How to Study the Bible III – Does the Bible teach that God is a Trinity ?
Craig Kaes · Nov 27, 2016
How to Study Bible (2016), No. 46
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926542453981

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So one thing that we typically do as teachers is we do a whole mess of research. And the research is almost always very messy. And then we gather up the pieces, parts of the mess, and put them together in some sort of format that's easily digestible. That's kind of the point of teaching. Today we are going to take a different approach. We are in a how to study the Bible class And so I thought it would be useful to show you all the mess. So this is how we go about actually teasing out the answers that we're seeking.

One story that I love about a family that was involved with the Sunday school program downstairs. The little girl came to the back door, three years old. face stained red with berries. And the berries on that side of the yard, A-OK, you should be eating those all day. And the berries on that side of the yard, we might have to call poison control. I'm not sure about those particular berries. And the mother, she said to the little girl, which berries did you eat?

Where did you get them? I need to know. It's important. Tell me the truth. And the little girl, without missing a beat, said, the truth is in the Bible. So she lived through the ordeal, so it must have been the good berries or the bad berries were not so dramatically bad. But the point is, we beat into the kids, the truth is in the Bible, because there are so many sources in this world that are claiming to be the truth that's important, that we established very early, if we want to know what's true, then we should be looking in the Word of God. Because that's what's been revealed, and that's stable. It's a wonderful foundation to stand upon.

So with that in mind, I wanted to cover a topic that is completely counterintuitive to a lot of us, and that is the Trinity, because I think it's a really useful example of, OK, this is a concept that makes no sense to me whatsoever. What does the Bible say about it? OK, I've got to believe that. The concept of the Trinity, people try to explain it in different ways, and they take what is beautiful and rich within God's Word, and then try to mash it into an example that is in this world, and stuff gets lost. How many of you have heard the Trinity explained in terms of an egg?

About half of you. Apple? Same sort of thing, but same half. So that takes a very rich concept and then mashes it into something that we can certainly understand with our human minds, But it's not an accurate portrayal of what's actually going on. I can separate a yoke from a white, but you can't pull the Father and the Spirit apart. So these analogies, the breakdown. So let's not look at any analogies. Let's not pay any attention to those.

Let's say I've heard about this Trinity thing. I'd kind of like to understand if it's true. Something about three persons in one unified Godhead. It doesn't make sense, but what does the Bible say about it? How would you guys go about trying to answer the question? It's just you and a Bible. Three separate persons with the same essence. Okay, so how would you go about trying to understand that? you are a bad, bad man.

First off, I tried the obvious. This is just walking you through a game of what I call chase the rabbit. Chase the rabbit is, okay, I've got an idea, let me go and research that. Sometimes I'll see another rabbit shoot off into the bushes over there. Cool, let's go follow that thing, or maybe I want to be methodical. I want that rabbit. And so as I see them dashing off, I just sort of note the coordinates where they ran off into the bushes, like I'll come back for those ones later.

So started with the obvious, and I expected the answer that I got. Searched for Trinity, searched for triune, found absolutely nothing worthwhile in scripture with either of those two words. Okay, now I'm stuck. Maybe if I'm trying to establish that there's a relationship between these three persons, I could look in scripture where all three are mentioned kind of close together. That might be a good way to do it. And so that's what that third search is. I'm looking for, I would be totally happy with either word, Father or God, I would then like either Son or Jesus, and I'd like Spirit, and I'd like to find them within two verses of each other. And this is, you can do this with a concordance. It would be a nightmare to do so.

This is where electronic tools I think are super helpful. With a concordance, you would look up Jesus and all the verses and copy those down and then you'd go and you'd look up God and Then you'd like circle the ones that had God near them and you could repeat the process That's a disaster And so with an electronic tool, you can just do a simple search and say within two verses find me these three words And lo and behold it pops up a list and you can just select them and see ah, okay I know what's going on there.

So when I search for God, Jesus, Spirit within a couple verses, one verse that popped up was, for he whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life. But he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides in him."

And so now, I know what scripture says, it's time for me to make some observations. And so in the process of making those observations, I've got in the back of my head, I want to understand facets of the Trinity. So things that are relevant for that, I'm going to pay extra special attention to. So something that we can all see.

So God sent somebody. The Father and the Son are separate. Where would we get that? You can't send yourself. It's hard to send yourself. I agree with that. And the father loves the son, maybe he loves himself, but it's weird in the context. The most natural observation would be, okay, father and son, they're separate. God gives the spirit. It's not super clear whether that's separate or not. Maybe he gives his own spirit, we don't know. But spirit seems to be something that is giveable. And disobedience to the son leads to some pretty dire consequences. So that suggests that maybe the father has a relationship with the son such that he would not be happy if folks did not obey his son. So we know a few things.

So switching this around a little bit, and just looking for sun. And the reason why I switched this, turns out there's a bug in the software that I use where that the two verses, there were verses that I knew should have been included in the search and they weren't. And so maybe there's a bug that the verse searching doesn't work quite right. So I switched to words and that seemed to do much better. So what this says is I'm looking for Father or God. don't care which one, I'd like sun and I'd like spirit within a hundred words of each other.

So I want them relatively close. And the reason why I'm adding that extra bit at the end is because I'm actually okay if we've got a verse that's like one whole thought that spans multiple verses, I'd really like to include those. Like we get Ephesians 1, read 14, 15, somewhere in there. That whole thing is one sentence. It'd be bad if we were only looking, give it to me all in one verse. What you really want is give it to me all in one thought, but you can't search for that. So 100 words.

A verse that pops up is, whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. I think at this point we can say Jesus and the Father are separate. They're separate persons, because I don't know how you give thanks through somebody to the same somebody. That starts to feel odd to me. And we should do everything in Jesus' name.

And so, here's our first rabbit. It just went shooting off into those bushes over there, and it is, what does it mean to do something in Jesus' name? We're going to stay focused right now. That's a rabbit. It went off into the bushes. We're not chasing that one, but we know it, because we'd love to come back and research that some. And my guess is name, based on what we've heard here at Holly Hills, probably looking into the culture of the time and what they think about names might bear some fruit. So if we go chase that rabbit at some point, we probably want to chase it from a cultural perspective. But we're staying on task.

What we have at this point is Father and Jesus are separate. What we have is Father and Son are separate. So is my Trinity the Father, the Son, and Jesus? I don't know yet. It's important I think Jeremy said it on day one of this class, to go into scripture with a humility. We don't know all the things. And when we don't know all the things, then we can see what God has revealed to us. And so at this point, we know the Father and the Son are separate. We know Jesus and the Father are separate.

But it raises a question. Who's the Son of God? Can the Son of God be Jesus? There's our second rabbit, just ran off into the bushes. This one feels really, really relevant for what we're trying to study. Do we have four persons of the Godhead? Maybe Spirit, God, Jesus, and Son? It would be helpful to establish that the Son is Jesus. And so, I search. I'm looking for the exact phrase, Son of God.

Jesus and I'd love for those to be in the same verse Okay, so I want to I want to look that up and we find just tons of references And this is great and just clicking through as we hit each verse we can make some observations so then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and And after he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command those stones to become bread. And then a little bit later, then the devil took him into the holy city and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down.

OK, so a few obvious observations from that. Spirit led Jesus up there. Spirit and Jesus are separate. The devil, we've got established as the tempter, because the spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And then a little bit later, we've got this critter called the tempter that shows up.

So those are the same. The tempter, the devil, who really was in heaven, which we could go chase that rabbit too, would have a sense of who Jesus actually is, refers to him multiple times as son of God. Okay. Question. Is the father of lies a great source for truthful information? So let's keep studying. But it's it's a note. It's an observation. It's a data point. We're just we're scientists We're gleaning what the Word of God wants us to know so next verse when he and he is Jesus from the context and came to the other side of the country of the Gadarenes.

Two men who were demon-possessed met him, and they were coming out of the tombs. They were extremely violent, that no one could pass by that way. And they cried out, saying, What business do we have with each other, son of God? You have come to torment us before the time Okay, so there goes another rabbit, right? But before the time, is there a time when he's going to be tormenting demons? That might be a fun thing to study. But it's not a rabbit right now.

We're on point, we're trying to get Son of God equated to Jesus. And Jesus comes to these demon-possessed men and they shout at him something about Son of God. Okay, so demons are recognizing Jesus equals son of God. A little bit later, Simon Peter answered, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus said to him, blessed are you, Simon Bar, I don't know, is that a Hispanic last name?

Because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you. But my father, who is in heaven, So we can get from this that both Peter and Jesus believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Now we're starting to get to some very credible sources there in scripture that are saying these two are the same. And we can go on and on and on, and I did for a little bit.

So Unclean Spirit's song said, you are the Son of God. John the Baptist testified that Jesus is the Son of God. The disciple John wrote an entire book to establish that Jesus was the Son of God and we can have life through him. And then the disciples also. Oh, I'm sorry, Paul also. So right after Paul's transformation, he shows up in the temples teaching that Jesus is the Son of God.

Okay, are we comfortable with Jesus equalling the Son of God? Do you see how that was a very simple research project? We didn't assume that we knew anything, and now we've got it firmly established, and if somebody comes along and says, to us that Jesus is not the Son of God? He was a really wise teacher? Do we feel well-equipped to say that's not true? Okay, because we took the time. Where do we find truth? Truth is in the Bible.

Conclusion. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is separate from God the Father. Now we've got a question. Holy Spirit. or Holy Spirit and the Father the same. And by the way, I've got a niggly in the back of my mind at this point, which is, I've seen Father, but I haven't seen God equals Father at this point.

I'm sort of standing on the Christianese that I've been around for the last decade. To equate those two, I'd feel more comfortable if I saw it in Scripture. That would make me feel better. So, niggly in the back of my mind. So, to find what I'm looking for next to answer this question, I'm going to search for Holy Spirit and God. I'd like those to occur somewhere in the same verse. I'm trying to restrict the search because I'm guessing if I expand that search, I'm going to get so many hits that I'm not going to be able to wade through them. So we'll start with it very restricted to one verse. And we found lots and lots in what we've got.

So from Luke, when Mary finds out that she's going to have a Jesus, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end. Mary said to the angel, how can this be, since I'm a virgin? The angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And for that reason, the Holy Child shall be called the Son of God.

OK, so, observations. Number one, the Son and the Father are separate. You feel comfortable making that observation from that verse? Yeah? Okay. Angel tells Mary that Jesus is the Son of God, so that was our last research topic, so we're learning more about that. It's showing up all over the place.

An observation that I didn't put on this list that popped out at me just now, Jesus is going to be called Son of the Most High, and we also know that He's Son of God. And so we might be able to equate Most High with God. Those might be synonymous, and so things that we learn in scripture about Most High might also tell us about God.

The Holy Spirit and Jesus are separate. And here I wasn't sure, because this whole overshadow, I don't even know what that means. The Spirit's going to overshadow Mary. That's odd. But I can look up what the word means. Right? So we're just trying to zoom in and make the best observation that we can. And so in so doing, we find out that the word is epischiazzo, which is to throw a shadow upon, to overshadow. It's used as a bright cloud at the transfiguration. OK, so that gives me some context for what this thing is.

And metaphorically, of the power of the Most High upon the Virgin Mary. So to me, overshadowing is different than growing inside of. Jesus is going to be growing inside of Mary. The Holy Spirit's going to be overshadowing her. Those are different things. So they're not performing the same actions. I think the Holy Spirit and Jesus are now separate. It's an observation. Should I make all of my conclusions off observations made on one verse? No. OK. So we'll keep going. But that's interesting.

Relationship between the Father and the Holy Spirit is not yet clear, because you've got the Spirit overshadowing, and it's the power of the Most High. So these are fuzzy to me still. We've got Jesus born of a woman. So that might be another way to establish Jesus as totally separate from the other two. Is this helpful to walk through the thought process of how we're teasing out a concept? Okay, good. Because I had no plan B if it wasn't. Moving on, we've got this Jesus.

God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this which you both see and hear." So we've got God raised Jesus. We have Jesus at the right hand of God, physically separate. And Jesus received the promise of the Holy Spirit of the Father. Question, would the Father promise himself to Jesus That's weird Unlikely so I'm starting to get a little bit of confidence that these two are are separate from one another Okay, so and we are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him and So we've got God gave the Holy Spirit. Likely at this point we can say that they're separate. And the Holy Spirit can witness physical things. So that's cool. So Holy Spirit is seeing all that we're doing right now.

When Stephen gets put to death, we get a pretty clear separation of these things. So we have Now when they heard this they were cut to the quick and they began gnashing their teeth at him but being full of the Holy Spirit He gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God And Jesus standing at the right hand of God and said behold I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man Standing at the right hand of God observations. We can say that Jesus and God are separate. Stephen sees them physically separated from one another. Meanwhile, Stephen is filled with the Holy Spirit there on earth. So that's separate. So Holy Spirit, Jesus, God, separate.

Oh, he called Jesus the Son of Man. Okay, this is a new title, right? You haven't seen this one before? That's a rabbit running off into the bushes, right? New search term, Son of Man. If I learn about Son of Man, I might be learning more about Jesus. So we're not going to chase that one either. But we put a bookmark there. Cross our fingers, we're going to remember. We'll get back to that one.

Next up, you know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. So we've got Jesus anointed by God with the Holy Spirit, so Jesus and God are separate.

And here's where I'm starting to make observations about God and Father. Remember that was a niggly in the back of our minds? We're not 100% sure there. And the niggly is we, where am I? So Jesus and the Holy Spirit were both referred to by name in that verse. And so, God might refer to Father. We'll have to wait and see. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are separate. The Holy Spirit and God, which we think is Father at this point, but are not sure, they're also separate.

And just so that we can all keep our focus, why am I digging into getting all three of these guys separate from one another. Stan? Because that's the essence of trinity. I mean, that's what the word means. Three something. Yeah. It's exactly right. So if I'm going to count 1, 2, 3, then establishing them as countable 1, 2, 3, and not 1, 1, 1, would be helpful. And Jehovah's Witnesses definitely believe that the Trinity doesn't exist because the word Trinity is not in the Bible. So basically you're giving a definition of Trinity without the word actually being in Scripture. Yeah, and if you'll recall, we tried a couple of lazy searches at the very beginning. Trinity? No. Triune? No. Should we Should we take our ball and go home? Yeah, they do. But it turns out we can do more.

It's also important because there's no God, but each person of the Godhead fulfills a different role. So Crystal is saying that it's also helpful because there's one Godhead, each person fulfills a different role, and we are going to see exactly that as we continue our research. So this is good. I just want to keep laying the framework for why we're digging into this, because sometimes it's really easy when you're digging into details to lose track of What's the overall structure for what we're trying to do?

What I'd really like to do is establish very firmly God, Holy Spirit, Son, three separate. Then I'd like to establish Jesus is God, Holy Spirit is God, God is God, and the Father is God. Because then I get them all back together again. So that's the process we're going through. Right now we're just trying to establish them all as separate.

Next up, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we exult in the hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations. Knowing that tribulations bring about perseverance. Perseverance, proven character. Proven character, hope. And hope does not disappoint.

Because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given us. We know God was the giver of the Holy Spirit. We saw that earlier. First observation Holy cats Like that's that's pretty incredible, right? I mean, we've got peace. We've got grace when bad stuff happens. We've got hope Wow, all right, so observation number one Wow Okay Observation number two Jesus Christ is our Lord and That's interesting. There's another rabbit. We're not going to chase that one.

We have peace with God. Nobody would sit in their bedroom without having opened a Bible and come to the conclusion that we have peace with God. We actually need to see that revealed to us through Scripture. And so getting in the Word of God lets us see these things, which is great. That peace is because of justification by faith, which is because of Jesus. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So we've got them separate. And by the way, you can make a million other observations here. We're trying to stay on point. We're looking at Trinity. So to focus back in, if we could make observations all day long. The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit. So God's love is in us. Here's another mind blower. And it's through the work of the Holy Spirit. Not through the work of Jesus. The work is specific to the Holy Spirit. And so we get to the conclusion that Crystal was drawing earlier, which is, here's our bottom line. Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, all separate.

We've got that pretty firmly established at this point, yes? OK. They have different roles. We've seen that also. And they have a pretty intense relationship with one another. Started to see this play out and they're working in unison That's interesting that there's this unifying sort of concept that that sits behind it That they're they're playing their parts Next verse and again, this is still from our our search about Holy Spirit and God But I've written very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you again because of the grace that was given me from God and to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Therefore in Christ Jesus I have found reason for boasting in things pertaining to God." So we've got Jesus, Holy Spirit, God all mentioned as three separate entities again. And so we don't have the Father mentioned explicitly, we have God. So we've got Jesus, Holy Spirit, God. So we're starting to get some credence to the fact that when we see God we can replace it with Father. When we see Father, we can replace it with God, because that seems to be what Paul does.

So we can see, again, that there's a close personal relationship between the three of them, and that they're part of a larger connected whole that maybe we can't fully see at this point. So we've got next verse, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Okay, so the three are separate but connected in some way. We see again that they're each playing their own different role. They're bringing different things to the table. They're participating in this larger whole.

And specifically, we see from this, Jesus associated with grace, God associated with love, Holy Spirit associated with fellowship. That's cool. That's rich. That's way better than an egg or an apple. Now we're really starting to see some beauty in scripture.

After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on him. And behold, a voice out of heaven said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. do we see anywhere this clear Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three totally separate individuals. It's super, super, super clear. But the Holy Spirit coming down and landing on Jesus as a dove, that was something One sec.

That was something that was foreshadowed. We can look at the relevant verse in John as well, where John the Baptist was told, when you see this happen, that's the one. That's the one whose sandal you're not fit to tie. And so the Holy Spirit coming down clearly communicates to John the Baptist, Jesus is the Son of God. Was there something else going on there with the Holy Spirit during the baptism?

That's a rabbit running off into the bushes. We could research that more. I'm actually personally curious if that was the only point of the Holy Spirit coming down was just the signal to John the Baptist. So for future studies. the Spirit of God instead of the Holy Spirit? It says the Spirit of God. So if we wanted to see if the Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit are the same, how would we go about it?

Ask the teacher. So fortunately, God has given some teachers for the building up of the body, for the equipping of the saints. Okay, so that's one option. But you are alone with your Bible and you want to know. So I guess you could do a search of spirit and God and see if there's many verses that connect the two. You would assume that one of them you'd find is, it says that God is spirit and truth. So you look at that and you look at this and you go, hmm, that's interesting.

It is interesting because then you'd start pulling those two back together, right? And at the end, Pulling those two back together, I give it just a teaser, but there's homework, and the homework is, okay, by the time we get to the end of this, we'll have three totally separate, we'll have Father as God, we'll have Son as God, we'll have some evidence, Holy Spirit is God, but we won't be conclusive on that point, and that's left for homework for you guys.

That would be a great way to go about it. I think it's an observation, it's quite unique that God would give this sign to John, because this has not happened to any other person on the face of the earth. Yeah, why would he do that? It's so obvious. Yeah, so that seems like a good one to go and study.

And so here's the richness of scripture. We went in looking for an understanding of one thing, and I think we're up to three or four. We're not studying those today, but we'll go chase those rabbits the remainder of the week. We might find more rabbits in the chasing of those, and just on and on.

We looked at Holy Spirit and God. Should we look at Holy Spirit and Father since we haven't firmly established that God and Father are the same yet? So it would be nice if we could somehow definitively pull God and Father together. If we see the same sort of relationship between the Holy Spirit and Father and the Holy Spirit and God in Scripture, then we can sort of pull these guys together.

So that was my next search. What you're seeing through this is my thought process as I go through scripture. My thought process is not necessarily your thought process. And that's A-OK. This is about, I have a question. Let me formulate an hypothesis about how I can find this. I think if I look for these things, I might find information about that. and searching out the truth in Scripture. That can be how all of you function. That going down this very specific sort of decision tree that I'm going through, that's my thought process. It's not expected that it would become yours. Does that make sense? Okay. So I decided, all right, I'm going to search Holy Spirit and Father. So I want to see those two together. I've already searched Holy Spirit and God.

So let me see what the relationship between Holy Spirit and Father is. And I've got, but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. And so we've got the Helper is equal to the Holy Spirit. So if I wanted to find out more about the Holy Spirit, I might look for things on the Helper that might give me more information. The Father will send him.

And we know we've already established that the Spirit is sent by God Now we're finding out the Spirit is sent by the Father That's starting to to pull some concepts together. I feel more confident asserting Whenever I see God without more qualification Then it's probably talking about the Father feeling better about that We get again that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Father are all distinct.

And we also see, again, they're each playing their own individual parts in this larger whole. So they're not interchangeable. They have different roles. So we've got all three connected in some way. We don't know in what way. And we have all three distinct. Let's just run through a list of questions. So these are all the rabbits that went off into the bushes. These are things that we can chase down in the future.

One, God gives us the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to have the Holy Spirit? Why would he do that? That would be a great study for another one of these seven-page rabbit hunts. What is the promise of the Holy Spirit that didn't make sense to me when I first saw that And if I wanted to find that maybe I'd look for everywhere the promise and spirit were mentioned somewhat close to one another Start teasing out what I can from that. I I'd like to do a more thorough study of God throughout the Bible and see if it's always referring to the Father when it's unqualified. I'm feeling more confident saying that God and Father are the same, but I'd love to see what it's like in the Old Testament all the way through. I never thought about this before, but it's interesting that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, landed on Jesus, and God gives Him to us.

Yeah. Three different things. Three different things. That's super cool. If we stop short, if we don't crack open the word of God, if we're content listening to analogies about eggs and apples, we missed that point entirely. Okay. So, more questions. Study of Son of Man. Remember we put a placeholder on that one? Son of Man? What can we glean about Jesus from that? What's the Gospel of God? That came up in there. And it has some relationship to Jesus. What does Jesus have to do with the gospel of God? Go chase that one.

I know it sounds absurd to say that out loud in a church, right? But again, coming to the word with the humility without assuming that you already know all of this, a lot can be revealed. We've already seen a greater richness in the relationship between the triune God than we would have seen otherwise. And then, was there another purpose for the Holy Spirit landing on Jesus during that baptism?

Was there something going on there? That would be a fun one to dig into. Let's see if we can validate what we've heard about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit being part of a unified Godhead. We've already seen hints of this, that they're part of a larger connected whole, and they work in unison, we've got a close relationship between them. What can we tease out? My first question, Jesus, did he ever say he was the Holy Spirit? Did he ever say he was the Father? Did he ever say he was God? So let's just start digging. I don't know. Who knows? Maybe he said it.

So I just looked for I and Holy Spirit close together. I found a bazillion verses. I looked through all of the bazillion verses. None of them were Jesus claiming that he was the Holy Spirit. OK, we can move on. And note my comment at the end. I hit a dead end, I'm not feeling creative, and so I'm going to move on. If I wanted to tease more out, I could probably tease more out, but there's so much to study. So, okay, what about Jesus claiming to be the Father? Well, this is interesting.

So I search, I am the father, and I get the passage that surrounds John 10.28 about the security of our salvation.

Fantastic verse. or set of verses, and I can make some observations based on that. So, my sheep hear my voice, I know them, they follow me, and I give eternal life to them, they will never perish, no one will snatch them out of my hand, my father who has given them to me is greater than all, nobody is able to snatch them out of the father's hand, I and the father are one. That's pretty interesting, right? Lots of observations.

Jesus gives eternal life. And I made a note, look up the tense in the Greek, because I know that the default for present tense in the Greek is a continuous present, meaning I am constantly giving life. And I'm curious, is that what's being said here? So I would go and I would look at the Greek about that. I'm excited about getting Jesus and the Father together as one, and so I didn't chase that rabbit. The sheep won't ever perish. The Father gave his sheep to Jesus. They're in the Father's hand, and Jesus and the Father are one.

And note the observation. Whoa. They are separate. They are one. not something you would come up with in your room without cracking a Bible. Okay. And the Jews picked up rocks to stone him. Why in the world are they wanting to stone him when he just said that? That, I mean, if I went downtown and I said that I and the Father are one, nobody would be hucking rocks. It might be, you know, teasing, laughing, pointing. They wouldn't be throwing rocks.

So this suggests a cultural reference. And so one source that I found helpful is the illustrated Bible backgrounds. And so I'm just going to look at illustrated Bible backgrounds and what it has to say about this passage. And it did comment about the stoning. It said that this echoes the basic confession of Judaism.

For Jesus to be one with the Father, yet distinct from him, amounts to a claim to deity. This challenged narrow Jewish notions of monotheism, even though there are already hints in the Old Testament about the plurality of the Godhead. And as you look through the rest of what Illustrated Bible Background tries to say about that, it makes the point that they would want to stone based upon blasphemy. And while the accurate definition of blasphemy was a claiming to be God, the Sadducees would have expanded that to just awful offensive behaviors.

So in the back of my mind at this point, I'm thinking, I feel like there's another place in scripture where the Jews picked up rocks. And so I'm curious what Jesus was saying then when they picked up rocks. And so, no problem. Do a simple search. I'm looking for stone or stones. That's what that asterisk means. I'd be happy with any word beginning with stone.

And Jesus, I'd like those in the same verse. I want to know when maybe they stoned him, they're throwing stones, they pick up a stone. And I get your father Abraham rejected to see my day and he saw it and was glad so the Jews said to him you are not yet 50 years old and Have you seen Abraham? Jesus said to them truly truly I say to you before Abraham was born I am Therefore they picked up stones to throw at him Therefore it logically follows that They picked up stones to throw throw at him, okay?

Golly, lots of observations about that one too. Weird to say before some historical character was born, I am, instead of I was. So maybe that phrase is significant. So, again, I look up illustrated Bible backgrounds just to try to understand a little bit about it, and I find Jesus' language here echoes God's self-identification to Moses in Exodus 3.14. Thus Jesus does not merely claim pre-existence, where he could have just said before Abraham was born, I was, but deity. See the people's reaction in 859, which is great. That's exactly how we got to this passage, was what's he doing when the Jews are picking up rocks to chuck at him? He's claiming to be God.

We already saw that. And so, yep, that validates. Is the illustrated Bible backgrounds divinely inspired? No. No. So it'd be really good to do some validation and check what sorts of things they're saying. So I Am is Ego Ami. And we've learned about that. We know about that from Holly Hills, what Ego Ami is all about. So that's cool. He really is saying he's God. And the Jews want to stone him. So clearly he's blaspheming in their minds. And now I've got this other reference that I picked up from illustrated Bible backgrounds, this Exodus reference.

So then Moses said to God, behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. Now they may say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am has sent me to you.

I go, OK, the English says the same thing. It raised a question for me, which was, if I look in the Greek Old Testament, am I going to see Ego-Emi? And fortunately, I've got a copy of the Greek Old Testament. And so you see bold there, the Greek for Exodus 3.14, you see Ego-Emi, just smack in the middle of that sucker. So God is saying, Ego Ami. Jesus follows up saying, Ego Ami. Jews pick up rocks to stone him because they know what he's talking about.

Think we've firmly established Jesus and the Father are one. All three separate, Jesus and the Father are one. All we've got to get now is Holy Spirit and the Father. That's your homework. Questions, comments, as Burn would say, consternations? Okay, let's close. Father, thank you so much for giving us your word, for giving us ones that can seek you out, for giving us that hunger, for giving us your spirit so that it all makes sense to us. You're just amazing. It's in Jesus' name. Amen.