Welcome to the resource page for our Sunday service May 31, 2020. Click below to go to our Youtube Live stream which will be live at 10:25 with service start at 10:30am. 

One Father

Deuteronomy 6:4

Questions for Children (or anyone else)

Deuteronomy 6:4
Trinitarian: One Father
May 31 2020

Click here for: Trinity VI Children's Worksheet

Draw a picture of Isaac Newton in or outside his manor watching an apple fall from an apple tree.

What two major definitions are there of the word "unity"?

The Father represents _______________. The Spirit represents ______________.

When and where does the book of Deuteronomy take place?

Does the "one" in the Shema refer to togetherness-unity, or singularity-unity?

Trinitarian perspective on the Shema:

  1. God:   _______________ : everyone knows there is a Creator (Rom 1:19-20)
  2. _______________ : Particularity : among the "gods" there is one who is unique (1 Cor 8:4-6), reveals His name, and saves
  3. One: ________________ : this unique god is above all others and alone truly God (Isa 43:10)

Which persons of the Trinity are emphasized in:

  1. The Old Testament?
  2. The Gospels?
  3. After Pentecost?

When you pray, you can pray to any Person of the Trinity. However, unless there is a particular reason to pray to the Son or Holy Spirit (and there may be many!), direct your prayers to the Heavenly Father.

 

Sermon Text

Deuteronomy 6:1–9 (ESV)

1“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it,

2that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.

3Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

4“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

6And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

7You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

8You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

9You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

A Little Deeper

Hilary of Poitiers (310-367) is my favorite Church Father on the Trinity. I think his reflections are slightly more faithful to the biblical text than Augustine, though there is much in Augustine I appreciate as well. Not only is there is a biblical faithfulness there, but Hilary can be a phenomenal writer too. Consider this passage on the Father and how for Hilary the Father is primarily (or normatively) God in way that the Son and the Spirit are not. [Note: don't misunderstand the word "primarily" here, as I use it. The Son and Spirit are fully God. In the sermon I explain at more length how the phrase "One God" is predicated of the Father, but never of the Son or Spirit. These distinctions are difficult and even dangerous, but helpful.]

6. It is the Father to Whom all existence owes its origin. In Christ and through Christ He is the source of all. In contrast to all else He is self-existent. He does not draw His being from without, but possesses it from Himself and in Himself. He is infinite, for nothing contains Him and He contains all things; He is eternally unconditioned by space, for He is illimitable; eternally anterior to time, for time is His creation. Let imagination range to what you may suppose is God’s utmost limit, and you will find Him present there; strain as you will there is always a further horizon towards which to strain. Infinity is His property, just as the power of making such effort is yours. Words will fail you, but His being will not be circumscribed. Or again, turn back the pages of history, and you will find Him ever present; should numbers fail to express the antiquity to which you have penetrated, yet God’s eternity is not diminished. Gird up your intellect to comprehend Him as a whole; He eludes you. God, as a whole, has left something within your grasp, but this something is inextricably involved in His entirety. Thus you have missed the whole, since it is only a part which remains in your hands; nay, not even a part, for you are dealing with a whole which you have failed to divide. For a part implies division, a whole is undivided, and God is everywhere and wholly present wherever He is. Reason, therefore, cannot cope with Him, since no point of contemplation can be found outside Himself and since eternity is eternally His. This is a true statement of the mystery of that unfathomable nature which is expressed by the Name ‘Father:’ God invisible, ineffable, infinite. Let us confess by our silence that words cannot describe Him; let sense admit that it is foiled in the attempt to apprehend, and reason in the effort to define. Yet He has, as we said, in ‘Father’ a name to indicate His nature; He is a Father unconditioned.Hilary of Poitiers, “On the Trinity,” in St. Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. E. W. Watson et al., vol. 9a, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1899), 53–54.

Songs for singing and listening to. Use them to reflect on before or after the sermon. 

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