Sermon Tone Analysis

Well greetings to the brightest congregation in the country, and welcome to Agape Kingdom Fellowship!

My name’s Dominic Enyart, I'm host of The Dominic Enyart Show and I have noticed!... a lot of people in the world A) do not know what they believe, and B) if they do know what they believe, they often have no clue why they believe it.

Typically people believe things because other people they like believe those things.

There is a massive crisis of people who are largely uninterested in thinking for themselves, which is a shame.

There are a lot of funny man on the street videos of people going around college campuses and asking, “Hey Hillary Clinton believes XYZ, or Donald Trump believes ABC.

What do you think of that?”

And regardless of what they say, if it's Donald Trump who says it, they hate it.

If it’s Hillary Clinton, they love it.

And they will be such wild, out-of-left-field beliefs, such as “Hey Hillary Clinton proposes implementing Sharia Law.

What do you think of this?”

And these leftists in college, in so-called “higher education”, will say, “oh yeah!

Definitely!” Simply because it was Hillary Clinton who proposed it.

Now, thankfully Hillary Clinton never actually proposed we adopt Sharia Law, which is the belief that women should be severely opposed, they can’t drive, vote, choose what they wear, they must wear burkas and they aren’t allowed to cover their face.

And these college kids love to say, “Oh well if Hillary Clinton supports it then, of course, it’s good!”

They have no clue what it is.

Now I wish life were just that fun and easy- you look at a bunch of liberals saying silly things and have a laugh.

Unfortunately, we as Christians are all too often much the same.

We believe things that we are taught without much skepticism, or desire to understand why it is we believe them.

About… 3 or 4 years ago, that struck me.

I believe in a Christian doctrine, and I believed it rather passionately- yet I found myself unable to give a solid defense of it.

I had always taken my belief for granted and not backed it up with Scripture.

I had maybe a vague verse or two which supported it, but nothing definitive.

When I realized this, I went around and asked my various friends who were fellow Bible students, if they had arguments in support of this doctrine ready off the cuff.

Much to my dismay, they didn’t have any super solid arguments they could rattle off the tops of their heads.

And while this doctrine is a core belief among Christians- we weren’t able to give more than a verse or two each to defend it.

The doctrine was the trinity.

So today, I’d like to explain the trinity; what it is and what it’s not.

Some various objections then answer those objections.

Before we get into that, though.

I want to make a quick note about heresy.

The Trinity is a doctrine that a lot of Christians hold very near and dear.

They are quite passionate about it, rightfully so.

But now this passion has a pretty significant downside to it.

Which is that every time people talk about it, inevitably people are accused of heresy.

It’s a very complicated doctrine, that can be confusing and it’s difficult to pin it down and define it exactly.

Now that said, if anyone is ever talking about how they view the Trinity, they are usually called a heretic.

Because there are a bunch of different beliefs about the Trinity, and whatever your belief is- it inevitably contradicts someone else’s belief.

Now that said, thinking about difficult issues like this, it can be bad when any theory is just outright called a heresy, because it discourages people from thinking about it.

So the attitude you get from a lot of Christians is, “Yeah, the Trinity is one of the most confusing doctrines of Christianity and anyone who disagrees with me even slightly is a heretic.”

That’s pretty unreasonable.

And that’s a huge bummer because that discourages people from seeking the truth of who God is.

They are afraid of being a heretic for coming to the wrong conclusion- even accidentally.

And I believe that has lead many to just think, “I’m going to ignore the trinity- other smarter people have already figured it out.”

And so my rule of thumb is, “I like it when people are thinking about the Trinity.

It’s good when people consider it.

And I will only call someone a heretic if they deny the Trinity.”

There’s a very Godly man I think many of you know, and he has some theories about the Trinity which I think are wayyyy incorrect.

But I’m not going to call him a heretic because A) he doesn’t deny the Trinity, and B) the Trinity is confusing and it doesn’t help anyone to better understand Christ if I call him a heretic.

So as Trinity-believing Christians, why don’t give fellow Trinity believers a bit of grace on the matter, seek after who God is, and help one another through confusion.

Help one another through what is considered by many Christians to be the most confusing doctrine.

So we’re going through the Trinity:

-What it is,

-Arguments against it,

-Refutations to those arguments,

-Arguments for it.

By the way my “internet pastor” Mike Winger has a really great video on this, I recommend you check that out.

I’m going to draw from him a good chunk today.

So, the Trinity…

The Trinity is the Christian doctrine that there is 1 God, made up of 3 different people.

Not that there are 3 Gods, but there is only 1 God made of 3 people.

The 3 people of the Trinity are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

There’s a wildly popular graph that helps illustrate this, if you ever study the Trinity in any depth, you’ll run into this, Scott, maybe you could display this on the screen.

And there you see, [explain graph]

Similar to diagrams of an atom, this is not a direct picture of what the Trinity looks like, but if you find it to be helpful, use it.

The word Trinity- break it down, it’s “Tri” which is 3.

And “Unity” which means 1.

So “Trinity” is 3 in 1.

Some are confused and they think the Trinity says, “there are 3 Gods in 1 God.”

Or “3 persons in 1 person.”

Neither of those is the case.

That would be a flat-out contradiction- it’s not.

But there are 3 “whos” and 1 “what.”

The 3 “whos” are the Son, Father, and Holy Spirit.

The 1 “what” is “God.”

And so just a few quick Bible verses that indicate how this works:

Isaiah 43:10, “...Before Me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after Me...”

So we recognize quite clearly that God is one.

There are not multiple Gods, but God is one.

That’s monotheism, “mono” meaning 1, and “theism” meaning the belief in a god.

Altogether the belief in 1 God.

God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

God the Father, 1 Peter 1:1-2 “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To the pilgrims… elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father… Grace to you and peace be multiplied.”

So there we see pretty clearly, God the Father.

Now as to the Son, we can look at Paul’s writings in Colossians 2, verses 8 and 9.

And before I pull these up, notice here that Paul is warning about anyone who would bring deception by saying things that are not according to Christ.

So Paul is saying “be careful of anyone who makes claims not according to Christ.”

And then He makes a claim about Jesus being God.

So let’s take a look, at Colossians 2, verses 8 and 9. “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

So in Him- in Jesus- dwells the fullness of the Godhead *bodily*.

In Jesus dwells the fullness of the Godhead.

That’s powerful proof that Jesus is God.

And keep in mind that’s in the context of Paul saying “be warned of people who disagree with this.”

So he’s essentially saying “HEY THIS IS IMPORTANT!

JESUS IS GOD! DON’T BE DECEIVED!

Quick tangent.

Something you’ll hear a lot of Christians say is, “Oh Jesus is 100% God and 100% human.”

I personally hold to that belief.

A common rebuttal to that is, “oh well then you have Him being 200% so that doesn’t work.”