There is one God who exists eternally in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, working together in all that God does. Creation, redemption, and indwelling power are not separate tasks for separate Persons, but shared expressions of the one divine nature. The fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ, and through the Spirit He lives within believers. To have Christ is to have the Father and the Spirit also, and from that assurance springs the deep peace of heart that can say with certainty, “It is well with my soul.”

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Fifty-one years ago, I was amongst a group of young aspirings who were getting ready for an ordination service when we were ordained to the Christian ministry in Baptist churches. And we practiced singing that song as an item to be given on the night. And it always retains its significance, that song, because it captures something a lot of people don’t necessarily work out straight away when they become Christians. But there are some things in the Christian experience where you have some deep assurance, some joy. Being a Christian is about a certainty of heart that faith brings. And it is well with your soul. And even though you may have had difficult backgrounds in getting to come to be a Christian, all of that is ruled over. It’s like God’s Spirit ironed out your experience.

[00:01:13] And all you know is it is well with your soul. If you could say that about you right now, say something. Say amen or say, yes, that’s me. Right now, go on. Amen. That’s the Christian experience. And even though there are some things that we’re uncertain of and don’t always get worked out very quickly, some things that remain matters of seeking to believe because the Bible teaches it, but it seems beyond our grasp of how the world is going to finish, Christ is going to come. When he comes in the air with a shout of command and the dead in Christ, as 1 Thessalonians 4 tells us, rise first and then we who are living at the moment at that time are caught up together with them. Corinthians tells us we get changed and we meet up with the dead who are raised. They’ve got raised bodies.

[00:02:18] We get ours changed and we meet Jesus and he comes with us to the ground. That’s all in 1 Thessalonians 4. And being able to believe the spectacular assertions there or the description of what glory will be like in heaven and just the fact of where we’re intended, some of that you believe, but you just trust. It’s not happened yet. You have the assurance. But this assurance that you have deep in your soul that you’ve gotten in the door with God. It is well with my soul. That’s the native, if I could call it that, Christian assurance. Have you got it? If you haven’t, you need to go and speak to the Lord about it. You need to investigate why you don’t have the sense of it is well with my soul because that’s the starting point when you come to Christ and when he, by his spirit, comes to live inside you,

[00:03:31] when he makes you a son of God and you know, you know it is well with your soul, is the beginning of Christianity for you. There are a number of things that the Christian faith presents that are difficult for people in terms of conceptually believing and one of them has to do with how we understand God, that we have got a God who is one God but we understand from the teaching of scriptures that he is in three persons. Now, they’re not human persons. Humans do have personhood but the word person doesn’t necessarily mean human though in the case of one of the three persons of the Trinity, he existed before he became a human. Do you know which of the three persons I’m talking about that existed before? Oh, I think you do. The one who took on humanity. It’s our Lord Jesus. But he had existence before then.

[00:04:51] When I was a child, I learned along the way about the fact that the second person of the Trinity, that’s the Son, there’s God the Father, there’s the Son and there’s the Holy Spirit and there are three persons. I don’t mean that they’re all human persons but I mean that they have personhood and these three have been in operation for eternity past which means that the one who becomes the son before he took on humanity was yet still the son. And there’s a mystery in this. And there are times back through all of the Bible history where this one has turned up to people. And you call that appearance of the second person of the Trinity, you call it a Christophany. Put your hand up if you’ve heard that word Christophany before. Well, it’s good to see. Because it’s not well understood that the son was the son

[00:06:04] before he became born as Jesus. And this second person of the Trinity sometimes appeared to people. You call it a pre-incarnate appearance of the son. It’s called a Christophany. There’s also appearances of God where you couldn’t discern whether it’s which member of the Trinity is appearing. And you call that not a Christophany, but you call it a theophany. I had to write that word down so I didn’t forget it. A theophany is an appearance of God. And there’s times in the Old Testament when God appeared to people in different forms, took on an appearance. In the New Testament, where there’s an appearance of Christ, such as when the Lord appeared to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, and you’d call that a Christophany. And we can’t discern by just reading the Scriptures whether he physically was in the air

[00:07:09] appearing to the Apostle Paul or whether that was an appearance, not in a bodily form, but an appearance as though here in a bodily form, and it’s called a Christophany. Now all of that is talking about the Trinity, and I hope I haven’t lost you all before the sermon’s begun by bringing up some of the details. In fact, the talk about the Holy Spirit is something that we’re particularly doing in these weeks, months, and we’re going to the Old Testament to learn lots about the Holy Spirit. I used to think that the Holy Spirit was mostly learned in the New Testament, but that’s actually not the case there’s certainly a development in the role of the Holy Spirit that the New Testament brings to us but the whole Old Testament is full of incidents where the Spirit of God is mentioned and so this is something

[00:08:05] that we need to understand I called the title of my message rather hopefully because I’m hoping it doesn’t get too complicated but I called it The Godhead in Trinity The Godhead in Trinity and so I wanted to bring a little bit of understanding of the Trinity without going too far to us and I recruited for my help one of the books I had in my library was my father’s book before me and its title has to do with the Holy Spirit in the latter days and the latter days they started at the day of Pentecost by the way and they’ll finish in the events of the book of Revelation they’ll finish when Christ has come again but we’re in the latter days which the day of Pentecost began and so the book is about the Holy Spirit in the latter days but it starts off by giving a bit of a talk about the Trinity

[00:09:10] and I’ll read a little bit to you because it is fascinating these details of this one God we have but who is in three persons and the Godhead exists eternally in three persons the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit yet Christians, that’s us are not tri-theists believing in three gods they are monotheists which means we believe in only one God insisting that God is one in essence or nature while maintaining also that there are three persons or a trinity of persons fully sharing that one nature according to the revelation of scripture as the Bible teaches us the Godhead is thus by Godhead we mean Father, Son and Holy Spirit the Godhead is thus one in three or three in one. And there’s a mystery in that that you’ll never unravel. And if you set yourself the task to sort of rationally unwrap it

[00:10:21] so it becomes nothing unusual and you’ve fully got the understanding, you’ll drive yourself crazy because it is the eternal truth that is presented by the scriptures and by how our one God has revealed himself across time and you can’t get away from it. You either have to believe it or just leave it. You won’t be a Christian until you take on board the revelation that God himself has given through the scriptures. The word of God, that’s the Bible, states that each member of the Trinity performs functions that belong exclusively to each one. Now the fellow writing this book is an evangelical expert, fellow who’s written books. One of them was called The Battle for the Bible. He’s fairly extreme in his expression of evangelical ideas and he’s already saying something here that I can’t fully nod my head to

[00:11:27] is a good way to say it. The word of God states that each member of the Trinity performs functions that belong exhaustively to each one and these offices that the three Trinity members have are non-transferable. Now there’s a sort of a point that he has because he goes on to say it was the Son who died on the cross on Calvary. The Father didn’t die on the cross. Not the Father nor the Holy Spirit. It was the Father who sent the Son to die for the salvation of mankind. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity whose general work in the church began at the day of Pentecost. He was busy in the Old Testament but the church began at Pentecost. That’s a Baptist belief by the way. There are plenty of Christians who haven’t learnt that yet. He was sent by the Father and the Son Christ in his glorified human body.

[00:12:33] He sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven and in the omnipresent, he is the omnipresent head of the church in the person of the Holy Spirit who dwells every believer. Now, if you didn’t quite manage to follow there, that’s okay because I know I’m reading mysterious things but truthful things. Now, my purpose today is to introduce the work of the Holy Spirit from the Old Testament. I’ve been doing that over the last few months. It’s an enormous topic. So I want to track us through a few verses, Bible verses, but first of all, I want to point out that our good friend who wrote this book, I haven’t told you his name, but this particular fellow has made a statement that has truth in it but it’s actually not well said because I can think of ways that this is not the case and I’m referring to him saying

[00:13:34] that the Word of God teaches, it states that each member of the Trinity performs functions that belong exclusively to each one and these offices are non-transferable. Now, he’s a theologian writing and I think that the way he said it could leave it open to you taking it the wrong way in a way that’s in error and in order to show you this, I want you to turn, please, to the inner scriptures to Colossians 1 verse 16. Colossians 1 verse 16. And in this particular verse we have a statement made about Christ and it’s how you understand Jesus as representing things. It says, For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authority, all things were created through him and for him. So Jesus is, the him is very easily worked out, that’s Jesus,

[00:14:50] that he’s the one that created them. But generally speaking, when you talk about the Trinity, the one who is the creator is Father God. Let’s go to Genesis and chapter 1 verses 1 to 2. Genesis chapter 1 and verses 1 to 2. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. Now, because it says God, I know it was how I understood the Bible in my youth, is talking about just God. And then as I learned about the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I think I moved in my reading of the Bible to take up the spot that I believed every time I read God, it meant God the Father. There were plenty of verses where that was probably appropriate. But when you read it here, this is the beginning of the Bible. In the beginning,

[00:15:53] it’s talking about the beginning of everything, in the beginning God and I read it as God the Father created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness over the face of the deep. Interestingly the Holy Spirit gets him mentioned immediately and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters and the word for hovering is the same word that would be used of an eagle that was flapping his wings and her wings and hovering over her nest, taking care of the little ones that they can’t get snapped up by other carnivorous birds. It’s a care. So in this creation of the heavens and the earth and the earth being without form and void and before the world was moulded into what God wanted it finally to be created as, the Holy Spirit was there and he was giving care.

[00:16:50] The word that was hovering is an implication of the care that the Spirit was giving over the face of the waters. There were no land as yet, but the Spirit was there caring and that’s already a mention of another member of the Trinity coming in to be a part of God, the Father if you will think it’s just God the Father, it’s working creation. Let’s go to another verse and the one that I want you to look at now is Colossians 1.16. I think that’s the one. Did we have that before? Anyway, we’ll look at it again. For by him all things were created. This is now Jesus. In heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And when it says through him, I understand it to be through the word, through Jesus.

[00:17:54] And I do so because John’s Gospel in chapter 1, let’s turn to John’s Gospel in chapter 1, verses 1 to 3. This is the beginning of the New Testament account of creation. In John’s Gospel, chapter 1, in the beginning was the Word. We’re not yet certain what to make of this, the Word, with a capital W in our English Bibles. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. This is the verse, you know, some of the various sects, like Jonah’s Witnesses will come and argue about. And they want to try and say that this is actually not meaning, you know, real God. They have another way out of it. He was in the beginning with God. Now listen, if you think that the one who created the world was just the Father, then you’ve got to hiccup. You’ve got to swallow. You’ve got to change. You’ve got to advance your thinking

[00:18:58] because this tells us that whatever it is that is referred to as the Word, he was with God. And by the way, the actual language in the Greek is using a preposition, pros. It means face to face. The Father and the Son, and presumably the Spirit, but the Father and Son were face to face. The Word, it wasn’t with when you’re alongside. It wasn’t with just that you happen to be there in the car. No, the Word and God the Father were face to face. And the Word was God. The deity of the eternal Son. Here you have the mystery of the Trinity. The Word was God. And that was, was I like referring to the words in the Greek, it’s, the word was busy, was again. who was means the past, but continuous. The Word was God continually. He was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him.

[00:20:06] And without him was not anything made that was made. Wow, the unwrapping of creation involving the whole of the Trinity. Now, my good friend here, and I quite admire this fellow who wrote the battle for the Bible. He’s a bit extreme of expression, in my opinion. But that first chapter, the part I read to you in this book of his, it said that, let me catch it again. The Word of God says, each member of the Trinity performs functions that belong exclusively to each one. So the Father did all the creating, the Son had to come and do the dying, and the Holy Spirit has to wait around for the church to start. That actually is all incorrect. Because the Holy Spirit is in the beginning of Genesis 1, hovering over the waters. And I’ve got so many verses I could show you the Holy Spirit’s busy in the Old Testament.

[00:21:05] But then it says, these officers are non-transferable. I think it’s overstated. It’s true that the Father is not the one who died on the cross. But at the same time, and I was fishing for another verse before, 2 Corinthians, let’s try, now let’s try Colossians 2.9, it’s nearer the end of my list, Colossians 2.9. And this verse, I’ve had a whole sermon on in our church several months ago. It’s talking about Jesus. It says, In Him, the whole of the fullness of deity dwells bodily. The Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all dwell physically. Well, within the physicality of the Son, Jesus, He took on humanity. How did He get the humanity? We won’t look at the verse, but you probably know it as the Holy Spirit came and over dwelt the body of Mary to become the mother of Jesus. And therefore, that holy thing that was born to her

[00:22:17] is called us the Son of God. And remember, in the previous sermon, we were talking about the term Son of God referring to the next in authority, the one immediately under God. And so the angels, when there were only God and angels, they were called sons of God. And then as God sends His Son, whose Son in a special sense of never starting ever, He always has been the Son. This Trinity is eternal. This Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is something that’s always been. That’s just what we’re looking at in the Gospel of John. He’s always was-ing. He was with the Father. Not only was He with the Father, but He was face to face with the Father for eternity ever past. And this second person of the Trinity came and was taken by the Holy Spirit down to the very womb a body of Mary to be landed in her. And when He’s born,

[00:23:26] therefore the Scripture states that He shall be called the Son of God. You know, the theologians, poor fellows, back through history when they had these great councils and they had the task of somehow articulating the faith for people to know exactly what was being believed. they had a trouble and they got criticised a lot, as theologians often do, for not being accepted in their wordings. But they had to talk about the Son, the fact that He always was and yet He became the Son of God and so there was an expression about the fact that He was called the only begotten Son and yet He also was born. He had a time He was born. But He was only begotten but not created because the eternal Son has always eternally been the Son. Yet He became born and as such was the heir, the wording only begotten is meaning that He has no rivals

[00:24:37] and it’s particularly applied to the question of inheritance, the one who inherits or as I was talking earlier about the fact that who’s the one who’s next in authority down from the Father. Well, when there’s a trinity and they’re equal in authority and one comes down to earth and is born, there’s a sense in which there’s a descent that He’s taken up by becoming a human but He is not created but He’s eternally Son of God. That’s why in the New Testament if you read the term Son of God it refers to Jesus. We become sons of God but we become sons of God by being joined to Jesus and our connection to Him when you come to Christ and you take Him as your Saviour. God makes you His Son and He loves you and He cares for you and you’ve moved to know that it’s well with your soul because when you came to Christ and His Spirit came into you

[00:25:43] you took on that status of the Eternal Son through Jesus never on your own. He’s the only one. He’s the only begotten Son. He was never created but He’s begotten in His human birth which is why the angel said to those about His birth therefore shall He be called the Son of God because He’s the offspring of God into human form. the one who always was. Remember the Christophany is the appearance of the second person of the Trinity before He took on the human body and became Jesus but He had appearances in the Old Testament and you use the word Christophany if you can identify it as the second person of the Trinity who’s appearing. I think you can certainly do that after He like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus because Paul, Saul, to become Paul, Saul says, who are you, Lord? And the answer from the one appearing,

[00:26:58] why I say it’s a Christophanies, is Jesus, the one fellow you’re persecuting? Here’s this deep stuff. In him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. Now, I used to think when I was younger that Christ was the Son in sort of a third of the sense because he had the second person of the Trinity, which is one third of the Trinity, that that was how he, you know, was what this verse is saying. But then when I looked at the verse, I had to look it up in the Greek to make sure I had it right. The fullness of the deity, that’s the Godhead Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwelled in Jesus bodily that’s actually a different picture and I’ve had the wrong picture about the Trinity thinking of Jesus as sort of like having a third of the Godhead he had the Son part, you know and likewise our good friend here

[00:28:07] I haven’t said his name because I’m really criticising him I was saying this business here he’s saying that these are non-transferable offices especially exclusively held by each Father, Son and Holy Spirit no, what you discover is that maybe there’s one that takes a lead or has a big part but the others are bodily there with him and when you come to Christ you come to the encapsulisation in human form of Father, Son and Holy Spirit that’s why there are some denominations that teach that you come and do business with Jesus and you receive Christ in your life and then there’ll be another visiting speaker come to the church and say you better receive the Holy Spirit that’s all nonsense you can’t do business with the one in whom the fullness of the deity dwells bodily oh you say bodily but I receive Christ

[00:29:13] wasn’t that just his spirit actually the same is true about the portfolio of the spirit for the Holy Spirit after the day at the day of Pentecost and on had the role to bring all that God is into the hearts of the people who came to Christ the people who believed in Christ and it’s the gospel that declares the glorious truth that when you understand that Jesus on the cross has finished with your sins when you understand that by his resurrection his sacrifice has been accepted by heaven and that he’s taken the effect of his shed blood to heaven and there’s no more anger of God at you because of the atonement. You’re forgiven. You’re utterly forgiven and you’re still forgiven even when you fall. That’s the strength of the atonement and as the consequence of you being put into right estate with God.

[00:30:15] God has put all that he is in you in Christ and when you have Christ there isn’t any part of the Godhead that’s left out that’s what that verse means for in him the whole of the fullness of deity dwells bodily in him and how he comes to live in you is through the Holy Spirit also having a role to play at bringing the exalted Christ into your person so when you’ve received Christ there’s no second experience of receiving another way of getting help you don’t need anything more than Christ and when you get Christ you get the Father that’s how the Father comes to you you get the Holy Spirit in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily that’s Christ and when you come to him as saviour because of what he did now I could take the same talking applying it to Jesus dying on the cross because in the book it said

[00:31:23] these roles are untransferable and Jesus is the only one who was sent to die but isn’t there a verse that says about how God was in Christ bringing us to himself there’s lots of verses that God the Father was in the suffering of the Son God the Father suffered the giving of his Son illustration, Abraham and the offering he didn’t have to make when the Father thought maybe his Son might have to be sacrificed there’s a bigger sacrifice by the Father Abraham that would have been then the boy who got killed because of the love of the Father for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son yes, the Father was in the death of the Son as its greatest gift of love that eternity has ever seen for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish

[00:32:35] but should have everlasting life and the gospel which outlines what God has done in Christ needs no top ups needs, there’s a lot more application that goes on yes I’m not saying that you can’t have help from the Holy Spirit subsequent after you’ve been converted you need to let that Holy Spirit who’s come to you when you’re coming to Christ to learn to fill you and control you there’s an awful lot of growing as a Christian as the book of Romans tells us when you’ve come to know the Saviour when you’re saved but yet you need to learn to walk with Him and so the book of Galatians tells us that we have to learn how to walk with our Saviour and by the Holy Spirit we are able to have His salvation applicable and applying and working in our lives I had an awful lot I wanted to say about the Trinity

[00:33:38] I’ve just started a page and a half’s worth but we’ll leave it there for now but are these not enormously deep things isn’t it marvellous and what’s marvellous about it is that song that we sang not just the song but it brings to my mind that when you’ve got Christ you’ve got enough you’ve got all for in him the whole fullness of the deity and the deity dwells bodily and when you come to him as the one who died for you and he comes to you you have it all it’s a fantastic thing and so it is a truth that the father didn’t come down and have to be up on the cross but the father was in the son as he died for us. And so I don’t want to put a tick against the word there exclusively that the members of the Trinity had a role just exclusively. The other ones would be sided out. No, this is mine to do.

[00:34:49] No, no, no, it’s not like that in the Godhead. They’re all working together. What a fantastic thing. And you can… I just love that song. And I remember singing at the beginning of my ordained part of my ministry. I’d been busy beforehand in gospel work. But I want to tell you that having Jesus has been enough.