In the sermon titled 'Grace and Peace from the Triune God,' Douglas Campbell explores the opening verses of Revelation 1:4-8, focusing on the greeting of grace and peace from the triune God to the seven churches in Asia. He emphasizes the eternal nature of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, explaining that while humans have a beginning, the divine does not. The sermon delves into the concept of the Trinity, a foundational doctrine in Christianity, asserting that it is crucial for understanding salvation. Campbell warns against altering the doctrine of the Trinity, such as by adopting modalism, which misrepresents the distinct persons of the Godhead. He highlights that the Father decrees salvation, the Son accomplishes it, and the Holy Spirit applies it. The sermon concludes by affirming the love of the triune God for His people and the importance of teaching this foundational truth to future generations.

This morning. If you would turn with me this morning to the book of Revelation. This morning I'm going to read chapter 1 verses 4 through 8 and look to look specifically this morning at verses 4 and 5. It's Revelation chapter 1 verses 4 through 8. Actually could we change something this morning?

Could we all stand for the reading of God's word? The word of God says, John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom, priest to His God and Father. To Him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him. All the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him even so amen I am the Alpha and the Omega says the Lord God who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word this morning.

Thank you for your truth. Thank you for your sovereignty and for your lordship. Thankful, Father, we are thankful to know the one true God. Father, this morning, as we ponder your word, would your Holy Spirit give us insight and understanding? Would you give us wisdom?

The Father, we might glorify you in our lives in the way we understand, in the way we worship, in the way we live out your truth. For your glory alone we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. You can be seated.

This morning first let's look at Revelation chapter 1 verse 4. It says, John to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who were before his throne. We start this address to the seven churches that are in Asia. This address is to the seven, they would be the main churches in Asia. In modern day, this would be the area of Turkey.

These seven churches are in the cities that would be considered to us maybe like the county seat. So they are the heart of the community. It began, the church began there in Ephesus and then was spread to these county seats, or that's really a modern day term for it, but was spread to the surrounding main cities in that area. And John writes a letter to these seven churches. He starts the letter by saying, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come." He addresses this first saying grace and peace to you from the eternal father, God the Father who had no beginning, who had and who has no end.

He is separate from you and I and to rightly understand God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all are eternal, all have existed forever in the past and will exist forever into the future. They're different than you and I in this aspect, that while you and I, our souls will live forever into the future. They had a beginning in the past. You and I would call that our, I guess on earth, we would call that our birthday. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit have no birthday because they are eternal beings.

Now oftentimes we celebrate at Christmas time, we would say this is the birth of Christ. It actually isn't the birth of Christ as far as his, who he is, his existence. It's simply the first day that he took on the flesh and dwelt among us. Amen. We know that Jesus existed in the Old Testament.

Jesus existed in the creation. Jesus existed forever in eternity with the Father in the past. He is the eternal Father. Next in the text we come to it says grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne. This seven spirits, as we go back into the Old Testament, we have this correlation between the lampstand and the same understanding that the lampstand was a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

And in the book of Revelation, we come to certain numbers and different symbolisms and things like this. We know that there isn't seven different Holy Spirits, but what John is telling us here is he's making reference to symbols in the Old Testament, but he's also saying this number means in the completeness of, And so before the throne of God is the completeness of the Holy Spirit. So at this throne we have God the Father, the eternal God. We have the Holy Spirit. And next as we read in verse 5 it says, And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings on earth, to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood." The first thing that we see about Jesus Christ is John refers to Him as the faithful witness.

Jesus Christ, God the Son, came to earth to take upon the flesh to bear witness to the Godhead, to bear witness to the Father. He is the perfect witness. He's not appearing through dreams, He's not appearing through feelings. He is coming to earth to dwell among us. In fact, testifying to his faithful witness, we find in John 1 where John refers to him as the word, the outright revelation, the picture, the actuality, the flawless word of God, that as Jesus Christ displays to us who God is, we see in him the perfection of the revelation.

He is the faithful witness. Next, John refers to him as the firstborn of the dead. And in the Old Testament, and we have to, when we read this, we can, in our minds, we can start to think, well, Jesus wasn't the firstborn living person ever. And if we would interpret it that way, it's actually, that is correct, he's not. But in the Old Testament we understood principles and we saw how the firstborn in the family had the double blessing from the father.

When there came to be an inheritance, if Brody and Connor and Sam were going to inherit from their family, then traditionally Connor, it would be divided up, there's three boys, they would divide it up into four, and the oldest boy would get double what the other two got individually. As we continue down that line and not to take a lot of time here, we begin to understand that first born of the dead simply meant that this firstborn took preeminence. He was of the highest stature. That Jesus, when he took upon the flesh, He had the highest stature of anyone to ever take upon the flesh. Now obviously we don't take upon the flesh the same way that He did.

That Jesus Christ though He was in the flesh and He was fully man while he was in the flesh. At the very same time though, he was fully God. And he is preeminent among all who are born of the flesh. In Psalm 89, 27 it says, And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. We have a definition there.

That when it refers to Christ as the firstborn, it also refers, this refers to him as the highest of kings. And we often and rightly say he is the king of kings, and he is the Lord of lords. So this morning as we come to this text, we understand rightly, and to summarize what we just said, or what John just said, he says, grace to you and peace from God the Father, and from God the Holy Spirit, and from God the Son. We find here, as we find all throughout the text of the Holy Scriptures, we have the understanding of what we in theology would call the trinity. Now, some of you, we oftentimes, and to understand, hear this statement rightly, everything that you and I believe about salvation, the trinity is foundational to that belief.

It is different from any other religious belief system. There is no other religious belief system that has anything like this. If you remember that God is holy, holy, holy. He is separate from us. And there are times because he is so separate from us that we try to comprehend who he is and our brains can't do it.

So Rightly understand though that if you took a concordance out and you looked up the word trinity There are proponents of this that would say well the word trinity isn't even in the Bible And if you took a concordance and looked you would find they're right the word trinity isn't in the Bible But the teaching of the Trinity is all throughout it. It is foundational to a biblical belief in the one true God. Without it, you're doomed. Therefore, when we see those who would question the Trinity or warp its understanding, understand rightly, when you begin to mess with the Trinity, it's not the same as messing with whether we baptize infants or adults, or infants or born-again people. It's not the same.

If you pick apart the Trinity, you pick apart the very understanding of salvation. You question, you begin to question, is God really God? Those who would tear apart the Trinity are not just false teachers, they are wicked false teachers who are pulling people with them to the pits of hell. Because they they're giving you a different God. So as we go about understanding or looking at the Trinity this morning, that God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son are one.

They're one God in three persons. But I think it was Steve Lawson, I can't remember if he got this from someone else. He said it this way as an introduction to get you ready to understand the Trinity. He says this, he says, define the Trinity and lose your mind. Defy the Trinity and lose your soul.

So this morning understand that while we can go to the Word of God and we can see the Trinity, There are things about the Trinity that our minds just can't deal with. Why? Because God is not like us. It would be the same as trying to explain to a dog the color green. I think dogs are colorblind aren't they?

Pretend that dogs are colorblind if they're not. Explain to them a color. They've never experienced color. Try to explain it. You can't.

And probably if, and this is getting weird, but if your dog could talk back to you, they would think you were crazy if you started to tell them, well there's different colors out there. Can't you tell? When you're, when you're, this is really going bad, but you kids are listening, right? When your dog is driving and comes to a red and green light, and you'd say, you drive on the green one, and he would say, there's one shade of gray, and there's the other shade of gray. Sometimes in that weird illustration, It's our problem with our minds comprehending the Trinity.

It's something outside of us. It's something we've never experienced apart from the one true God, apart from what he has revealed to us in Scripture. So again, define the Trinity and lose your mind. Defy the Trinity and lose your soul. Though we don't understand it completely, I believe there will be a time when we are with our Lord and Savior that we will understand it infinitely better.

But we must wrestle with it and we must defend it because apart from it we don't worship the one true God. So there are some who do try to summarize the Trinity, and this is a good summary, I think. They say the doctrine of the Trinity can be summarized in seven statements. The first is there is only one God. The second, the Father is God.

The third, the Son is God. The fourth, the Holy Spirit is God. The fifth, The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is not the Father.

Again, we serve the one true God who is in three different persons. So with this understanding that this is a hard topic, I wanted to look at how did the reformers break it down so that young people could understand this better. I went to the Westminster Catechism and question eight, the question says, are there more gods than one? The answer is there is but one only, the living and true God. This is one of the things that made it harder for the Israelites to come to faith in Christ.

Because they're troubled, one of the, not stumbling blocks, but one of the things that made that hard for them is they understood well that there is only one God. And when Christ would say that He is God, If they didn't understand well the depth of God, what's their reaction? Grab a stone. This guy claimed to be God. There's only one God.

There's not multiple gods. He's not God because he's not God. He's a person. And so they grab their stones. They get this from some of the foundational teachings of the Old Testament.

And I would encourage you to even memorize this. This is foundational to the Israelites, this is foundational to the Jewish people, this is foundational to your belief system found in Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 4 through 9. It says, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." This was so foundational to the Jewish people that I think even today most of them would have this this text somewhere within their house reminding them that the Lord our God is one. And reminding them, as we see the summary of the first commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might. And foundational even further, that you teach this to your children.

So there are some that would say of us, You guys put way too much emphasis on getting men to teach their children. And I would say that's foundational to the scripture. That's connected to the text. That's the foundation of the Jewish faith. That's the foundation of the Christian faith.

That our God is one. That we are to love him with all of our hearts all of our souls with all of our mights and we're to teach this to our children it was it was really I was blessed by what brother Jim said in Sunday school Moses wasn't gone very long and the whole camp has already turned because they got away from the Word of God. He wasn't gone for generations. He wasn't gone for centuries. He wasn't even gone for years.

Absent of the word of God, people fall away. And if you think that because your child comes to church, we actually don't have children Sunday school anymore, but if you think that your child goes to church and goes to Sunday school, and colors a picture of Noah's Ark, that that is going to have any sort of deterrent towards where the world is going to drag them. You're an ostrich with your head in the sand. It's not going to work. We are blessed in this church with men who teach their children the word of God.

They take it seriously. If you don't and you think the church is going to give them enough, You're fooling yourself. It doesn't take long. The foundational is the Lord or God is one. Now look what in John chapter 10 verses 24 through 30 says, so the Jews gathered around him and said to him, how long will you keep us in suspense?

If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. And Jesus answered them, I told you and you did not believe the works that I do in my father's The works that I do in my father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand." Now look what Jesus tells the Jewish people in this next verse, I and the Father are One. Jesus is pointing out to them, you're getting upset because you think that I'm claiming to be God.

What's upsetting you is that you know There is only one God, but you don't understand our triune nature. I'm not a second God. I am the Father, our one. We are one God. I wasn't born 33 years ago or 32 or 30 wherever we're at here.

I existed at the foundation of creation. I existed before creation. I am a father, are one. We are the triune God. Now next question nine, How many persons are there in the Godhead?

There are three persons in the Godhead the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost and these three are one true eternal God the same in substance Equal in power and in glory although distinguished by their personal properties in Second Corinthians 13 14 It says the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. We see that Paul ends his letter again reminding the Church of the Trinity, the triune God, the one God who is in three persons. In Matthew 28 19, Jesus says, go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Again, foundational to our church, foundational to the Church of Christ, and ordinance of the Church. One of the things that we are commanded to do is we are commanded to baptize.

And the formula for this ordinance is that we baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And we could spend some time going off of where some people will warp this and they'll see later in the text where it'll say to baptize them in Jesus' name. When it says that it's not the formula, They are telling them to do this in their Christ name. The formula is always to bring us back to remembering the triune God, the one triune God. Now there are those, and I didn't want to make this crazy academic.

I try not to. But there are those who would say, they would have a wrong understanding. They would say that God isn't three persons and one God. God is one person who will take on three different people at different, or three different persons, but only one at any given time. We call this modalism, and this word and Greek word and all this stuff, it comes back to, if you remember way back when, they used to do these plays, and oftentimes they would have actors come and, and, and I'm butchering this a little bit, but they'd have actors come and put on these plays and they'd have one actor play several different parts.

And I can't remember. R.C. Scroll talks of one that he saw when he was young about the book of Job. And Job and, I think Job and Satan were both played by the same person. It's just that when he was a different character, he put a different mask on.

And that's where I was getting to. They would play out these plays, and depending on who they were, they would have a different mask for that character. Or in a sense, they would have a different mode. Modalism says this of God, that God isn't three persons, He's just three different modes. He is the same person.

But that's not what scripture teaches. In fact, we can disprove this quite easily by turning to Matthew chapter 3, 13 through 17. It says, Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, Let it be so, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented.

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went out from the water, and behold, the heavens were open to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." How is this destroyed? How does this defeat modalism very quickly? Well, it defeats it for the same reason why, and this is I'm trying not to be silly, but you kids might understand this better, you never see Clark Kent and Superman at the same time. Right?

Maybe that's too old of a, I don't know, newer superheroes. But why? Because Clark Kent is Superman. He just has different modes. But you never see him at the same time because it's not possible that the same person.

When we look to the baptism of Christ, we see the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. We see the Son coming out of the water and we hear the Father saying, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Now why is this why is this important? If we don't understand the If we don't understand the Trinity correctly, we can begin to pit God against Himself. We can begin to have, we can have a false understanding that it's the wrath of God the Father that Jesus had to come and he had to rescue us from.

In a sense, Jesus is working against the Father because He has chosen some that He's going to save and to protect. Friends, Jesus doesn't protect any of us from the Father. In the Old Testament, when we saw the wrath of God, Christ was intimately apart. In the New Testament, when we see that Christ died for his church, and there are some whom he has called who will come to faith in him. And the wrath of the father was poured out upon his son.

This loving kindness towards you was not just from Christ. It was completely, a hundred percent all of it from the triune God who has set His love upon you. There is no pitting against. In fact, when we look at the illustration of marriage and the relationship between Christ and His Church, the Trinity is what we are to look to, even for our marriages. Our marriages should reflect Trinity.

It should be a relationship between a husband and a wife and God, whom are completely glorifying the Father. The Father doesn't argue with the Son. The Son doesn't argue with the Father. They are of one purpose. They are of one will.

And they are accomplishing it. We so often think of, and where this begins to fall apart, and where we begin to look at people, not just as false teachers, but snakes who are leading people to hell. When you start to pit the father against the son, you start to say foolish things like, we need to unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament. This is a result of a very, a complete lack of understanding of the Trinity. And these teachers who call themselves Christians, they aren't just trying to make the Bible more relevant for the culture.

They're destroying the Word of God itself. Most notoriously, many of you would know, Andy Stanley has not only said this, but has seemingly doubled down on this. He is not a biblical Christian. He is as the serpent. If you destroy the Trinity, you destroy salvation.

The Trinity is foundational to salvation. Now look in the New Testament, when we do this, when we try to separate the Father from the Son, we try to say, well, the Father was the the King of the Old Testament, and the Son is the King of the New Testament, and it's two different things, and in a sense, two different gods. This is all false. It's the same God. You need the Old Testament.

You can find salvation in the Old Testament. You can't, there are much of the New Testament, you can't even understand apart from the Old Testament. We're in one of the primary books of this. You cannot understand revelations separated from the Old Testament. You just can't.

But when we make this separation and we start to say things, well the God of the Old Testament was angry and Jesus is nice. We throw out things like Jesus was in the burning bush. Jesus was involved in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus was involved in creating the Grand Canyon. In the New Testament we see Jesus help us to better understand the word love, but we only have to jump to Revelation 1911 and we see a completely different Jesus than most people are willing to preach about.

It says that I saw heaven open and behold a white horse the one sitting on it called faithful and true and in righteousness he judges and makes war. The Jesus whom we want to warp and say he's all about love and he doesn't care about what you do, he just he just wants to love you up, that Jesus is completely contradictory to the one who judges and makes war. So which one is correct? It's the Jesus who is the triune God, and He accomplishes His purposes. In John 6, 37 through 40, it says, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me and This is the will of Him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all That he has given me but raise it up on the last day For this is the will of my father that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day salvation is a triune God working to accomplish his will It's not one person pitted against another. In fact, the triune God is, again, it is foundational to our understanding of salvation. How is it applied? Well, we understand by the text that the Father, as we just read, the Father decreed salvation. The Father is the Elector.

The Father originates, He has originated salvation to His will. The Father decreed it, salvation originated with the Father. Next the Son, God the Son, accomplished it. Salvation is brought to fruition in the Son by dying upon the cross, by taking the wrath of the Father that you deserved upon Himself. And finally the Holy Spirit applies it.

Salvation is communicated by the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit that enacts and gives you repentance and gives you a new heart and changes your heart. Changes, we talked about that on Wednesday, He doesn't change your physical heart, but He changes who you are. He changes your emotions. He changes what's important to you.

He grants you a change in direction to one who is an enemy of God, to one who now loves God and loves his law. Salvation is an act of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They're in it together. If you're in Christ, you are blessed among all people because the love of the triune God has been given to you. What a blessing, amen.

Now, Again, back to the beginning, our minds can't comprehend one God in three persons, but it's what the text says, it's what it teaches, it's what we must believe. Anything apart from it hits God against himself, destroys the harmony, destroys his perfection. It's not the God of the… God of Scripture. The God of scripture. If it's not the God of scripture, he cannot save you.

Because he is yet just another idol. Amen. Coming back again, in conclusion, Revelation one, four through five, John to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth, to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood. Friends, when you read this text, if you understand it?

It should make you feel like you just won a hundred lotteries. To Him who loves us. To him who loves us. The triune God loves his people. And It's It's better than a game.

It's better than a football game It's better than a baseball game. It's better than fishing. It's better than camping in the woods in a booth It's definitely better than all of that. Because God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, regardless of the situation you find yourself in today, He has demonstrated that he loves you. He's been kind to you.

And if you're not in Christ, if you think all of these other things of the world are better than that, Repent. Repent because He has been kind. Repent because He will bestow His love upon all who turn to Christ in repentance and faith. The King of kings and the Lord of lords, the God of creation will adopt you to be his child. Doesn't get better than that.

Doesn't get better than that, amen? Amen, let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you. Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you that you bestow your love upon those on us who are not worthy.

Thank you that you're, though we can't understand everything about you, we know that you are holy, holy, holy. That you're not like us. Though when we search our hearts, we know exactly who we are. And yet at the foundation, in eternity past, the one true God chose to bestow His love on His people. Father, may your wellness or your kindness do just as your text says.

May your kindness draw us to repentance. May your kindness cause us to run to you, the triune God who loves us. Father, Father, may we ever be reminded and even bind it upon our doorsteps and put it in our homes. It's a hero, Israel. The Lord our God is one.

We might love you with all of our hearts, our minds, our souls and our strength. That we might teach our children of the one true triune God who has been kind above all comprehension. Would you draw us near, in Christ's name, Amen.