IT'S IMPORTANT WHAT YOU BELIEVE | THE TRINITY

Pastor Dustin Woolam | Recorded January 4, 2026

TLDR Summary

Pastor Dustin Woolam teaches that the Trinity is the core of the Christian faith and is what makes it unique among all other religions,. He uses the analogy of a shadow being a "two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object" to explain that our language only provides "shadows" of a God who exists beyond our comprehension,,.

He emphasizes that while there is only one God, He exists as three persons—not three people or three separate parts—who share a singular name and essence. Rejecting historical heresies such as Modalism and Arianism, he asserts that there was never a time when the Son or the Holy Spirit did not exist. Drawing from the Old Testament, he identifies "hints of the Trinity" in passages where the Lord sends the Lord or the Holy Spirit is specifically mentioned.

He further explains the "hypostatic union," the truth that Jesus on earth remained 100% God while becoming 100% human, never ceasing to hold the world together even as an infant Ultimately, he encourages believers to embrace the mystery of the Trinity, allowing the incomprehensible nature of God to turn into praise rather than despair.

TRANSCRIPT

Here's the thing about the Trinity, it's easier to say what you can't say than to say what you can. Most of the important things about God, we have to see in Scripture and kind of see how God talks about Himself. I heard a description of the Trinity and us trying to explain it that I really like and then we're going to start reading and do the anatomy. If there's enough light for you to do this, it's kind of well lit from multiplying those. But if you imagine your shadow, right, of your hands,. So if you look and there's a shadow or you're outside and there's a shadow of a car, a shadow is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, right? Can we understand that? So some shadows can have more or less detail depending on how the sun falls, it could be longer, it could be shorter, it could be right under you. But this shadow tells us that there's a three-dimensional object that exists with only two dimensions. And so, if you watch the Marvel movies, I'm about to like either give you some information you didn't know or you already knew,. A Tesseract is not a thing in the Marvel movies. A Tesseract is a three-dimensional shadow of what a four-dimensional cube would look like. We can't see in four dimensions, but we can imagine what that shadow might be. And so when we try to describe God, the best that we can do is shadows. We are not going to understand this because we're not God. So I just want to let you off the hook right now that you don't have to fully comprehend this,.

However, it's clearly taught in the scriptures and it's imperative to be a Christian to believe this. The Trinity is core to the Christian faith. So he talked about modalism, modalism is. When we talk about it, some modalism says there's one God who in the Old Testament was the Father during the New Testament, he was the Son, and now he's the Spirit, but it's one God showing up four different ways. Heresy can't believe that,. That's not Christianity. That's something else. Then he talked about Aryanism, which is to say that there was a time when the Son was not, right? There was the Father, and then later we had the Son, or even later we had the Spirit. And so we have these breakdowns. That's also what we call heresy. What is heresy? Heresy is something that's opposed to Christianity. Or whatever, you know, the Muslims are whoever they have their own heresies,. But what we would say is heresy is something opposed to Christianity. So the Bible tells us that there is never a time that the Son did not exist. There was never a time that the Holy Spirit did not exist. So we have all of these breakdowns, all of these potential holes here that to be a Christian you must believe the Trinity.

And so we're going to talk about what the Bible says we have to believe. There are a ton, a ton of words that theologians will use that frankly aren't really super helpful,. You're going to have to get a dictionary. So I'm going to ignore those words. But if you're interested in like the theological nuts and bolts and crunching this, I'll recommend some books to you or some videos. And you can get started if you want to know more about this. Deuteronomy 6, let's see, verse 4. We're going to, here's the other, I'm going to start with this. It is absolutely critical that we understand two things. Thing number one, that we only have one God,. We say Father, we say Son, we say Spirit, but we have one God. And here's a distinction that matters: He is three persons. He is not three people. So the Father, the Son, the Spirit are persons, the Father, the Son, the Spirit are not people. So we'll talk about this a little bit in depth, but that's where we're starting.

So Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4. We'll be familiar with this. It says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one". And so God says this is how you have to teach your kids about me,. And then we're going to go to Matthew and then the rest of our reading will be in the Old Testament. Matthew 28, here's a fun thing. We're familiar, hopefully, with a great commission where Jesus says go into all the world. I'm going to read it, Matthew 28 verse 16. Then the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me",. Listen to this part, starting in verse 19: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you". And surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age. Here's the thing to notice, baptizing them in the name. That's a singular name in Greek. So the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Greek tells us He's one.

So we see three persons and we see one God. We don't see three people. We're not partialists, right? We don't have three clover, three leaf clover. We don't have the three parts of an egg. We don't have all this stuff. We don't have the Father is part of God, the Holy Spirit is part of God, and Jesus is part of God. We have the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are God, right? So if we have just a little bit of space in our head, the thing that's helpful about the Trinity is what we can't say,. So I cannot say that the Father is God without also saying that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God or else I'm wrong. Now why is all this matter? Right? Why aren't we talking about this? Why I'm going to take in the Sunday to talk about the Trinity? Because it's one of the many things, vital things that makes Christianity distinct from every other religion. We have, in Christianity, a couple of things that are very distinct. We have a God who became human and then died for us so that we could be with God,. That's unique to Christianity. Christianity has a God who, all by himself, with no effort at all, having always existed, made everything. That's unique. Other religions will say they have something similar but when you really look at the nuts and bolts, the Christian creation story is unique. So when Jesus says in John 14 in the upper room, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father," he doesn't mean you've seen an example of the Father. He means you've seen the Father, right?

So let's hop over to Zechariah and Isaiah because I love showing things in the Old Testament when possible. So we'll go to Zechariah first in chapter two. When we think about, and I'm going to read a couple of creeds and confessions, on our way to Zechariah, I want to make a comment. Some of you may have noticed that I like to and prefer to quote old ancient things. I make comments about old Christianity, things being 1500 years old, when we did Advent, we talked about how old it was. There's a reason for that. Here's one of the things. First off, Paul tells us if anyone preaches a different gospel, they're anathema. There are very few things in the Bible where God's like, "No, don't pass go, don't collect $200". And Paul tells Timothy and Titus and some of his young followers, he says, "When I leave, wolves will enter and they're already among you". So Paul, in his death, and then the people like Polycarp and some of the other people right after the apostles, they're wrestling with heresies that are beginning to show up,.

In fact, the heresy of Aryanism which says that there was a time that the sun did not exist. When we talk about the Roman Empire being Christian, they were Aryans. They weren't Christians who were Trinitarian like we are. So these old things, which I'll quote towards the end, are from the 300s and the 500s because the church fathers are working out what the apostles said, they're fighting heresies and these heresies are returning to us. So you will see and you may look on the internet, you'll just buckle up, I'm going to say something,. Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons are not Christians. They're not saved. They believe in a different God, right? And so a Mormon will come to you and say, "I'm a Christian". They're like, "No, you're not". Because you believe a time that Jesus didn't exist. You believe that Yahweh, Elohim, was at one time or another just like us and became a God. The Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is not God? They're not Christians. I love them. I would love for them to become Christians. Muslims will say, "We worship the same God". They don't. They don't worship a Trinity like we do. They worship a different God and slap on a similar name.

So the reason the Trinity matters is because we have to be very crystal clear in the God that we believe in. And we want to make sure that we don't make a modern mistake where we attribute some kind of society to the Godhead, right? It's not that God's the Father and Jesus is the son and the Holy Spirit is like the Spirit,. Because then people start doing weird stuff like saying the Holy Spirit is the female part of God. That's wild. Why do people say this? I don't know. Because they don't. People want to be new. They want to be clever. They want to rework things. But we have old stuff that tells us the truth. We don't need new things. The Bible is ancient. And so in Zechariah we're going to see Paul tells us in the New Testament that if the powers and principalities and rulers had known what God was up to, that they would have not killed Jesus,. And he begins to hint at how all of God's plan was laid out in the previous writings, the Old Testament.

So we're going to see some hints of the Trinity and the Old Testament. So Zechariah, chapter 2, starting in verse 3. While the angel who was speaking to me, Zechariah, was leaving, another angel came to meet him and said to him, "Run, tell that young man Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of people and animals in it,. And I myself will be a wall of fire around it declares the Lord, and I will be its glory within". Come, come, flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord, "For I have scattered you to the four winds of heaven, declares the Lord". So notice God says he's going to be in the city. So come, Zion, escape you who live in Daughter Babylon. For this is what the Lord Almighty says, "After the glorious one has sent me, after the glorious one has sent me, against the nations that have plundered you, for whatever it touches you, touches the apple of his eye, I will surely raise my hand against them so that their slaves will plunder them,. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me". So the same voice that says, "I myself will be a wall of fire around it declares the Lord, and I will be its glory within," says the Lord has sent me. The Lord sends the Lord. How does that happen? It's hints of the Trinity.

Isaiah, we're going to be in 48. So that's left. If you have a paper Bible, that's however your menu is set up if you're digital. Isaiah 48, starting in verse 11: "For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another". Listen to me, Jacob, Israel whom I have called, "I am he, I am the first and I am the last. My own hand laid the foundations of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens. When I summon them, they all stand up together,. Come together, all you who listen, which of the idols has foretold these things? The Lord's chosen ally will carry out his purpose against Babylon. His arm will be against the Babylonians. I, even I have spoken. Yes, I have called him, I will bring him, and he will succeed in his mission. Verse 16: "Come near to me and listen to this from the first announcement I have spoken in secret. At the time it happens, I am there". And now the sovereign Lord has sent me endowed with his spirit,. So we have this further picture of God sending God. Some people would say it's maybe God sending Isaiah. That's fair if they want to argue that, but in context, it looks like God sending God.

Isaiah 63, we're going to start in verse 7, just three verses here. I will tell you the kindness of the Lord, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the Lord has done for us. Yes, the many good things he has done for Israel, according to his compassion and many kindnesses,. And he said, "Surely they are my people, children who will be true to me". And so he became their savior. In all their distress, he was too distressed. Hold on, am I right yet? In all their distress, he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy, he redeemed them, he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit,. So he turned and became their enemy, and he himself fought against them. So we see, again, they grieved his Holy Spirit. It doesn't say that he's talking about God. He could have just said, they grieved God, but it says he grieved his Holy Spirit. So we see God sending God. We see in Daniel 7, which I've read in the past, that Yahweh is on the throne, and another Yahweh figure rides the clouds. There's all of this stuff in the Old Testament about multiple Yahweh figures, existing at the same time in the same place, which is why we can begin to see the importance of Deuteronomy chapter 6,.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, is one. The Jews who are first Abraham and all the others coming after him are first introduced to God in a world that is entirely polytheistic. There are a whole bunch of gods, and nobody has a problem with any of these gods existing. Sure, you have this guy, and that guy, and there's Molech, and there's Baal, and Ashtarith, and nobody denied that any of these gods existed,. Nowadays, we could point to them, and as we have more of the Scriptures, we say, oh, those were demons who were controlling people. It's easy to make that jump, especially with the Bible. In the New Testament, there were supposed to be Zeus and all the other deities in Paul says, hey, listen, there's one true God. Part of the Jews' problems with the Romans was that they wouldn't worship another God, and so the Romans says, well, we either have to kill them all, or, all right, listen here, Jewish people, if you're not going to worship our gods, specifically the emperor, then we need you to pray for him to your one God,. Well, the Jews kind of got to pass. That's why when Christianity showed up, it was a problem, because there's now another sect that says, no, there's only one God, and the Romans are like, what are we going to do? We can't have this. We cannot have these people rejecting our gods, and that's why the Trinity matters, because the Trinity in the Christian faith, when we look at God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we don't mix words, when we say, this is who God is, what we're saying is, no other God is like him,. There's no other name by which people can be saved except for Jesus. Are there lots of other gods? Sure. You can worship the God of your stomach, you can worship Zeus or whatever you want to do, you can worship yourself and you can worship demons, but no one is like the Lord most high.

Then so, how do we parse that?, How do you explain that? Someone, how do you say that to someone? Glad you asked. I'm going to read a couple of old creeds. I'm not going to read the whole thing because they go into some more depth than what I want to get into here. So the council of Nicaea, the Nicaean creed, comes from the middle of the three hundreds, the fourth century, and it says, "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father",. I'm going to talk about that. God from God, light from light, true God from true God, but God not made of one being or essence with the Father. All right, so we can keep talking, it's going to go and talk about Jesus when we talk more about Jesus. We'll read the rest of the creed. So here's the thing, Jesus is eternally begotten. One of the things I really like about the Old King James is when you read about Jesus, it says he's the only begotten Son of God,. Some newer translations leave out begotten.

Here's how we can imagine or understand begotten. Think about standing in the dirt or on the beach if you prefer a beach or wherever it might be and your foot is in the sand. Your foot is leaving a footprint. You haven't moved it, you're just standing there and now imagine that there has never been another situation than that one situation where your foot has always been making the footprint. There's never been a time when your foot was not making a footprint. The footprint has never not existed. That's what it means when we say Jesus is eternally begotten. There's never a time that Jesus was not the Son. There's never a time when the Father was not the Father, but they never had a beginning. It's just always been that way. And so the Nicaean creed tells us that.

The Athanasian creed. So there's a guy named Athanasius who did a bunch of teaching and then shortly after a bunch of his people got together and made this creed, he wanted to say even more about the Trinity, bring some more clarity and not only that, but to make sure that we didn't forget to talk about the Holy Spirit as well,. One thing I want to point out about Athanasius, I mentioned briefly, I've been kind of rifling through this. I mentioned briefly a while ago that most of Roman Christians were what were called Aryans. They believed that Jesus came after the Father. And so Athanasius is kind of one of the last guys who's like, "Guys, that's heresy. You can't believe this. This is wrong",. And they're like, "Athanasius, man, you're crazy". And he says, "If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world". And so Athanasius in his teaching said a lot of things that later became this creed.

So I'm going to start a little bit down. He says, "The Catholic faith, again, Catholic being universal, not Roman Catholic, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confounding or confusing the persons nor dividing the substance",. So we're not going to confuse that there are three persons, but we're not going to forget that all three of them, that their substance is God. There's not anything you can say about God. Let's keep going. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost, but the Godhead of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one,. The glory equal, the majesty, co-eternal, such as the Father is, such as the Son is, and such as the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Ghost eternal, and yet there are not three eternal but one eternal. And also there are not three incomprehensibles nor three uncreated, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible,.

So likewise, the Father is Almighty, the Son is Almighty, the Holy Ghost Almighty, and yet there are not three Almighties, but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. Yet there are not three gods, but one God. So likewise, the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Ghost is Lord. Yet not three lords, but one Lord,. For like as we are compelled by the Christian Verity, Christian truth, to acknowledge every person by himself to be both God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the Catholic universal religion to say there be three gods or three lords. Okay, that's a whole bunch of stuff. That the Bible tells us, Jesus talks about the Father, He talks about Himself, He talks about the Holy Spirit, the Father talks and all this stuff.

What is all this in 2025? I already talked a little bit about the importance of knowing who we worship,. There's a thing, and I may mispronounce this, it's called apathetic [apophatic] theology. And what it is, is it's when we say there are things we can't say. If we want to say right things, there are things that are impossible for us to say. So that's what most of what I've done today. We cannot say that Jesus is created. Now then, what do we do? Here's the mystery. What do we do with Jesus being human?, What do we do when Jesus says I submitted to my Father? What do we do when Jesus says I only do what I see the Father doing? Because it seems like Jesus is subject to the Father in that moment. And what do we do with, well, why do we pray to the Father in Jesus name through the Spirit? Why does that matter?

This is what I'll tell you. When we begin to see things that appear to be roles or appear to be functions, that's how God relates to us. That's not how God relates to Himself,. God relating to Himself is co-equal, co-eternal. There aren't three people with three different wills. There aren't three people with three different ideas. There aren't three people existing in harmony of agreement. There's one God with one will, with one purpose. And so when Jesus in the garden says not my will, but yours be done, it's the humanity of Jesus that's making that prayer, not the divinity of Jesus that's making that prayer.

All right, last little brain bender,. We'll wrap it up and I'll hopefully give you some things to take home with you. Jesus on earth as a human is 100% God. He doesn't ever not be any part of God. I've said this before, the same baby child that's learning to speak Hebrew or Greek or whatever language his parents are teaching him is at the same time Hebrews tells us holding the world together with the word of His power. So we have Jesus never not being God. We do have Jesus taking on humanity. And so Jesus becomes 100% human,. The technical term for this is called the hypostatic union. So we look at Jesus and we say he's 100% God, he's 100% human. Some people will try to say oh well Jesus had a God spirit and a human body. Nope, that's not true. Jesus was God in his physical flesh and he was man in his physical flesh. We cannot separate those things. And if we can grasp that even a little bit, then we're on the road to observing the Trinity.

Even though it's going to be difficult and it's going to be hard, this matters because especially in the modern era with TikTok and Facebook and Instagram and X and all this other social media, there are a whole bunch of people on the Get On TV or on the internet and they make a bunch of convincing statements and we find people drifting from the truth of who God is. It is absolutely key that we know the God that we worship. And the first step in that understanding is to know that he's beyond comprehension, which is silly,. There's a great little thing, if you haven't seen it, called That's My King by a guy named SM Lockridge, he spends about seven or eight or ten minutes talking about God and he says things like he's amazing, he's sincere, he's loving and it's just these rapid fire statements, seven, eight, nine minutes in, he says I wish I could describe, I wish I could describe him to you after he's been doing it for seven or eight minutes. Here's the thing. When we look at the Bible, we want to come humbly to a God that we don't understand. And so we see things in the news about whatever's going on all over the world or whatever's happening in Washington or whatever's happening in this place or that place or whatever and it's all out of control and we say God why and we have this gut response maybe we get angry or maybe we get confused or why did this happen to me or why did this or why did that then we need to just dial away back to the Trinity and God himself is beyond comprehension,.

So then when he says to us in the in the Old Testament my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts it's in his nature to be beyond our understanding it's in his nature to be bigger than we are. And so what I would love for us to do and to take with us is all of our questions with all of our struggles with all of our pains or all of our conflicts on the internet with other people. If you're like I was I'd like to argue with atheists and Muslims and all everybody to the high and just tell them your God's not my God I have a different God and I'm not going to apologize for that I have the one true Christian God and I love you but you have to convert you have to there's no coexistence God is different from everyone,. And so step one in that kind of zeal for the Lord I don't mean be a jerk I mean don't move right you don't have to be a jerk you just have to be unwilling to yield on the truth step one to that kind of Christianity is to understand that we worship a God that's beyond us right and and but he reveals himself to us,.

Communion's about that Jesus came and he says if you've seen me you've seen the Father so we can always look to the gospels for the nature of God we can always look to the scriptures for the nature of God because last thing and then we'll sing and be dismissed God has intended for things to be simple even when they're not easy. So what simple we worship one God in Trinity that's that's it that's that's the simplest thing and if somebody says explain that to me then ask them to explain I don't know explain why a shadow is two dimensional and a person is three dimensional and then you'll have some semblance,.

Let's pray Father thank you for all that you do God we are just barely scratching the surface of the Trinity and it's just so much to absorb and we could talk about this for the next 50 years and never come to a conclusion and so Lord when we look at this we feel a little lost we feel a little out of sorts but help us Lord to land in the place of simplicity that we worship one God in Trinity and that we don't worship three Almighties but only one Almighty and that there is this mystery of the three persons and Lord help us to embrace that mystery to lean into that mystery to begin to work on that but Lord let that not turn into despair but rather let that turn into praise that you are beyond anything that we could possibly hope or imagine to understand,. Lord help us as we go from this place to be a witness for you help us as we go from this place to not yield there's no other name by which men can be saved that there's only one true God and there's not room for anything else we give you our hearts in our lives in Jesus name you know it.