad is so awesome that they get in a conversation with another kid about 

Their 

Dad and then they say, oh yeah, well my dad could 

Beat your dad up . Like, why do we do that? 

I have no clue. But 

I universally, that 

Is language that kids 

Use. Like they just decide my dad's the best. Therefore he could totally take your dad in a 

Fight. And then you get to 

A point where you, you grow up a 

Little bit and all of a sudden you have this realization that, well, not everybody's dad is the same type of 

Dad that I had. Everybody 

Doesn't have that same experience. And then you become a teenager and all of a sudden that your dad isn't so cool and you start to see the imperfections in your dad, and they're not a 

Superhero 

All the time. I, I'm kind of at that stage or I'm entering into that stage with my oldest 'cause he's 13 and, and some of it maybe is my fault. 'cause 'cause When you got a teenager, you start doing things to intentionally bug your teenager 

Like six, seven. Like, 

What? I don't know what that means, but I'm just gonna do it 'cause you don't like it. And I'm trying to point out to you 

How stupid 

Saying that is by me saying that a 

Lot to you. And 

So you, you kind of have this moment where all of a sudden, like your dad's no longer awesome. And then I'm now at a stage in life where my dad's awesome again because I I 

Have the perspective to 

Look back and say, wow, I'm so 

Grateful for what 

I had. And maybe your experience in this room is very different than that. Maybe you're somewhere in between all those stages or, or, or maybe you've just 

Had a really 

Challenging, difficult 

Experience 

With 

Your view of a father. But, 

But here's what I want you to know, whether or not you had an amazing dad or 

A terrible dad, that 

God is not just a 

Slightly better 

Version of your dad. That's not what scripture's trying to teach us. That instead 

The God is the perfect Father that your heart 

And my heart 

Were created for. 

And, and scripture 

Tries to, to 

Explain this to us in the New Testament, that Jesus himself is trying to very clearly 

Point 

Us towards 

What it looks like to experience God as our heavenly Father. Jesus says, 

I and the Father are one. He's trying to say, if you look at me, look who I am. Look how I live. And and that will better 

Help 

You to understand who our heavenly 

Father is. 

John 14 nine, he says, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. So when Jesus is interacting with sinners, interacting with broken people, is he doing it in a wrathful way? No, he's not. When when someone is struggling with sin and someone is broken and someone is 

Is 

Downtrodden, Jesus isn't picking up a stone and throwing him at him. No. Instead, 

Over 

And over again, we see Jesus 

Has 

Compassion, that he's moved with 

Empathy 

To do something to help people. And, and what scripture's trying to get you and I to understand is that is who our heavenly Father is. That he's not this 

Wrathful God 

That hates you. No, he's a loving God who 

Desires a 

Relationship with us. When Jesus tells the 

Story of 

The prodigal son, that famous story, he's trying to help us understand who 

Our heavenly father is, 

That so many things about the prodigal son in the first century 

Culturally 

Would've been crazy. 

That, that you've 

Got this son who essentially says, dad, 

I hate you. I wish you were dead. 

Give me my inheritance and my money now spits in his dad's face, 

Leaves, 

Runs off squanderers all of his money, eventually comes to the end of himself, 

Says, 

This isn't worth it. 

I'd rather be a slave 

On my dad's farm that than stay off away. 

And so he, he just really, with a lot of 

Trepidation and fear, he comes back towards his father. And then something really crazy happens in the story, 

It says that the 

Father has been looking and waiting for the son to come home. And then finally, when the son comes home, it says that 

The father hikes up his skirt, that he reveals his legs, 

And then he runs. Both of those things would've been culturally 

Just shameful for a father to do. And what the dad was doing 

Is he was taking all the attention on himself, bringing the shame on himself in order 

To 

Take the shame off the son and to love his son that, that a son is walking in thinking, okay, my dad's gonna hate me. He might kill me. He might hit me, he might hurt me. And that's not who 

God was at all. Jesus 

Is saying that the Father runs and embraces the Son and celebrates that the son has come home and he's trying to get us to understand that's 

Who our heavenly Father is. 

And so maybe you're in a similar spot today 

Where, where your view of God is, well, well, God is 

Wrathful, and if I turn and I confess these sins that I've been struggling with that, that he's just gonna shame me for those things. But, but that's not true. 

Instead God 

In a compassionate, 

Loving way, just waiting 

For us to turn back, and he embraces us and he loves us 

And he cares for us. 

In Romans chapter 

Eight, verse 

15, it 

Describes 

The relationship that we 

Have with God our Father. It says, for 

You did not receive this 

Spirit of slavery 

To fall back into fear, but 

You received the spirit of 

Adoption as sons by whom we cry, 

Abba Father, 

It's this idea that when we become a Christian and, and the way we have access to the 

Father is because of the work that Jesus 

Did for us on the cross, that he 

Dies 

For our sin. And now because of 

His 

Death, when I put my faith and trust in him, I now have access a relationship with 

The Father. 

And, and the 

Example it's used 

In is he's saying it's like adoption, that we've been adopted into the family, 

That we are part of 

The family, and now our heavenly 

Father is 

Our dead. Now let me clarify. That doesn't mean that that 

Jesus 

Is a son and I'm also a son. No, Jesus 

Is God. 

Jesus is distinctly God. So, so he's unique to us, 

But 

It's trying to use this example 

For the rest of us to say, Hey, we are a part of 

That family. And then it uses this interesting term. It says, Abba 

Father 

Abba is not a Greek word. It's an Aramaic word. 

Sometimes falsely, you'll hear, hear people say, well, it's, it's like 

Calling 

God 

Daddy. And that's not really true. So 

If you've heard that, sorry. But it, it is this 

Intimate end endearing term. So 

It's the Aramaic word, Abba, with the Greek word for father 

Connected together. And it's trying to paint this 

Picture of 

The relationship that God wants with us. One of intimacy, one of commitment, one of relationship. I I think when you really unpack our view 

Of God, 

Why does it matter? 

Here's 

Why I think that it matters. Because 

If we get it right, it shapes 

Everything about who we 

Are. So if our view of God as our heavenly Father is healthy, it shapes 

Our identity in a really healthy, 

Positive way that, 

That you've seen people, you know people, that their 

Identity is 

Shaped around who their dad is. 

If you're a pro athlete 

And, and your kid goes into the draft, sometimes you get drafted 

Just because their 

Dad's genetics. We, we've seen it happen many a times. So that identity gets wrapped up in who 

Their father is. The the whole picture 

Of being adopted into God's family is that our identity can now be found in him, and nothing can ever take 

That 

Away from us. 

It also shapes our security 

That, that when a little kid is scared and they're scared of the dark, they're scared of monsters, they're scared of bad guys, when all of a sudden dad holds their hand or, or better yet sometimes picks him up and snuggles with him, all of a sudden there is a security. There is a trust there that changes everything. And in the same way, when we have moments of doubt and anxiety and fear, that if we can really lean into, in our heart and in our gut, our soul, our mind, our heart, really believe not just intellectually but believe that God is our Father, it changes our security. It also should shape our intimacy with God. That, that he's not just this distant guy with a white beard sitting on top of a cloud like that is not who Jesus demonstrates to us, that God the father is. 

Instead, it is a God that warmly loves you and loves me so much that he sent Jesus to die in the cross force. And he, and he wants to have an intimate relationship with us. He, he's not the dad that, that lives halfway around the world that you, you call once a year on Father's Day. This is a dad that lives next door that wants to be actively engaged in part of our lives and also shapes our healing. That if you've got brokenness and you've got, maybe it's from trauma that you have with your own dad, and that's real trauma that we gotta deal with and we gotta unpack, but when we get our relationship with God as our heavenly Father in a healthy way, there is a healing that comes that can overcome the worst situation that you might have come from the worst background, the worst history that we have a God that can heal those things and redeem your present and your future. 

And then lastly, it shapes our community that, that, when you think of Thanksgiving, you think of the family getting together. There's some weird conversations that happen like you have Uncle Joey who shows up and he's just off and slowly different than everybody else. And maybe in your family, like you'd be going to Thanksgiving and they'd say, Hey, don't bring up this topic or that topic. And hey, aunt, aunt Susie, don't mention that. And if your name is Susie and Joey, sorry, those are just my, my random made up names. But we say, Hey, hey, don't, don't go near that thing with that person, otherwise you're gonna get some weird stuff. Like family is weird and yet you still get together as one another. Why be because they're family and church is kind of the same way that, that, hey, there's gonna be differences that we have. 

There's gonna be different socioeconomic groups, groups and different cultural groups and different ethnic groups and, and different political leanings and, and all kinds of differences. But the thing that should be, the thing that that draws us together is, hey, but we both have the same father and we love our father and that makes us siblings. And sometimes I fight with my siblings, but I still love my siblings, is that we're gonna do this thing together even when it's messy because we, we can together say, Hey, this is the most important thing that, that we might have all these different disagreements, but the most important thing is that we've got a Heavenly Father that cares for us. And when we get that right, it changes everything. Heavenly Father, I, I just thank you so much that you are our Heavenly Father and that you love us and you desire an intimate relationship with us. 

Can I pray for anyone in this room right now that, that maybe they had a challenging experience with their dad, maybe it was painful, maybe their father was absent. And so often we carry those things with us. It, it affects how we view you. And so God, we just ask for healing and we can turn the page and view you for who you are and not based off of our own personal experiences. God, I pray as we continue in this series just, just what the Trinity is a very deep, complex theological truth and yet so important to who we are, how we live, and what we believe. God, I pray that it would be illuminating to us, that we'd be excited, that we would dig in, that we would learn more. God, I I pray that we'd also recognize that there is a mystery that we will never understand because you are bigger than we could ever fathom. Pray this all in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.