Dear Church Family,

This month I ask you to pray, serve, invite, and or bring stuff for our Vacation Bible School. This is a precious time with our children and the Gospel is shared. I’m so grateful for our staff and volunteers who transform our campus into a wonderland! Speaking of transforming our campus, please pray for our renovation of our preschool wing. I think it will make a huge difference as we reach young families. We have had over $500,000 given and we’d love to have $500,000 more to pay it off. Will you seek the LORD and ask Him what amount you might give? This is a great investment for the Kingdom!

Wesley Huff is an up-and-coming theologian from Canada I recommend to you. I listened to Wesley Huff share the following about the Trinity (I’m also so thankful for Pastor Malcolm and his great knowledge of the Trinity) and thought this would encourage you all—

The Father is called Yahweh God, the Spirit is called Yahweh God, and Jesus is called Yahweh God. There’s only one Yahweh. They eventually come up with this language of being, and being describes what you are. Person describes who you are. It’s what philosophers called ontological status. God is Yahweh. And we see this in the sense that Jesus tells His disciples to go baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is given the honors, the attributes, the names the deeds and the seat of God. The Spirit is given the honors, the attributes, the names of the deeds and the seat of God. And the Father is given the honors, the attributes, the names of the deeds and the seat of God. Yet, there’s only one God. How do we understand this? The ancient Jews understood that God is complex within His unity, and that God can rule and reign in Heaven, and yet the Ark of the Covenant could still have God’s presence. And we even see examples when, before Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham is met by three individuals, two that are identified as angels and one that is identified as Yahweh God. The angels go off to Sodom and Gomorrah to find Lot and his family. Abraham dialogues with Yahweh. Eventually, Abraham leaves. And then in Genesis 19, it has this really interesting passage where it says that Yahweh on Earth rains fire and brimstone from Yahweh in Heaven. But, you only have one Yahweh. So what’s going on there? Well, we would say within a Christian framework, this is the pre-Incarnate Christ. This is the complex unity. And even early on in rabbinical Judaism, there’s a concept of the Shekinah glory, which is the presence above the ark while God is ruling and reigning in Heaven. God is complex within His unity, yet only one God. But there’s something else going on there that maybe we don’t fully understand, but then is teased out in its fullness in the New Testament with the Son, which is a title of familiarity. It’s not like a birth son, but the Father and the Son; those are kinship terms, but they have existed in a set of living, loving relationships. It has always been three, and they’ve existed eternally as three.

Press on,

Mark