Who do we proclaim in the Great Commission?

Intro (1 page)

· (read passage)

· Every organization exists for some purpose

o Businesses, schools, churches, etc. exist to accomplish some specific goal

o Bank of America: “At Bank of America, we are guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better through the power of every connection.”

o Bayside High School: “Empowering students to embrace learning by promoting excellence and independence to become responsible citizens.”

o FBCBB: “We exist to delight in, declare and display the glory of God to all peoples in order to see unbelievers becoming committed worshipers of Jesus and finishing well by His grace and For His glory.”

· Without a clear understanding of its purpose and mission, any organization is going to flounder, sooner or later

o No organization can do everything; a bank can’t do education, an elementary school can’t do brain surgery, a church can’t handle stock market transactions

o Each must operate for a specific purpose

o For our local church, we have our own mission statement, which we just read

o We’re not trying to do everything, but we are trying to do something, and our mission statement clarifies what that is

· So what about the church as a whole, for that group of believers that have existed the past 2000 years?? It also has a mission statement: the Great Commission

o We’re going to spend three weeks going over the Great Commission

o There is so much in the Great Commission to discuss, so we’ll have to go at a fairly high level over the next three weeks

· Who, what, why

o Remember the Five W’s you were likely taught as a kid? Who, what, when, where, why

o This week, we are going to focus on the WHO of the Great Commission

o Next week, we will discuss the WHAT

o And two weeks from now, we will wrap up with the WHY

· When we hear “mission statement”, our minds likely go to action steps

o Maybe you think of evangelism, or building churches, or Bible translation

o But before we go there, we must start with a simple question: which God are we proclaiming?

o The Bible gives us our answer; our passage itself gives us our answer

o When discussing baptism, Jesus says this is to be done in the “name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit”

o This is the WHO of the Great Commission, the Triune God of Scripture, and this doctrine is what we will explore today

· SUMMARY: there in one God, who is one in being and three in person; the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; the Father is the Father of the Son; the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son

o This is the central doctrine of the Christian faith

o This doctrine makes our faith distinctly Christian and separates Christianity from every other religion

o All other doctrines flow from this one! Justification by grace alone through faith alone, the resurrection, the doctrine of the church, and countless others flow from this doctrine of the Trinity; the Gospel itself is a Trinitarian doctrine

o It also impacts our view of ethics and morality

o If we get this doctrine wrong, it will necessarily impact our views of salvation, the church, end times, and countless others, and if we get this doctrine wrong, we have departed from Christianity

o And with that, let’s proceed to explore the WHO of the Great Commission

One God (0.5 pages)

· When asking who it is we proclaim, we must first ask, how many?

· How many gods are we proclaiming? Zero? One? Three? A million?

· This is an essential question! Different religions answer this different ways:

o Atheism denies that there is any God

o The Jehovah’s Witnesses have one greater god and one lesser god

o Ancient Egypt had around 2000

o Hinduism has over 300 million

o And Mormonism has literally an infinitenumber of gods

· So what does Scripture say? What is the Christian answer to this question?

Only One God (1 page)

· Let’s start at the very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

o God created all things – that’s what heavens and earth refers to

o This God, this one God, created all things; if there were more than one god, this god would be among the things created

o Genesis 1:1 provides a clear contrast between God and creation: God…creation

o There can’t be more than one God, because the contrast that is set up here would no longer work; God can’t have created all things, if there are other things!

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

o This reinforces what we just said about Genesis 1:1! We have this contrast between God and creation.  God…creation

o And here God expressly rules out the possibility of any other gods; what was clear by implication in Genesis 1, is made explicit in Isaiah 43

· And let’s check in on our passage today, Matthew 28:18-20:

o “baptizing them in name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”

o Jesus is commanding that people are baptized in the name of God

o When we read this, it sounds like three names, right? Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  So are there three gods?

§ But look at the verse again: Jesus says that people are to be baptized in the name – singular! – of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

§ This is not just in the English, but in the original Greek as well

o The Bible consistently treats God and His name as synonymous

§ There are many passages we could use to demonstrate this, but perhaps this is no more clear than in the third of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.”

§ God is prohibiting blasphemy; to take God’s name in vain is to malign God Himself

§ But notice the command is not about taking the namesof God in vain, but the name of God, the singular name of God

o So when Jesus references the singular NAME, He is referring to God

§ So how many Gods are in our passage? How many divine names? One!

· So thinking about what we’re seen in Scripture:

o How many Gods are there? One!

o How many Creators are there? One!

o How many Lords are there? One!

Unity of Nature (1 page)

· But we can say more than this about God

o We’ve established that there is only one God, but could there more than one?

o Is God like a cell, where God could divide and reproduce into more gods?

· Some religions have such ideas about God

o Mormonism believes that their gods can reproduce; their gods can make babies, and these babies can become gods

o Or how about the New Age, where everything is god? The earth is god, the sun is god, we are god, the pew your sitting on is god; this god is made up of a bunch of different things

· But is our God like these gods? Is this one God something that can multiply, divide, or reproduce? Can our God be broken out into a bunch of different parts?

· Let’s look Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

o This verse is part of what is called the shema, an Old Testament passage which Israelite parents were commanded to teach to their children every day

o We clearly see in this passage the teaching that there is only one God: “the LORD is one”.

§ But we can say more than that. If the intent of this passage was only to say that there is one God, the verse could have said “the LORD our God is the only God”

§ But that’s not what the passage says! He says that the LORD is one

§ This points us to the idea that there is not only one God numerically, but that God by nature is a perfect unity

o When we say that something is one, we are saying something is a perfect unity

§ All that is in God is God; if God were made up of a bunch of pieces, if God could divide or multiply, then God would no longer be a perfect unity

§ I have some Lego sets; when I put a set together, is the set a perfect unity? Is it one? No! It’s made up of a bunch of pieces! Even if I only have a single set, it is not one; it is not a unity

· We see this even more clearly in James 1:17: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

o James is ruling out any idea of variation in God

o You won’t find this part of God is one thing and this part of God is another

o You won’t find God splitting into parts

· This is the unity of God

o God is a perfect unity in His nature, and because He is a perfect unity, there can only be one God!

o What we said about there only being one God flows from the fact that God is a perfect unity

o It is because of God’s unity that we don’t need to fear that one day God will break apart and shatter, or suddenly multiply into a bunch of other deities

o As James observes, it is precisely because God is without variation, that He gives good gifts! His goodness, His love for you and for me, flows from His unity

o And without God’s perfect unity, we could never be confident of God’s perfect, unchanging love and kindness

Summary (0.5 pages)

· So let’s just pause here for a second and let all this soak in

o The unity of God is a vital doctrine; we need to drink deeply of this, if we are to make any sense about what Scripture says about God

· But maybe we can summarize all this information by answering a series of questions together. Maybe you’re overwhelmed with all this information, so let’s zero in on some questions as way to cut through the clutter:

o How many Gods are there? (One!)

o How Lords are there? (One!)

o How many Creators are there? (One!)

o How many Saviors are there? (One!)

o How many divine beings are there? (One!)

o How many Gods are there? (One!)

In Three Persons (0.5 pages)

· Now at this point, you might thinking, “okay, Paul, we get it! We know there is only one God! How are we to understand these three names in our passage?”

o The reason we needed to spend time on the fact that there is only one God is to ensure we properly understand the Threeness of God

· “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”

o We’ve unpacked the unity of God, now let’s unpack the Threeness

o What do we mean by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

· Spoiler alert: these are the three persons of the Trinity

o There is only one God, yet these three persons are God

o The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God

o KEY POINT: God is one in being, but three in person, and these persons are coeternal and equal in power and glory

o Stated another way: there a single whatin God, but three whos

o This is what we mean by the Trinity

· We’re only going to look at a small handful of passages that draw out this truth

o The thing is, the entire Bible, both Old and New Testament, is saturated with the truth of the Trinity

o The entire Bible, both Old and New Testament, is a Trinitarian book

o But in order to not keep you here for hours, we’ll look at a small sampling of passages

God the Father (1 page)

· The first person we come to in our passage is the Father:

o “baptizing them in the name of the Father…”

o Who is this Father? What does Scripture have to say about Him?

· The Father is God

o We first look at Jesus’ prayer in John 17

§ Jesus is praying to the Father for His disciples before He goes to the cross, and in verse 3, Jesus says to His Father,

§ “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God”

o And in Ephesians 1:3, the apostle Paul says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”

§ Here Paul expressly identifies the Father as God

· The Father is the Father of the Son

o There are numerous passages which show us that the Father is the Father because He is the Father of the Son, but perhaps none clearer than Hebrews 1:1-2, 5:

§ Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. [Verse 5] For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”?

o If the Father has always been God, He must have always been Father

§ But you can’t be a Father without a Son!

o So, we identify the Father as the Father, because He is the Father of the Son; the Father begets the Son

God the Son (1 page)

· The second person we come to in our passage is the Son:

o “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son…”

o Who is this Son? What does Scripture have to say about Him?

· The first thing we must understand is that the Son of God, Jesus, is indeed God

o Divine names are attributed to the Son

§ In John 12, the apostle John references the famous passage in Isaiah 6, where the prophet Isaiah sees God seated on His throne

· John then makes the astounding statement that when Isaiah saw God on His throne, the one He saw was the Son of God!

§ And in perhaps one of the most startling passages, in John 8:58, Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I AM”.

· Not only is Jesus asserting that He lived before Abraham, but He says He is the great I AM of Scripture

· This “I AM” is the covenantal name of God that God gave to Israel, Yahweh; Jesus is saying that He is Yahweh, that He is God

o Maybe you dismiss this; maybe Jesus is lying or delusional

o But if Jesus is lying or delusional, you have to discard everything else He says

o You can’t pick a middle ground that says, “Jesus is a good guy” and deny He is God; Jesus is either a liar, completely delusional, or is indeed God

o The Son performs divine actions

§ Jesus forgives sins in Mark 2 and foretells how He will raise Himself from the dead in John 2

§ Paul praises Jesus for having created all things in Colossians 1

§ Forgiving sins? Raising Himself from the dead? Creating all things? Only God could do such things!

o The Son is praised as God

§ In Revelation 5:13, we see the great throne room of God, and all the angels and saints are there singing praises to God.  Yet this very praise they give God, they give to Jesus, the Lamb of God!

· “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

· If Jesus is not God, this praise is nothing short of idolatry

o So is Jesus, the Son of God, is He God Himself? Yes! He must be! KEY POINT: He does the works of God, He is given divine names, He is praised as God

· How does the Son relate to the Father?

o Think of the words of John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son”

§ Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father

§ Men beget sons; sons are of the same nature as their fathers

§ Men do not create sons, though; men beget sons

§ If the Son is begotten of the Father, He must share the Father’s nature

§ And since the Father is eternal, the Son is eterally begotten of the Father; there is no time at which the Son did not exist

o So why is the Son called the Son? Because He is begotten of the Father; begotten, not made

· There are many more passages we could have read about the deity of Christ

o We didn’t even touch on all the Old Testament passages!

o The entire Old Testament is replete with imagery pointing us to Christ as the fulfillment of its messianic prophecies

§ Daniel, Psalms, Genesis, Isaiah, Zechariah, Song of Solomon, and many other places repeatedly point us to the Messiah and the prophecies which were fulfilled by Jesus

§ The deity of Jesus is no mere matter of a few proof-texts; it is the heartbeat of the entire Bible!

§ The book of Hebrews and the four Gospels all carefully prove how Jesus is God, the promised Messiah of the Old Testament

God the Holy Spirit (1 page)

· The third person we come to in our passage is the Holy Spirit:

o “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”

o Who is this Holy Spirit? What does Scripture have to say about Him?

· We should immediately be able to tell from our passage is that the Holy Spirit is God

o If the Father is God and the Son is God, and we are to be baptized into the single divine name, why would Jesus suddenly break the pattern and include a person who is not God?

o If the Holy Spirit were not God, then Jesus would be saying something like, “baptizing them in the name of God, God, and creature”

§ That makes no sense!

§ The whole point of the passage is that this is the single divine name; why would Jesus command that the Holy Spirit be treated as God if the Spirit was not God? If the Holy Spirit was not God, this statement by Jesus would be blasphemy

o The Holy Spirit must be God

· The Holy Spirit is also personal

o While the names of Father and Son immediately suggest something personal, it’s not so obvious with the Holy Spirit

§ Is the Holy Spirit just an impersonal divine agent? Is the Holy Spirit like the Force in Star Wars or some sort of cosmic divine energy?

§ Absolutely not! Just as the Father and Son are personal, so is the Holy Spirit

o In Ephesians 4, the Apostle Paul says that we can grieve the Holy Spirit through our sin

o In Romans 8, the Apostle Paul says the Holy Spirit intercedes for us when we pray, with groanings too deep for words

o And in Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira try to pull one over on God and lie about a gift they gave to the church

§ When they do so, Peter tells them, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?...You have not lied to man but to God.”

o So we see that the Holy Spirit can be grieved, lied to, and intercedes; this is not something an impersonal agent does, but rather one who is personal

o This passage is also a direct statement that the Holy Spirit is God; Peter treats lying to God and lying to the Holy Spirit as the same thing – which can only be true if the Holy Spirit is God

· How does the Holy Spirit relate to the Father and the Son?

o The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son

o Look at Galatians 4:6: “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts”

o The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is sent from the Father

§ The Holy Spirit is from the Father; He relates to the Father as the One who is sent by the Father

o But the Spirit is also “of His Son”

§ So the Spirit is “from the Father” and “from the Son”

§ This combination, being from the Father and from the Son is what we mean by “proceeds from the Father and the Son”

o The Spirit is not another Son, because He is not begotten of the Father

o He is the Spirit because He proceeds from the Father and the Son

Inseparable yet Distinguishable (2 pages)

· We’ve established that God is one, and that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God, but how do we tie this all together?

· There are two critical errors we can make in discussing the Trinity:

o The first is to separate and divide the persons of the Trinity, such as by making them different parts of God, or where the persons are lesser or greater than each other, or any number of other things

§ But there’s a problem – when we separate and divide the persons, we no longer have one God!

§ Remember, not only is there only one God, but God is a unity as well

§ Consider the words of our passage – “in the NAME [the singular NAME] of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”

§ The three persons are inseparable, not merely because they happen to agree, but because they share the one single divine nature

§ We dare not divide up the Trinity, because then we are denying that there is one God

o The second is to conflate the persons of the Trinity, to say that there is only one person who reveals Himself in three different ways, as though God is simply changing masks

§ But our passage clearly distinguishes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

§ Even though there is one NAME, it still distinguishes the three

§ Look again at our passage – “in the name OF THE Father, and OF THE Son, and OF THE Holy Spirit”

§ Jesus clearly intends for us to distinguish the three persons of the Trinity; these names are not mere masks

o When we conflate the persons of the Trinity, we lose the promises of the Gospel!

§ What are we do to with John 3:16 – “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son”

§ This promise of our salvation clearly distinguishes the Father and the Son

§ If the persons of the Trinity are just masks, then there is no Father giving the Son, there is no Son of God who died on the cross in our stead, there is no salvation

· Remember our key point: God is one in being, but three in person, and these persons are coeternal and equal in power and glory; there is a single what in God, but three whos

o This is such a mystery! Three persons in one God? There is nothing in all of creation like this! There is no analogy, no parallel; it is something we must learn from Scripture

o One of the difficulties of using the word “person” is that we think that God must be like us as human beings, but we cannot do this

§ As humans, each of us is one in being and one in person

§ But for God, God is one in being and three in person

o We must rely upon Scripture to understand the Trinity! We must be faithful to Scripture, not to our own wisdom or reasoning

· The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, yet there is only one God

· There is one Father, not three fathers; there is one Son, not three sons; there is one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.

· So how do we distinguish the Father, the Son, and the Spirit? Very simply: the way Scripure does – by how the persons relate

o The Father is the Father because…He is the Father of the Son!

o The Son is the Son because…He is begotten by the Father!

o The Spirit is the Spirit because…He proceeds from the Father and the Son.

· Let’s repeat this to drive this point home:

o The Father is the Father because…He is the Father of the Son!

o The Son is the Son because…He is begotten by the Father!

o The Spirit is the Spirit because…He proceeds from the Father and the Son.

o And this is where we stop – where Scripture stops, we stop

Blessed Trinity! (2 pages)

· Has your brain melted yet? Are you struggling to wrap your mind around this?  If you are, you’re not alone!

o This mystery is great! But would God be God if He were easy for us to wrap our minds around?

o But God is not a creature, He is the Creator, and His ways our higher than our ways

· You may ask, “this theology is all well and good, but where’s the practical application?”

o We’ll get there; there is so much practical application we can draw from this, and we will see this in the Great Commission itself; the Great Commission is itself an application of this doctrine

· But let’s not move too quickly away from this wonderful mystery of the Trinity

o This is our God! This is the One whom we will spend all eternity worshipping!

o Have you ever just stopped, sat at the feet of Jesus as revealed in the Bible, and just contemplated God for who He is?

o Have you ever wrestled with how incredible God is, not merely for what He has done, but for WHO He is?

· The trouble is that when we move too quickly to the practical, we end up missing the whole point!

o Contemplating God, meditating on who God is, is the goal to which our lives point

o It is what we will do for all eternity

· God is the highest good

o He is the highest object of contemplation

o He is our highest joy, our chief love, our soul’s delight

· Apart from the Trinity, there would be no salvation

o There would be no Father giving the Son in love to save the world

o No Son to die on the cross for our sins

o No Holy Spirit to apply the work of the Son to us

· God does everything from the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit

o Every blessing you and I receive is triune!

o As Pastor Rick has gone through the book of Ephesians, how often have we encountered the phrase “in Christ” or “the Spirit”? These are Trinitarian terms

o All these wonderful benefits of salvation flow from our Triune God, and if our God were not Triune there would be no such blessings

o God does all things as a Trinity

· This should drive us to worship!

o This mystery should expand our minds to how awesome, how incredible God is

o Can we ever come to the end of this mystery? Just spend some time in quiet contemplation of how God has revealed Himself in scripture – there is no bottom to this infinite well of delight

o This is your God! This is the God who dwells high in the heavens – who also dwells in you, if you have placed your faith in Christ

o If you are a believer, an eternity of joy is set before you, of knowing the love of the Triune God, of dwelling in intimate fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

· But if you are not a believer, if you deny the truths laid out before you today from Scripture about our Triune God, then no such joy will be yours

o This is your God, whether you believe in Him or not

o You are a sinner; you have rebelled against God and against His law

o You have broken every law; you have lied, stolen, murdered others in your heart through hatred, committed adultery in your heart, you have followed after other gods

o You will one day stand before this Triune God, and you will give an account for your life – and you will be found guilty

· But God!

o Our Triune God has made a way of salvation for you! In love God came to earth in human flesh

o The second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, became man, for us and for our salvation

o He bore the punishment our sins deserved; that mountain of debt we owe our Creator for our rebellion, Jesus satisfied on the cross, and He satisfied it completely

o There is no more to be done; Jesus has paid it all! There is no sin so great that it cannot be forgiven by the blood of Christ

o So turn to Christ in faith! Why will you die in your sins? Turn to Christ in faith alone; cast yourself upon Him – and be saved

Conclusion (0.5 pages)

· This doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God, of our dependence on Him, of our eternal comfort

· So bask in the glories of this doctrine

· Find in our Triune God the delight that exceeds all others, the joy that can be found nowhere else