 It truly has been a joy to be with this section of Christ's body and what's amazing about being a Christian is the union that we have with one another, the love that we have for one another. We don't have to know someone very long before you already feel connected. You feel like you love this person. I love this church in particular because you'll have a lot of love for one another and y'all's not ashamed to express that love with hugs and handshakes and pats on the back. All that is very affectionate and what that's one of the beauties of Christianity. That's one of the things that that the Lord says is one of the greatest apologetics of the fact that Jesus has come in the world, that his people love one another. That's something very unique about Christianity. In fact, that really loving one another is the key to relationships and relationships is the key to life. What would life be without relationships? What would you give? What would you have to have to give up all your relationships? Would you take all the money in the world on the condition that you would have all the money in the world and you could have all the limited buying power that would bring you fame and fortune, that would bring you power. You would have all the things that the world's looking for and if you could have that on this one condition, no friends, no relationships. Well, none of us if we're in a right mind would make that train. It's because God's made us not to be alone. He looked at Adam and says it's not good that he's alone. We're made for relationships, but the key relationship that God designed us for is a relationship with him. The thing that we can have a relationship with God. If you would, turn with me to John chapter 17. I would love to have expository sermon before this morning and we can go through this chapter. We're not going to do that. I just want you to look at verse 3 and then jump to 22. This is Christ's high priestly prayer. We heard that Christ is the greater priest and here is his crying to the Father. I think this is what Christ wants more than anything else. We would love for Christ to pray for us and he has prayed for us, but what did he pray for us about? What does he want us to receive more than anything else? Look at verse 3. And this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent, that we may know God. And this knowing God is more than just knowing about God is that we may have a relationship with God, that we may know him intimately. That's what Christ is praying for is that we, his people, would know him and that we too would know Christ. Now jump to verse 22. He says, the glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one. I am them and you and me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you love me. Can you imagine this is what he's praying? He's explained in this prayer that from all eternity before he came into the world he had this joyful, glorious relationship with the Father. And this is the most important thing to Jesus. The most important thing that he has is the glory that he shares with the Father, this perfect relationship. So we see even in the Godhead there is this relationship of mutual love for one another. In fact, this relationship is so close. He says we're perfectly one, loving one another, treasuring one another. This is what the Son was doing from all eternity past. He's gazing upon the Father and enjoying the Father. And what was the Father doing from all eternity past? Gazing upon the Son, enjoying the Son. As it was when I first held Martin, my young boy, the first day I just gazed upon him. Just couldn't take my eyes off of him. And I don't know how or why, but immediately I love this little baby. Oh, all of a sudden meaning and purpose to life is brought about when the fact that I have this relationship with my own Son, how much more does a holy Father look upon Jesus as Son and just enjoy. And we are created for that purpose to glorify God, right? And to enjoy him forever. That's what Christianity is all about. It's not just getting to paradise and having seven virgins and having a cup full of wine or just having our bodily appetite satisfied. The purpose of glory in heaven is enjoying God forever. Having the relationship with the Almighty. Can you imagine that? What more could God give? He didn't just give us earthly materialistic things. He gave us himself. And more than that, the very relationship that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit enjoy among themselves, which is the most glorious thing in the world. He says, I want you to enter into that relationship. I want you to be one with us. Not that we become divine, but we become joyful participants of that mutual relationship with the Father. And that's what we enjoy to some degree when we worship together and our love for one another here. We participate in the relationship of the Father, Son, and the Spirit as we love each other here on earth. What glory this is. And we're made for this. But Islam does not provide for any of that. The greatest thing it does not give us. In fact, Alexer McGrath, professor of science and religion of the University of Oxford said, we are created with an inbuilt yearning for God, which is famously expressed in the prayer of Augustine. You have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you. But Islam does not provide that with us. Abdul Salib says this about Islam and generally agree that according to Orthodox Islam, the purpose of man is not to know God and become more conformed to his character, but it is to understand his will and become more obedient to his commands. Islam is more about being a servant to the will of God, the commands of God, not necessarily having a relationship with God. Now we want to do the will of God because sin separates us from that relationship. It's just not a matter of just being obedient just for the sake of being obedient. Obedience brings us, if you would, into conformity to the character and the nature of God. And it's sin that separates us from that relationship. And I'm here to tell you this morning, and this is the purpose of today's message, which only the Trinity provides us with a relationship with God. Only the Trinity. You know, Muslims and Jehovah Witnesses and others will say the Trinity is a contradiction and they'll use the Trinity against us. I'm here to say no, the Trinity is what makes the Christian worldview cohesive. It's the Trinity that makes us, gives us the opportunity to have a relationship with God Almighty. You take the Trinity away. And if you have just a monolithic God, such as Allah, a single person deity, then there's no relationship. It's impossible to know this God. So here are my three points. We're going to look at the chronic explanation of the Trinity. How does Muslims understand the Trinity? And how does the Qur'an explain the Trinity? Two, we're going to look at the biblical explanation of the Trinity. How does the Bible explain the Trinity? And three, we're going to explain why we must be Trinitarian. Let's look at how the Qur'an explains the Trinity. And Surah 112, it says, Say he is Allah the one and only, Allah the eternal, absolute, Ibogetif not, nor is he begotten, and there's none like unto him. See, Muhammad thought that Christians, when they talked about the Trinity and Jesus being the only begotten Son, thought this was more of a biological process where the Father and Mary have some form of physical relations. And the outcome of this is a new deity where Jesus becomes divine in the birth. They thought the Trinity was God the Father, the Son, and Mary. Surah 471 of the Qur'an says, O people of the scriptures, do not exaggerate in your religion and do not say about God except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, the Son of Mary is the messenger of God and his word that he conveyed to Mary and the spirit from him. So believe in God and his messengers and do not say three. Refrain is better for you. God is only one God. Glory be to him that he should have a Son. To him belongs everything in heaven and on earth. Surah 5116, the Qur'an says, and God will say, O Jesus, Son of Mary, do you say to the people, take me and my mother as gods? So here it's looking at, Muhammad thought, are you saying, or are Christians saying that Mary is a God? Of course the Bible never makes that claim. And Surah 19, 88, and they say the most merciful has begotten the Son. You have come up with something monstrous in which the heavens almost rapture and the earth splits and the mountains fall and crumble because they attribute a Son to the most merciful. It is not fitting for the most merciful to have a Son. See, Muhammad thought Christians believed in three deities. Surah 23, 91, no Son did Allah begot, nor is there any God alone with him. If there were many gods, behold, each God would have taken away what he has created, and some have lorded it over others. Glory to Allah. He is free from that sort of things they attribute to him. See, Muhammad thought, man, Christians believe in three gods, three independent deities, Mary being among them. He says, how could that be? If there were three gods, they'd be rivaling over who's the top deity. Far be it for God's glory. But Muhammad didn't understand the Trinity. He didn't understand the biblical teaching. But what does the Bible say about the Trinity? How do we explain the Trinity to others? Well, let's look at what the Bible says. And if we want to understand the biblical doctrine of Trinity, we need to understand three things. Some people have said these are the three pillars of the Trinity. So if you're explaining the Trinity to others, remember these three points. One, there is one God. And by that, we mean one essence. And by essence, we're saying who God is, what he's made out of. There is one God, one essence. Second pillar, there are three persons. We're not saying there is one essence and three essence. We're saying there's one essence and three persons. The third pillar is each person is fully God. One God, three persons and each person is fully God. Now let's look at these points more closely. The first pillar, there is only one essence. Theologians call the essence of God substance. There's only one substance in the Godhead. And what we mean by substance or the word essence is we mean his nature, his character, and his nature and his character or his essence is the totality of all of his attributes. God is who he is. I am what I am, he told Moses. That means he is love. God is love. That's not just something that he has. That's something who he is. He's made out of love. That's who he is. God is all-knowing. He doesn't just have this. That's who he is. In fact, he is all that he is and all of his attributes. There is only one essence because there's only one God. Drutotomy 6.4 says, Hero is or the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That's why we are monotheists. 1 Corinthians 8.4 says, There is no God but one. Ephesians 4, verse 3. There is only one body, one spirit, just as you are called into one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. James 2.19, you believe that God is one? You do well. Even demons believe and shudder. You see, there's only one God because the Bible says there's only one God, but also there is no other God besides this true living God. Isaiah 45, verse 5, I am the Lord. There's no other besides me. There's no God. I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there's none beside me. I am the Lord and there is no other. Isaiah 46.9 says the same thing, for I am God and there is no other. See, God's omnipotence demands that he stands alone. How could he be all powerful? I mean, all power is his. And the power that we have, the power that is stored up in the sun that provides the energy to grow the grass and feed the cattle in which we eat, which we get energy. All that power is delegated power. And God has all power. How can there be another God besides the God who has all power? God would cease to be all powerful if there was another God beside him. Acts 17-28, Paul says, all lesser powers in heaven and earth live, move, and have their being in him. Even the power of Satan is only delegated to him, and he can only move, do, and act and behave according to what God permits. Thus, the three persons of their Godhead are not different essences, nor even of like essences. But they are one and the same essence. And this is the first pillar of God. There's only one all-powerful being. There's only one all-knowing being. There is only one God of love. He's one in his essence. And there's none beside him. First pillar. The second pillar that the Bible teaches us is that there are three distinct persons. Theologians call the persons substances. But what do we mean by substances or we know better in our own vernacular persons? What do we mean by persons? Hebrews 1-3 says, who being in the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person? Saying Jesus Christ in his person looked just like the Father in his person, but they're distinct persons. John Calvin in defining the what the Bible means by persons says this, by person therefore I call subsistence in God's essence, which while related to the others is distinguished by an incommunicable quality. By the term subsistence we would understand something that is different from essence. Here is my own definition of persons. Persons are incommunicable and relative properties that distinguish the three persons of the Godhead from one another by their personal relations to each other as distinct center of consciousnesses. So these are incommunicable relative properties that distinguish the three persons of the Godhead from one another by their personal relations to each other as distinct center of consciousness. So whatever we mean or the Bible means by the word person that there are three persons it must mean that these persons at least have a distinct center of consciousness. Professor John Murray says, why should we have difficulty in viewing each person as a distinct center of consciousness? Does not the scripture represent the Father as addressing the Son as thou and the Son the Father as thou? And the same must hold true of the Holy Spirit if Trinitarian distinction applies to him as well as the Father and the Son. The Dutch theologian Brachel says, we understand this to refer to a living, intelligent, incommunical being who is fully independent, sharing no part with one another. That is in the scriptures we see the Father is capable of speaking to both the Son and the Spirit as distinct persons. Likewise the Spirit and Son are capable of speaking to the Father. The Father knows that he is not the Son and the Father knows that he is not the Spirit and the Spirit knows that he is not the Son or the Father. These three are distinct persons without mixture or division. The Father is neither the Son nor the Spirit and the Son is neither the Spirit nor the Father. They remain distinct although they do coincide in one another. Jesus says, I am in my Father and my Father is in me. They coincide or co-inher each other. Some have said this is inner penetration of the Father in the Son, the Son and the Father, and likewise with the Spirit. Each person is able therefore to communicate, have fellowship, love, and prescribe glory to the other two persons. They are one in essence, but they are able to communicate to each other. They are able to have a relationship with each other. That is what we need to see about the Trinity. The Trinity allows there to be a God who has a real loving fellowship or relationship with the three persons. That is amazing because in all eternity there is this eternal relationship. All of it does not have that. We need this eternal relationship. One God who is all-powerful, who yet is not bored in heaven, who is stuck in eternity past with nothing to do. That is not our God. In fact, this is what makes him self-complete. He did not need anything. He made Adam and said, Man, Adam, you need a helper. You are alone. This is not good. I mean, the doctrine of Islam is true and Allah is just out there. I mean, he needs creation. He is going to have any type of relationship at all. God does not need us. He has this perfect, beautiful relationship with himself. See, the personhood has derived their relationship from each other. This is what we get in eternal generation. The Nicene Creed says, I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible. And one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father, before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made or created, like Islam teaches. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified as God. Now, Calvin wants to clarify what he believes eternal generation means. He says, what is generated from the Father is not essence or what is communicated from the Father to the Son is not the essence of the Son, rather it's the personhood. Because the one essence of God cannot be divided, the essence of the God he has had is not derived or communicated from the Father to the Son or to the Father and the Son to the Holy Spirit. You see, the Father in and of himself is God. He's fully God. We call that auto-theos, God of God and God of himself. God, the Father does not need the Son or the Spirit to be God. He is fully God of himself. Well, that is also true with the Son. In the essence, the Son is fully God in and of himself. The Son is auto-theos and the Spirit likewise does not derive his essence from the Father or the Son, but the Spirit is auto-theos. You see, they do not derive their essence and life from one another, but rather they derive their essence and life from within themselves. As the Father is self-existent, the Son and the Holy Spirit are also each self-existent. Therefore, only begotten speaks not of the creation of the Son, where there was a point where the Son did not exist. Rather, the only begotten or being begotten speaks of the nature of the relationship that the Son has with the Father. This is because the distinction between the persons come from their eternal relationship with one another. That is, for the Father to be the Father, he needs the Son. And for a Son to be a Son, to be a Son, you have to have a Father. You see, they need this relationship for the identity of who they are as a person, not in their essence, but as their persons is communicated by their mutual relationship with one another. That makes sense? Thus the eternal relationship between the three persons of the Trinity establish the individual uniqueness of the three persons of the Trinity. And together the Father and the Son's relationship necessitates the personhood, not essence, but the personhood of the Holy Spirit. In other words, personhood requires there to be a diversity within the unity. And this is why Christianity says unity and diversity are both equally ultimate. We see unity in the essence, but we see diversity in the personhood. Thus the three persons exist simultaneously together at the same time. We don't believe in modalism, where the Trinity is just different modes of the one person. Back to Brachel, he says the divine beings assist in three persons, not collateral or side by side, but rather one person exists by virtue of the other person either by the way of generation or procession. So this is the second pillar of the Trinity. First one is one God, second one is three persons. The third pillar is each person is fully God. The Father is fully God. According to scriptures the Father is declared to be God, 1 Corinthians 8-6. Yet for us there is one God, the Father. Second Corinthians 1-3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So clearly it's claiming the Father is God, is divine. The Father has all the attributes of God. 1 Peter 1-2 says, according to the foreknowledge of God, our Father. The Father is the Creator of all things, which that would be impossible if he was not God. Hebrews 1-2, in these last days he has spoken by us through his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things and whom he also created the world. The Father is sovereign over all things, which this too would be impossible if the Father was not God. Luke 10-21, I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth. The Father is to be worshiped as God. Matthew 6-9, pray then like this, our Father, which is in heaven. How will be that name? The Father is to be glorified and is glorified by the Son. John 2017, I'm ascending to my Father, your Father, to my God and your God. So Jesus is claiming that the Father is God. And most people do not disclaim that, but our Jehovah will witness his friends. They say, well, that Jesus is not God, but this is not true either. The Son is fully God. One, the Son is declared to be God. Isaiah 9-6, it says, unto us a child is born, to us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, mighty God. Titus 2-13, we're waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. How much clearer do you need? 1 John 5-20, and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true, and we are in him who is true. In his Son, Jesus Christ, he is the true God in eternal life. Bible is not trying to hide this. The Son Himself, Jesus Christ claims to be God. Jesus said in John 8-58, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am Jehovah, I am Yahweh, I am, I am Lord. He calls Himself by the name of God. The Son allows others to call him God. John 20-28, Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God. If Jesus is not God, he's committing blasphemy. Why would he allow Thomas to call him God? But he receives us. He says, blessed are thou. You see because you believe that I'm God because you see, but blessed are those who believe I'm God who do not see. Jesus Christ possesses all the attributes of God. He's eternal. Isaiah 9-6 says he's everlasting. John 1-1 says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. The Son is all-powerful. Isaiah 9-6, he calls him the mighty God. Revelation 4-8 says, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. He is the Son and he's all-knowing. In John 21-17, they said, this Bible says, Lord, you know all things. How could that be if he's not God? The Son is creator of all things. John 1-3, all things were made through him, and without him there was nothing that was made. The Son has power to forgive sins. And that's why they wanted to stone him. He says, Jesus says, your sins be forgiven. How could he have done that? Somebody wrongs my wife, Letha. And I go up to the person who did that, so I forgive you. What do I have to do with it? My wife has to forgive this person. This person didn't offend me. He offended my wife. We offended God and God alone. How can Jesus say, your sins be forgiven you if he's not declaring himself God with the power to forget? The Son is worshiped by angels and by men as God. Hebrews 1-6 says, and again, he brings the firstborn into the Word and he says, let all God's angels worship him. And the Son is glorified by the Father as God. John 8-54, Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing, is my Father who glorifies me. John 17-5, and now, Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. So Jesus Christ according to the scriptures is God of God. The third is the Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is declared to be God in 1 Corinthians 12-4-6. The Holy Spirit has all the attributes of God. He's eternal, Hebrews 9-14. He is omnipresent, Psalms 139-7. The Spirit is all-knowing, 1 Corinthians 2-10. The Holy Spirit is Creator of all things, Psalms 104-30. The Holy Spirit is sovereign over all things, Romans 15-19. The Holy Spirit is worshiped as God in Matthew 12-31. You see, all this is said about the Holy Spirit. This means that each person is co-eternal and co-equal in power and glory. The Church Father, Augustine says, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, each of these by himself is God. At the same time, they are all one God. Each of them by himself is complete substance, and yet they are one substance. Because there's only one essence in the Godhead, and because each of the three persons fully subsists in that one essence, there are not three all-powerful beings, but there's only one all-powerful being. But each person is co-equal in power, eternity, and glory. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are co-eternal, co-equal without the slightest deviation in their essence. The Father is fully God, auto-theos. The Son is fully God, auto-theos. And the Holy Spirit is fully God, auto-theos. And thus the Athanation Creed says, we worship one God in trinity, and trinity and unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. Isn't that amazing? Neither confounding the persons. We don't mix the persons together and blend them into one. There is true ultimate diversity. We're not trying to make the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one thing. They remain distinct and diverse from all eternity past, but yet there are one in substance. For there's no, though there's one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and the Holy Spirit is all one. The glory equal, the majesty co-eternal, such as the Father is, such as the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal. Amen. That is the biblical doctrine of trinity. It could be explained through these three pillars. One God, three persons, and each person are fully God. Now, my last point, and this is where it gets good. Why do we need to be trinitarian? Why is all non-trinitarian worldviews incomplete or inconsistent? The trinity is a necessary precondition for knowledge in all knowledge. We must be we must be trinitarian. The problem with non-trinitarian religions, such as Islam, and Islam is what we call unitarian monotheism. Yeah, they are monotheists, but they're unitarian monotheists because they don't believe that the Godhead has more than one person. It's one essence, one person. But I'm going to show you, I hope to show you, how that is self-defeating. First of all, in the Quran, Surah 39, 4 says, He is Allah, the One. But this does not mean one in number according to Muslim scholars. For one in number would imply that there is a second. However, the Arabic word ahad, which means the negation of any number, according to Vincent Cornell, the director of King Fraud Center of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas. I like the fact that he's from the University of Arkansas. He says, God is One. I'm talking about Allah. Allah is One in the sense that there is no multiplicity or division conceivable in Him. There's no diversity at all. We believe that there's diversity in the Godhead. He says, Not in Allah. In Him, neither outwardly, nor in the mind, nor in the imagination, God alone possesses such unity. In God, all there is is just this unity with no form of divisions, no form of differentiation. So everything that God is, is simply who He is without any differentiation. Well, this means that Allah is unknowable. And that's what Muslims would say. Such a view of God's oneness without any diversity means that there can be no divisions or differentiation, not just in His essence, but also within His mind. If God is not triune, then Muslims are right. There is no grounds for any distinctions at all within God. But without any inherent distinctions, all His attributes would be meshed together into one single attribute. However, if all His attributes were one without any distinction or differentiation, this brings in a huge problem. It means that there's no way that we can know Him. What does it mean to say God is love? If God's love is one and the same and identical with God's wrath? And what would God's wrath mean if it was one and identical with His knowledge? And what would knowledge mean if it is one and identical with His mercy? See, if all things are blended together and ultimately all unified and become identical, that means we don't know what love is. What is love? Well, we don't know. We know what love is by looking at the opposite. But if the opposite is the same as love, then it seems to be anything that we can put any knowledge on at all. Terms describing God would cease to mean anything if they can mean everything. Without distinctions within God, John Calvin says, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains to the exclusion of the true God. Boss says this, may we also say that God's attributes are not distinguished from one another? This is extremely risky. Once you say His attributes cannot be distinguished from each other. We may be content to say that all of God's attributes are related most closely to each other and penetrate each other in the most intimate unity. However, this is not the same as to say that they are identical with one another. Also in God, for example, love and righteousness are not the same thing. Although they function together perfectly in complete harmony, we may not let everything endelmingle into a pantheistic way because that would end our objective knowledge of God. That's why Calvin says, if Allah or God is just this one single thing that you can't identify, then we can't know Him. B. B. Warfield commenting on Calvin says, according to Calvin then, it must be seen that there can be no such thing as a unitary monotheistic God. The idea of multi-formity enters into the very notion of God. That is, if we're going to understand God, there must be some diversity. There must be some differentiation within Him. But the great Islamic scholar of the 12th century says this, Al Ghazali, the end result of the knowledge of this unity is that the inability to know God and any knowledge in truth is no knowledge at all. So in Islamic studies and also in the crown, the go is for us not to know God. And if you can't know God, there's no relationship with God. But if God is this unknowable unity without any diversity, then this means Allah cannot love. Robert Lethem says, only a God who is triune can be personal and only the Holy Trinity can love. Think about this. Allah is all by himself. Let's pretend he can think, which he can't even think. But let's for now, just like he's thinking and he's self-aware, it's hard to think of a complete unity being able to even think. What would he think about? Because there's no distinctions in his thoughts. So really, he can't think. But let's pretend he can think, all is up there thinking. Well, how can he love? And if he can't love, how can he be righteous? Do you know righteousness stands upon the fact that there are more than one person? Think about the Ten Commandments, just love God and love your neighbors. But if you exist by yourself and no one else, there's no God, there's no friends, there's no neighbors, not even a dog. And you're just by yourself in this empty blank space. How can you lie? How can you steal? How can you covet? How can you hate? You can't. You can't hate. You can't transgress. But you can't love either. You see, Michael Reeves in his wonderful book, The Lighting in the Trinity, which I highly recommend. He says if God is a single person and has always been alone, why should he speak in his loneliness of eternity before creation? Who would he have spoken to? And why would he start now? The habit of keeping to himself would run deep. Such a God would be far more likely to remain unknown. And C.S. Lewis says all sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that God is love, but they seem not to notice that the words God is love has no real meaning unless God contains at least two persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. And if God was a single person, then before the world was, he was not love. All is not love. It cannot be love. He doesn't love his followers, nor can he love his followers. Jonathan Edwards says it appears that there must be more than a unity in the infinite and internal essence. Otherwise, the goodness of God can have no perfect exercise. To be perfectly good is to incline to and delight in making another happy in the same proportion as it is happy itself. That is to delight as much in communicating happiness to another as enjoying it for himself. I love that. So this is the highest good is to take the happiness that you have and want to share with the ones you love the most. That's why I watch a movie twice. It's the only reason. I'll watch it once and I'm done unless someone hasn't seen it, right? And you want to share what you enjoyed with the ones that you enjoy. That's what God's love is. God loves you. He shares what he enjoys, which is what? The son. I love the son. The father says, I want you to love the son and enjoy what I enjoy and participate in that which I participate in. That's the highest form of love. God was a triune. How could he do that? He couldn't. Ola could not be personal like our God. Robert Liemtham says, in fact, he's the lecturer at Systematics and Historical Theology at Wells Evangelical School of Theology. This is what he says. If he were not love, he could not be personal either. And this means Ola does not enter into a personal relationship with us nor can he. But sadly, this is where it becomes all self-defeating. They believe that the Quran is the revelation of Ola. But if they're right about Ola, Ola can't speak. If there's no differentiation within God, then there cannot be any differentiation in the mind of God. Consequently, without God being able to distinguish between various thoughts and attributes as in monastic pantheism, God would be utterly unknowable even to himself. In fact, that's what Aristotle says about God. We cannot know him. He's this unmoved mover. But neither does God know himself. If God can distinguish his knowledge from any of his acts of power, it would be impossible for him to reveal himself to man. And this is why Jonathan Edwards says that the divine revelation is rooted in the doctrine of the Trinity. If there's no Trinity, then God cannot speak. He cannot communicate because there needs to be diversity or distinctions within the mind of God. And if God is this mesh of unity without distinctions, he doesn't know wrath from law. And if he doesn't know that or can't distinguish that in his mind, how is he going to reveal that? How is he going to speak? Speaking by its very nature is taking bits of stuff and separating it from other bits of stuff and communicating to us in a way that we comprehend. God is all that is impossible for him to do such a thing. Well, God intrinsically, that is, in this intrinsic Trinity, in the ontological Trinity, in the fact that God has always been a communicative God. That's who he is because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit from all eternity have been speaking. How they've been speaking? Because they've been speaking to one another. And because that's who he is by his very essence in nature, he's capable of revealing things to us. He's capable to speak to us who are made in his image. Thus, communication necessitates that, our divine revelation necessitates that God is triune, that God is able to speak. Thus, the Cron says it's the revelation of God. But their God cannot reveal. We need the Trinity. But let me conclude with this. Not only does the Cron have a misconception of the Trinity, and if this was really the revelation of Allah, would he not know what the Bible had said about the Trinity? Why would Allah craft a straw man argument? But that's what Allah did in the Cron. This represents the biblical teaching of the Trinity. We don't believe Mary's God. But more than that, their God is impartial, unrelatable, unknowable, and unloving. Aren't you glad for the Trinity? Here's my closing exhortation. Shame on us if we don't pursue God with all of our heart, mind, and soul. Shame on us if we do not delight in the Trinity. Shame on us if we're not trying to grow, not just in obedience, but her obedience is driven and motivated out of love, out of love to be with Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit, and enjoy that mutual, glorious relationship. He prayed for that. The highest thing that we may go to glory and enter into a perfect, without sin, without covetousness, without jealousy, that perfect relationship. Let's practice that now. Let's grow in that now. Let's love God with all of our heart, with all of our mind and soul, and let's love each other. Let's love each other less. We love ourselves because we're made for relationships, and only Christianity provides that. Let's go, Lord, in prayer. God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we love you and we're thankful for you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for bringing us into a relationship with you. I pray, dear Lord, for those who may be here that is outside of that relationship that does not know you, that is alienated from you because of their sins. Dear Lord, I pray that they would see how their sins have separated them from you. Lord, I pray that they in Christ would repent, repent and come crawling to you. We're thankful, dear Lord, that you allow us to have a relationship with you. This we pray in your Son's name.