It's Sunday Morning

Continuing with what was started last Sunday...



 Good Morning.

 Last week we looked at how it's important to keep God's word in it's proper place when exercising our reason. Man tends to be guided by his senses and his own imagination and will pay heed to those who have gone before us and have left their knowledge behind. How much more then should we also value what revelations we have from God and have that stored in our hearts.

Now I have to confess, the verse in Isaiah that I had quoted last week:

Isaiah 1:18
 "Come now, and let us reason together,"
Says the LORD...

 was not something that jumped out at me the first time I read it. It was brought to my attention about 25 years ago by a gentleman in my apartment who was trying to convince me to his way of thinking.

 You see, he wanted to show that God is not unreasonable and does not expect us to believe unreasonable things. God wants to reason with us. Now that all sounds very reasonable... doesn't it?

 Here was his point. He pointed to my young son and said, “He is your son and he is not you, is he?” Then pointing to me, “You are his father, you are not him, correct?” And in conclusion he said it would be unreasonable to expect God to utilize the terms Father and Son in scripture and expect them to be understood in any way different than they are in common usage among men. So he continued, “This Trinity doctrine, this 'Jesus is God', it is all man's doing. It's all made up to enslave people in believing mysteries and fables. Ask any priest about the Trinity and they'll tell you, 'It's a mystery'!”

 Well, he appealed to my reason didn't he? And to my senses as well, because there was my son in front of me. And did he not also appeal to the Word of God by quoting a verse that said that God wanted to reason with man? Where was he wrong?

 Here... If you are going to appeal to the Word of God do not imagine you can just point to one separate verse apart from the whole and ignore the rest if it doesn't suit you. This is not a strange principle. If a science researcher conducted an experiment and simply threw away the data that didn't jive with his thesis his work would be considered fraudulent.

 So what is it that my guest was leaving out that was contrary to his idea of the reasonableness of God?

 We do not have the time here to go through all the verses in the Bible that point to the Deity of Christ or the concept of the Trinity but I think there are a few that will specifically speak to the “Father-Son yet one” controversy.

We can read, speaking of God in:

Job 9:8
 Who alone stretches out the heavens
And tramples down the waves of the sea;

-and-

Isaiah 45:24
 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, "I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself And spreading out the earth all alone,”

 And speaking about God's Son we read:

Colossians 1:16
 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him.

-and-

Hebrews 1:10
 And, "YOU, LORD, IN THE BEGINNING LAID THE FOUNDATION OF THE EARTH, AND THE HEAVENS ARE THE WORKS OF YOUR HANDS;

 I'm sure you can see it. God the Father stating in the Old Testament that He creates all things and does it alone. And yet creation is also said to be the work of the Son's hands. Two doing the same thing while one claims to do the work alone either makes for liars or somehow the two are also “one”. The premises found in scripture that each are the creator gives rise to the conclusion that both are the one God. This is just a rudimentery beginning of seeing how the Godhead exists, there being much more to it to explore.

 But this illustrates how something that sounds reasonable does not nessecarily mean it is fully reasoned out or true to the Word of God.

 Do not let your reason function apart from God's revelation but let your reason always be subject to it.