15th December 2024

Understanding the Trinity

Passage: John 14-16, Matthew 26:39, Luke 22:42
Service Type:

The doctrine of the Trinity – One God in three Persons – is not merely an abstract theological concept but also shapes how we experience the Christian life. While we often begin our faith journey speaking generally about “God,” we come to know Him more fully through the distinct yet unified work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father receives our prayers, the Son makes these prayers possible through His sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit applies God’s power and presence in our daily walk. Though challenging to fully grasp, this three-in-one nature of God is central to authentic Christian faith and practice.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] There is quite a bit to be learned about Christianity when you first begin to actually study it or get involved with the church, and particularly to put things together, the various aspects that get talked about the church. That happens when people start talking about Jesus the Son, or people talk about the Father God. What about the Holy Spirit? You become aware that there are three persons, not human persons, but three persons in one God. Now that’s quite a mind stretch. In fact if it were to be up to what is the most well easily able to be articulated, or

[00:00:49] if it came to be what’s the simplest, you know they talk about Occam’s razor when you do research, it means that you pick the simplest answer that’s most likely to be correct. If you applied that to Christianity, how do you deal with one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? It actually has a lot of big applications, some of them are. How do you understand the Christian experience? I’ve met people and I often get talking to them at bus shelters and other places, and I ask a general question, how did you come to God, or when did you first start thinking about God? What is interesting is that people will respond and speak in general terms about them and

[00:01:42] God. That’s pretty good actually, I think that’s nothing wrong with that, and in fact when someone comes to me and says, I really want to become a Christian, I lead them in a prayer, and the prayer often just uses the word God. Sometimes it goes, oh Father God, I know that I’m a sinner, I know I’ve done wrong. Father God. But then as you go on talking to them and begin to explain to them the Gospel, you have the Christmas event, and in the Christmas event there’s Jesus the Son. Now is Jesus the Son just that he was Father God who decided to take a trip to earth and come amongst us and be God with us?

[00:02:29] When you quote that text as Joey was quoting, explaining the communion, God with us, Jesus in the world as a baby, that’s God with us. Is God the One Person and he has one stage He’s Father God and another stage he comes down to earth and he’s Jesus the Son? What about the Holy Spirit? When you do business with the Holy Spirit and sometimes as you’re talking to folk they will talk about how there came a moment when they had a spiritual happening. spiritual happening wasn’t with any appearance of a person. It wasn’t with anything except that some sense the Holy Spirit of God came upon them. There’s many an account in history of people who became Christians because of a moment of the Holy Spirit coming on them

[00:03:23] and they walk out a different person. Was that the same one? One meaning identity, one stage Father, another stage Son, another stage Holy Spirit? That’s a pretty big thing to ask people to come to understand. I have to be honest with you. I would not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity were I not to have seen it so established in the Scriptures. It’s what the Bible teaches without a shadow of a doubt. I’m going to get into this in a moment, but this question of one God in three persons is very difficult. In the Old Testament it appears, and I don’t think the Jewish people really understood it, but one of their major verses they like to have quoted and people recite is a verse that says, one God, but it uses the Hebrew word Elohim which is in the plural meaning gods, one God, then it has a verb, but it’s not are, the gods are, it’s one God is. It’s in the singular

[00:04:30] the verb and it’s followed up with a word that means oneness or unity or who means oneness, but it doesn’t mean aloneness on your own. Our one gods is one, the Bible says. Actually I take it to mean unifying. You can’t split them up. When God gets into action it is that the Father’s been involved with his will. It means that the Holy Spirit has come to make something happen. It means often that Jesus was involved in the transaction too. This Gospel that we have, which as correctly was said by Joey in the Communion Gospel story begins with Christmas. Don’t let this generation talk you out of having a big place for Christmas, it’s just what this sinful race of ours does to push God out. The Gospel message begins with the Christmas moment, but in that Christmas moment there is a Father still in heaven. When Christmas happened it wasn’t though suddenly there was no one at home in heaven. Father

[00:05:45] God is in heaven and when Jesus was on earth he taught people to pray. He taught them to pray our Father who isn’t heaven. It’s called the Lord’s prayer because he prayed to Father God in heaven. He prayed to Father God but he also trained his disciples to learn to pray by saying Father God our Father who isn’t heaven, hallowed be thy name. That’s the old English wording. But But it’s because our one God is in three persons and it’s just the facts that the Bible reveals, and you have to come and get used to it. And it has a number of corollaries as it applies to understanding of the Christian life. Some of you have heard me say some of these things before, since I’ve been here 18 years, with every fresh punch of people coming along, I want to teach some of the same things. But when I was at the university, there was a movement amongst Christian churches and

[00:06:49] amongst people in Brisbane to want to say that you need to have an experience with Jesus and that gets you in the door and you become a Christian. But there is a second experience that you need to have where you do business with the Holy Spirit. there were some very active young people, good Christians who were wanting to go and tell others about Christ, but also tell them about the Holy Spirit who were also busy, particularly on the University of Queensland where I went. These were busy going up to students and if they found someone who was a Christian they then asked them, but have you come to know the Holy Spirit? If the poor person went to a church that didn’t talk about these things much, they didn’t know how to answer. Simply from lack of any teaching

[00:07:37] is exactly what I want to be doing tonight. One day there was a fellow who was active on the campus and I admired him for his activity and his enthusiasm, but he was busy telling Christians how they could have a second experience. It was a second experience of the Holy Spirit. So as I came up from the car park and met him, he met me and began to talk to me. I got onto this point and I said, don’t you come and talk to people. He was positioning himself, no, I wasn’t the first. He was getting people as they came up from the car park. I think it used to be free back then. That car park as the people came up, he came and talked to me and I said, are you going to talk to people heat and then dash around a road of footpath there was nearer to where the cafeteria was and wait there and when the same person comes by jump out again and say, Oh, have you come to know the Holy Spirit?

[00:08:37] And he said, well basically, yes, he was agreeing. I can’t remember his exact words, but he got my picture. Yes, I’m about two things. One talked to them about coming to Christ, another talking to them about coming to the Holy Spirit. So I said in Repartee, I says, well, I’m going to whizz around near the mathematics building. I did a lot of mathematics. And I’ll wait for him and when he gets there, I’m going to jump out and say, you’ve come to Jesus, you’ve come to the Holy Spirit. Now, have you come to the Father yet? He didn’t have an answer. It was sort of a joke question, but we have to understand we have one God. You’ve either come to know him or you hate. You’ve either come to know Jesus as the wade of no Father God. And if that’s happened, you’ve also been under the experience of the Holy Spirit because you can’t come to Jesus unless the Spirit draw him, the Bible says,

[00:09:37] draw you. There is such a thing as going deeper into the Fatherhood of God. And sometimes when you talk to people who’ve had things happen in their life in the family that went wrong and there’s been damage done to their capacity to relate to Fatherhood, that transfers over to how they get on with Father God. In fact, a psychologist I know who did a lot of counselling made a lot of distance with his patients trying to get them to restore a better understanding of their physical Father, so then they’d be able to be more open to know Father God. He and I had a bit of an argument, actually, not on one occasion but a different understanding, because I would always reply to him, if you could get them to come to know Father God, it’d help them to understand how to fix up about their human father. He was wanting it to go one way and I was trying to explain that the gospel applies

[00:10:42] it the other way. Maybe both are correct. But this business of Father God, our Father who is in heaven, may your will be done. That’s a mixture of the Lord’s prayer but also when the Lord was praying in the garden of Gethsemane. And the fact that Jesus had a will, not my will but yours be done, he prayed in garden Gethsemane, shows you that these are not just different, the one person with different masks on or different coming to deal with us methods. That Jesus in his will and the Father in his will were ones that Jesus had to say, I’m prepared to not hang on to my will but to do yours. And it’s proving what I’m trying to say here tonight, never lose the fact that we have three persons in one God. And Jesus is the Son. Actually in eternity past, before he took on humanity, he was what you call the second person of the Trinity. He was Son in heaven. He always has been Son. It’s one

[00:11:49] of the features theologians get to argue about and it’s called the eternal generation of the Son. But it’s about the fact that there’s something about Father God and Son Jesus that is an eternal happening and relationship and which we take on board in humanity. God has made fathers and sons on earth because he’s letting us as a part of us copying who he is. We reflect God. And there always was a Son. And in the councils of the Trinity when they talked about how to bring redemption to the human beings, the decision made was that the Son would be the One who would go. As a matter of fact it’s because He is the Son. The part of the role that he plays in the Trinity is that he is the expression of the Godhead. That’s why he sometimes called the word. The idea of word means more than just a piece of ink in the book. Rather, the idea of word is an expression. Sometimes an

[00:12:52] argument. Sometimes a sentence. Sometimes an idea. A word is an out speaking when in The book of John in its description of the coming of Jesus into the world talks about Him being the eternal Word. He was in the beginning with the Father and He was God—meaning He was divine. He was a part of the Godhead, the eternal Son, but yet that is before He took on humanity and in a discussion of the Trinity that they, the Godhead decided that it would be He who had come down to earth and would be born in Bethlehem. he was born as a baby, Father God and Heaven said, and I’m quoting the book of Psalms and other places, this day that he’d begotten a son. This day I have begotten you because when Jesus was born as a human, Father God and Heaven had a new son in one sense. It

[00:13:45] was the son who’s always been son, but now he’d taken on humanity and he was born human. That was the beginning in their relationship of Son and Father, being a son now on earth. As a part of that happening, Jesus took on but all the restrictions as humanity put on him, all the loss of entitlement that he had in eternity past, he had to walk around as a normal human. He had to depend upon Father God as we all do. Part of the temptations is how the devil thought he might get him to step out of that relationship with trusting in Father God but Jesus coming to earth took on board a man and God relationship of trust. He did it because that’s what it is to be human. That’s what we rebelled against at the beginning of time when the human race stepped away from trusting God and disbelieved his word and first sinned. Jesus came to live out how that relationship should have been

[00:14:46] as a part of his being human. What it shows you is it takes God to be a human. He’s eternal God, the son of God, but He takes on humanity and He lives out what it is to be a human and part of the reason if He’s doing that is He’s come to be our Saviour and part of being a Saviour is a rescuer, is a person who helps us be what we ought to be. When When a person comes to Christ and asks Jesus to help them to be what they ought to be, they need to first of all confess their sinnerhood and get forgiven. And secondly they need to trust Jesus to help them now to be the person that they ought to be, under God. He himself walked the human life and did not sin. A part of what Jesus did in order to qualify to be our Saviour on the cross was that he

[00:15:41] was sinless, he obeyed all that was required of the Old Covenant laws. Jesus was sinless and in that sinlessness qualified to be able to go to the cross and for God the Father to put on him all the sins of you and me and of the whole world, the rottenness, the degradation, everything that’s gone wrong with humanity, God punished Jesus for it as he took our place and he qualified so to be because of his sinlessness of walking with Father God in the early stages. Right through to the Garden of Gethsemane did he get tested along the way. Being tested along the way he passed the test and qualified to go to the cross but on that cross bearing our sins it didn’t lessen the terror of that moment. Even in his apprehension in the garden of Gethsemane he cries and he prays,

[00:16:37] If it be possible, Father, let this cup pass from me, but yet not my will but yours be done.” Can you see? They are indeed persons in relationship, Jesus and the Father. That’s why when he prayed, the disciples would be listening. When he prayed on other occasions and he told them about how to pray, he was telling them that you pray from earth to heaven. If anyone else wants to know who to pray from, pray from earth to heaven. At the moment who’s in heaven has changed, because not only Father God, it’s also Jesus the Saviour.

[00:17:15] When he’s at God’s right hand, the scriptures teach us, that he’s going to come back again and eventually Father God will too. At the end of time, all that God is is going to come to earth and live with us. God’s intention about living with us is something He’s always had is the scheme of the garden of Gethsemane that humanity would learn to be with God. But we wrecked it. We went out from it. We lost it. And he came that he might rescue us from our lostness and bring us back to Father God. And he Jesus prayed to his Father and he taught his disciples about prayer. This is how you pray and get the Father God to answer your prayers. He had a lot to say to his disciples. He said, when I’ve gone, then ask the Father in my name and whatever you ask, he’ll give you. Can you see this beautiful, this beautiful relationship of Jesus and Father of God

[00:18:15] that he has introduced as available to us if we will come to him as Saviour and Lord and let him lead our lives. We can also pray. It’s one of the things you learn as a Christian from the earliest days about praying, sometimes someone has to teach you. They put their, like sometimes, put your foot on their shoulder. They learn how to pray. And when you pray to God you don’t come cheekily and demand this and demand that. You come and tell Him that he’s God. And you say, Father. And there’s something to learn when you’ve become a Christian that you have got yourself a father in that step of being converted. It’s a wonderful thing when you’re praying and suddenly something inside of you makes you aware that he loves you and he’s your father and you can come to him. Now I don’t know what your family is like, but in our family, well my sons used to say, Dad you always look after the girls better

[00:19:23] than us. We’ve got 6 kids and so there were 3 of them were girls and 3 of them were boys. The boys always say, Dad you listen to the girls better. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, they think so. But there’s something about a father. Little girls, I’ve just had some of my grandchildren in my house and I was trying to get a sermon ready in another room but she came invading and she put on those feminine ears of get my attention. Why is it the little girls are so good at it? Who taught them? I don’t know where it came from, but probably Michelle. But anyway, there is something in kids and my sons also enjoy getting me to help them. There’s something about the child and the father that’s just intuitive. You know God made that. He made humanity to have sons and daughters and fathers, also mothers, that’s another talk, but God made those connections. It’s fantastic because

[00:20:27] they’re the equivalent also between us and Father God. One of the joys you get as a person learning to pray is to follow that advice from Jesus in the book of John. Look it up later in chapters 14, 15, and 16. But how when you pray in Jesus’ Name, pray to the Father in Jesus’ Name, and He will answer your prayer because he answers your prayer because of Jesus, because of His love of Jesus and Jesus’ success in dealing with your sins, and Jesus having rescued you by his death on the cross by paying for your sins, as something of a marvellous step forward in my relationship with God when I learn to say, oh Father, and cry out to him as a son, a sonship that I got by being linked to Jesus the Son. What a fantastic thing that is. And these are things that we learn as a Christian. Now I’ve wandered a bit from my topic. I don’t know how to get back into it, but let me just say that being a person that understands the gospel

[00:21:40] is not to see that God is just one person. God is one God, but he’s in three persons. They’re not human persons except for Jesus, he is. But there’s Father and there’s Jesus, there’s the Holy Spirit. As you read through the scriptures, you realise that when the one God, the God who we’ll have when we talk about our one God, wanted to show himself present very personally, he would do it by his spirit. And in the Old Testament, if you read a passage where it says the Spirit of God came, it’s that way back then of saying God did it personally. Wherever the The spirit moves, as the Old Testament will tell you. Because God didn’t leave it to pushing a lever or changing a circumstance or sending a prophet, but God came to do it himself. The spirit of the Lord is the way God did things personally. And there is a movement of God by the Holy Spirit, whereby he does do things. Sometimes when you’re

[00:22:49] really needing something, and you’re really desperate, you get in a situation where you got the where of all for an opportunity. I used to be a travelling preacher and you get into funny places when they don’t always tell you that they put you on the preach. I found advertisements which had my picture on it and that I’d be preaching that night in a big hall with young people and I didn’t know. No one told me. The organising people forgot just to tell me. I almost didn’t turn up not knowing but when I saw I was advertised I thought well I was deliberately not going how they’d have to learn a lesson. I said no that’s not very good grace. So I went along and I didn’t have a sermon. I just stood up and God gave me one. I’ve met people since who got touched and his life was changed by that message. God knows how to help you but he does it by the Spirit. One of the things

[00:23:45] of the Holy Spirit is God’s method of bringing to you the power of the Father, the answers of the Father, the supply of the Father and bringing to you the forgiveness of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the One that washes your heart. Who cleanses you from sin. He is the One who comes and impounds you to do what you can’t do in yourself. If you’ve been put in the position where God’s asking you to do something, I’ll tell you what to do, is say, Lord, that’s beyond what I can cope with. Please help me, but then don’t have a go. Step out and lean in the promise of the Holy Spirit that He’ll be there to help you through. And it’s amazing. There are times when God steps in and He does more than you know you’re capable of. Sometimes He leads you to say things you never intended to say, and people come up and say, who told you? Who told you? Meaning about them. And I say, what are you

[00:24:45] talking about? I didn’t know, but the Holy Spirit did. He’s here tonight. I want to say something about preaching. There is a power in preaching that is a power that only the Holy Spirit can give, where He takes an opportunity where people come to hear the Gospel, and somehow the Holy Spirit knows what is needed. And He speaks in their hearts. I’ve had people accuse me of saying all sorts of things. How did you know? How did you know? And I say, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But the Holy Spirit did. And when He’s present He knows the hearts of every person, every one of you, He knows your struggles. He knows how to bring the offer of God the Fatherhood to you, the offer of the forgiveness of Jesus to you. The Holy Spirit is like an applicator, if you like. He brings and applies all that’s available from the Godhead to us, and he’s here tonight. One of the features that occurs

[00:25:48] in preaching that you trust in and rely upon is that he will do what he alone can do and bring people conviction of what they need in Christ. Jesus, as we’ve said on previous occasions before we went back to heaven and he said to his disciples, it is expedient for you that I go away, because if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit will not come. But if I go he will come, and if the Holy Spirit comes he will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and judgment, and that sense of the fact of a need, of forgiveness. If ever there was something this generation of Australians needs is for a movement of the Holy Spirit upon it, that they will realise just how sinful they are, just how much they keep pushing God out of their lives, just how much, even at Christmas time, there is this movement not to have so many nativity things, there’s this movement, not to have

[00:26:44] Christmas always, the flavour of the time, let’s call it something else. We’ve got a culture and we’re somehow involved in it without our realising and we’re guilty with it as we push God and the Gospel out of our lives and so Christmas festivities get watered down and changed or dropped altogether and another thing is introduced and all sorts of other festivities can come in put in the calendar and they’re evil things, they’re ugly things, they’re sinful things and we don’t protest any more against the ugliness of some of the things that are put forward as being normal that’s happening in ceremonies It is a terrible shocking thing what we the human race and I’m talking about us as Australians to reject what God has done in Christmas time.

[00:27:31] I know I’m repeating something I said this morning but I wish again for the days when church people would have a big truck and put those hay bales in the back and people would get on it and go around on Christmas Eve and go to places where there’s people who are shut in and people who are just lonely I’ve been on those bus trips they’re wonderful and you hop off and you sing outside the door and these old ladies come out and smile and glad to hear the Christmas carols and that was some way that we used to do and nearly all the churches Baptist churches used to have such an event similar event at Christmas time but it’s dropped off the calendar. We’re having a Christmas Eve and we’re working hard not to drop having one but I want to tell you that this is the Christmas carols night that we’ve got which is next Sunday

[00:28:22] night is putting together a Sun Rally and a Christmas gospel from a recognition of singing of carols will do and that is what is what we’re trying to do to keep doing what’s always been on the agenda for Christmas time because it’s the beginning of Christmas now I had a whole lot of things I was going to say to you tonight and I’ve somehow gone off and not said them but they’ll catch up I’ll use that another day but let’s remember Christmas and the birth of the Son and the joy of the Father that day he got a son in a human sense Father God did and through what that son did by going to the cross is the opportunity for people like you and I to have a moment when we come for the forgiveness of sins and we get tied in with Father Son and Holy Spirit we get in the door because of our connection with Jesus and having received him as Saviour we had to understand that we now have God

[00:29:32] as our personal father in a very special sense and we’re taught to pray here the two said Jesus have you asked nothing in my name ask that you might receive that you joy may be full when he spoke about asking in his name he’s talking about speaking to the father in Jesus name and that’s how prayer gets answered when you pray and say Oh Father I ask you in Jesus name, that you’ll help me with this or whatever it is, and you have his ear, and that’s what he answers. Well, Christmas begins the Gospel because it’s how Jesus became a man, took on a man. He still was the turtle son, but he became the God-man, and he did that that he might live a successful human life and qualify by keeping the law, by being someone born under the law and keeping it, so that he would be sinless and be able to be a sacrifice for your sin and mine. And because of what he did, we can come and get into the family

[00:30:38] as it is we’d ever become God, but we become connected to God, where Father is our Father, where the Spirit is ready to help us, where Jesus is our personal Savior. Do you know Jesus? Do you love him? Do you love him as your personal Savior? And if you don’t, can I urge you to consider coming to Jesus, asking him to be the Savior of your soul and of your life, of your heart, of your future, and the one who will introduce you to have God as your Father. You’ll always be able to pray, my Father, who is in heaven. Let’s finish. Heavenly Father, We thank you in Jesus name for all of these things. Lord, I thank you that you are such a loving Father and you love your children. You love to look after them and you send your Holy Spirit to help them. Here’s the comforter, He is the counselor. He is the one who encourages them. And when he comes, He also is the one who convicts of sin. Lord, if there’s someone here not right with you, may the Holy Spirit convict them of their need to be reconciled to you by coming to Jesus as Saviour. Do that in their hearts today, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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