Good morning, welcome to Trinity Reformed Baptist Church Jackson, Georgia. It's August 23rd, 2015. Join us now as Brother Steve Martin brings us a message from the word. You might have wondered looking at the scripture readings what we were going to preach on this morning. If you read the hymns and thought about them, you'd think, well, they all seem to be about the Trinity. And this morning I'm going to preach to you some aspect of one of the most marvelous, perhaps the most marvelous, of all the Christian doctrines. I'm not going to defend the Trinity. I'm not going to look up all the verses showing you that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit each exist, they're distinct, they're co-equal. I'll mention that in passing. But I wanted to talk this morning about the eternal relationships within the Holy Trinity. The eternal relationships within the Holy Trinity. To believe and submit to God's revelation of His triune nature changes your life forever. When you come to see that God is triune, He's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, they're not mixed up, they're not swirled together. They're not Clark Kent going into a phone booth and coming out Superman, as if God the Son went into a phone booth and came out God the Holy Spirit, went back in the phone booth and came out God the Father, as if they're different modes of existence. That's an old heresy. But there are three members of the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They're each co-equal as God, but there's only one God. There's not three gods. We're not tritheists. We don't believe in three gods. We believe in one God. In Deuteronomy chapter 6 in the Old Testament, this is what Moses told the people. Hero of Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is, there is one Lord and one God. And you are to teach these things to your children. And he goes on to explain how to catechize your children in the things of God. There is only one God. And then as the Old Testament began to unfold, there are hints There are shadows of the fact that, well, maybe there's multiplicity in this one God, because it says in Genesis chapter 1, let us make man in our image. If God was a monad, if He was a single existence, He would say, let me make God in my image. But it says, let us, plural, make man in our image. Huh, a plurality of some kind of more than oneness in the oneness that's revealed in the Old Testament. There's even a very pregnant verse, I think it's in Proverbs, I can't remember the exact reference, I didn't get a chance to look it up, that, do you know the one true God and do you know what his son's name is? Have you ever seen that proverb? It's like, hmm, that's a clue. When you look at Isaiah 53 about the suffering servant, this one who was to come, he has the attributes of deity, and yet he's not God the Father. He's a servant sent by the Father. And the Lord says to my Lord, David says, well wait a minute, how many Lords are there? The Lord said to my Lord, so he's talking about two entities that he has fellowship with. And I could go on and on. But when you come to understand these things, it changes your life. The doctrine of the Trinity is not a matter of human reasoning or logic or speculation. Nobody dreamed it up. Sometimes people accuse Christians of inventing the Trinity. A certain kind of mental mindset says, the word Trinity isn't in the Bible. You can look in the concordance, the word Trinity isn't there. You've made this up. Well, I think that's a very specious, weak argument. For one thing, there are lots of terms that everybody uses in a certain discipline that saves you having to explain a lot, everything from if you're a mechanic, and there's some people in this church with good mechanical skills, meaning being able to work with their hands and figuring out devices, and there's technical terms that you might use. I was even talking to someone about fixing a tractor during the space between Sunday school and church, excuse me, Bible study and church. Although some weeks it's more like Sunday school. Anyway, and this person was explaining how to fix this certain aspect of a tractor. Well, this person was using technical terms. In that discipline, it's very acceptable. But to me, I was thinking, well, he's trying to be a sophist. He's trying to be sophisticated using all these big words. Just because I didn't know them didn't mean they weren't true. You ever play baseball? Did you ever get to Little League? That's the infield fly rule. What's the infield fly rule? Well, if you play baseball, you know what the infield fly rule is. If you want to know what it is, come up to me afterwards and I'll tell you. Anyway, every discipline, every area of study has certain terms that are used. And the Trinity is short for saying that there is one God in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. They're each equal to each other. They're each worthy of our worship. They're each in the exact same glory. And they're the God who really exists. Now, the Bible reveals that this one God and three persons works as a team, and that the three members of the Holy Trinity work in a perfect organized manner. Today I'm just going to try to show you two things. First of all, this morning, We're going to look at how the relationships within the Holy Trinity have always existed. From eternity past, on through what we call time, and to eternity future, there will always be these perfect, perfect loving relationships between the three members of the Holy Trinity. And it flows over, we're going to see in my second point, and the implications of the eternal fellowship of the Trinity are enormous. I'm going to touch on just seven different aspects of how the eternal loving relationship that exists between the three members of the Holy Trinity has impact in all aspects of our daily lives. Ultimate reality, the fact that you're sitting here today, the fact that your synapses in your brain are working, that your lungs are working, the fact that it's raining, all of the things of reality are based upon the kind of God that God is. God is the determiner of reality. What He does determines reality. The kind of being He is determines reality. The fact that God is triune, that He's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three in one, changes everything. You cannot disbelieve the Trinity and be a Christian, because you're denying the saving work of God. You're denying how each member of the Trinity works to save you. If you say, well, I don't believe in the Trinity, well, that's your prerogative, but it's a damning prerogative, because you cannot be saved and not believe in how the three members of the Holy Trinity work to save you. Let's look at, first of all, my first point I wanted to establish, that the eternal relationships within the Holy Trinity have always existed. It is the glory, and I'm realizing this is a subject that's not talked on very frequently, and your church does a great job teaching doctrine. Your pastor does a great job teaching you the deep things of God. You've studied the impassibility of God for many weeks in Sunday school. He did a brilliant job. You go, never thought about that. But it's true. It's important. I'm so glad our God is impassible. He's immutable. He's simple. Well, have you ever thought about the fact that it's the glory of Christianity that God is triune? All the other religions of the world are polytheistic, meaning many gods, polytheism, many gods. But Christianity and cults based upon it are the only ones that are monotheistic. Judaism, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarians believe there is only one God, but they don't believe that he's tri-personal, that there's three members of the Holy Trinity. The reality is that God has always existed and He's personal and He's relational. I'm going to say the same thing another way. At the core of all existence is relationships because the members of the Holy Trinity have always been relating to one another lovingly since eternity past. God is ultimate reality, the ground of reality, and it's a reality based upon relationships. The Father has always related to the Son and loved Him. The Son has always related to the Father and loved Him, and each of them with the Holy Spirit. This has been going on from eternity past. Relationships as we consider them among humans is no new thing. In fact, it's very weak and pale reflection of what goes on in eternity among the members of the Godhead. We are to be relational. We are created as persons to have relationships because that's the way our God is. That is reality. If you're not a relational person, you've got a problem. You're denying the reality of who God is and how he made you. We are made to be relational because God is relational. God is not a cold, static, fixed, non-relational monad. You go, what's a non-relational monad? Allah. Allah relates to no one. If you talk to an Orthodox Muslim, you don't sing, since Allah came into my life, you don't talk about knowing and relating to Allah. Allah doesn't relate to anyone. He is never related to anyone. He only relates to himself in their theology. That's not biblical and it's not true. But it impacts how Muslims think of their religion and how they live their lives. They don't do what they do to know Allah better. They don't experience his love anymore or seek to love him anymore. You don't relate to Allah. He's a non-relational static monad. So the values of relationships ultimately belong to the fact that Christianity is true and that we are learning to work out in our human relationships what's always existed among the members of the Trinity. Even Jesus said, through the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5, that the relationships between a husband and a wife are some pale reflection of the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church, which He came and purchased, which is in turn a pale reflection of the relationships within the Trinity. One of the main points of the relationships that are within the Trinity is that they're other people-centered, other person-centered. To have a relationship, you can't be self-focused. That's not a relationship, you know. Looking at the lint in your navel all day and relating only to yourself is not being relational. God is a personal God because the members of the Godhead are relating to each other all the time. I'm going to go through some verses in John's Gospel. It took me a while to figure this out, but after being a Christian a number of years, I began to notice, you know, John speaks more of Jesus' relationship with the Father and Jesus' relationship with the Holy Spirit than any of the other Gospel writers. I'm not just saying the other men didn't see it or teach it, but John does more of pulling back the curtain and saying, let me tell you what was going on before time, back in eternity. And so he spends more time talking about what was going on back then. For example, this other person centeredness in John 3.35. For the father loves the son, Jesus says, and has given all things into his hand. Two chapters later, John 5, 19 and 20. Truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord but only what he sees the father doing. For whatever the father does, that the son does also. For the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing. The Son, in response, always does that which is pleasing to the Father, John 8, 29. So Jesus went on to say, I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father, John 14, 31. And then back in John 8, so completely are the Father and the Son other-centered that Jesus can say, I do nothing of my own authority, but speak just as my Father has taught me, and he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, but I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. And that's just a smattering of some of the verses in John's Gospel about this. One last passage in John chapter 16, where Jesus says that I'm going to send you another one just like me. The Holy Spirit is just like me, only He's the Spirit, you can't see Him. He's God, just like me. There are two Greek words for another. When He says, I'm going to send you another, just like me. There's another, kind of sort of the same, like heterodox or heterosexual. And there's the word halos, which means the same. And Jesus says, I'm not giving you someone kind of sort of like me. I'm giving you someone who's identical to me in deity. Even as I'm with the Father, and the Father's with me, and I'm the Father of one, and all those kinds of things, so the Holy Spirit, as you're not getting a bargain basement deity here, you're not getting some cheap knockoff, you're not getting an imitation deity, you're getting someone just like me. It's for your good that I go away, for if I don't go away, God the Holy Spirit, who has been with you, will be in you, and you'd rather have Him in you than by you. Or to put it another way, if Jesus had been with us for three and a half years and he says he's leaving, that would be kind of scary because he's become everything to us. If Jesus is here, things are okay. And now Jesus is saying, I'm leaving. Gulp, what does that mean? But it's to your advantage. Well, what does that mean? It's better for you. How? Well, the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Holy Trinity, equal to the Father, equal to the Son, has been with you. But when I finish my work, he'll be in you. Now, you've heard me say before, and I'm sure your pastor has said, that Orthodox Jews of the first century find this like a pinball pinging inside their head, having a hard time grasping. What are you saying? You're saying that there are three members of the Godhead, and you're equal to the Father, and you're God, and now there's another one, but the manifestation of God's glory, the Shekinah glory, that's only present in the temple, and that's only in the Holy of Holies, and only one man, the high priest, ever sees it. but you're saying that He's been with you, but now He's going to be in you. And the reason is because when God cleanses these temples, these physical temples, He will put God the Holy Spirit within us. An Orthodox Jew could never conceive that God would live in a sinful human being, that God would take up residence, that God would make this fleshly body His temple. But that's what Jesus is saying in John 14, 15, and 16. I'm sending another one. He'll be the new comforter, the new encourager, the new keeper, the new rebuker, the new everything to you that I've been to you. I am going to return to heaven soon, but I'm going to give you the third member of the Holy Trinity who's been with you, you couldn't have gotten this far, but will now be in you. You will be now the temple of the Holy Spirit. Not the temple in Jerusalem. It's going to be torn down soon. but you will now be the temple wherein God Himself resides, which is why your life changed. The reason why your life changed when you really became a Christian is God had taken up residence in your life. One of the great Puritan works by Henry School, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, talks about this new birth, talks about this radical thing where God takes up residence in a human being. And Jesus says, that's to your advantage to have God reside in you. The degree of relationship within the Trinity is of the greatest intimacy and the greatest closeness imaginable. In fact, there are some terms in our English Bibles that you've read them, and you'll recognize them when I say them, and you go, yeah, I kind of always wondered about that. It's kind of hinky. What does that mean? John 10.38, the Father is in me, and I am in the Father. And a couple chapters later, John 14.10, I'm in the Father, and the Father is in me. So what's going on there? Can you think of a form of words to express a closer relationship? Somehow the Father's in the Son, and the Son's in the Father. And because being physical human beings we tend to think physically, kind of like a child does. Pastor Steve, if I invite Jesus into my heart, will He be in my stomach too? I mean, because kids think spatially and, you know, a seven-year-old hears about Jesus being in his heart and wonders, how's he going to fit in there? And even Nicodemus said, do I have to go back into my mother's womb to be born again? No, that's kind of a physical dumbing down. In what sense is the Father and the Son and the Son and the Father? Well, theologians, they always come up with words to describe things. They call it co-inherence. The father inheres in the son, the son inheres in the father. For example, the father dwells in the son and does the work the son does, at the same time the son dwells in the bosom of the father and does anything the father shows him. So we have to be very careful when talking about some of this because we don't want to go beyond biblical language. We don't want to start getting into weird things. Like I know a man who started out as an Orthodox Christian and he ended up in La La Land. And the reason he did that is he started taking a parallel passage in John 15. I am the vine, you are the branches, and my father's the vine dresser. And he kind of took that passage and He goes off into la-la land where a mystic, the goal of a mystic, a mystic is a person who doesn't rely upon scripture to get to God. A mystic relies upon his imagination and God to give him zaps. And he could conceive of like a Buddhist mystic or some kind of mystic out there of any religion, I'm just a drop of water that we absorbed in the ocean of God's oneness. Right. That sounds like something from the 60s when people were smoking weird stuff. Anyway, that's not the biblical teaching. I am not to be absorbed in the oneness of God's being. The Father isn't absorbed into the Son. The Son isn't absorbed into the Father. The Bible always makes them distinct. They're recognizably distinct, but they're each equal God, and they so closely are involved in each other that, again, theologians came up with the word ko in here, the Father's in the Son, the Son's in the Father, and the Father and the Son together send the Spirit, and there's this mutuality in this, some theologians call it an intertwining. I can't imagine a closer way to express it. Now, one way, though, that you can see it worked out for good or for bad in people's theology, and this is an old theological expression, in all of God's works in the world, the Trinity is not divided. In all of God's works in the world, the Trinity is not divided. You can tell if somebody's giving you good theology or bad theology is how they explain to you the members of the Trinity are working together out here. For example, in the giving of the law and the place of the law in biblical religion, what Barry Sewell taught on, New Covenant theology, divides the persons of the Trinity in regard to the law. The father gives the law, but the son comes later behind him and then retracts the law or corrects it or abrogates it. And the New Testament believers don't have to obey the law, but Old Testament believers did. That's an example of dividing up the Trinity and separating what they're doing as if they're not on the same track, just in regards to the law. The Arminian scheme of salvation, for example, divides the members of the Trinity this way. Jesus died for everybody. Whoa, does that mean everybody's saved? Well, no. What happens then? Well, the Spirit calls those who hear the gospel preach to them, okay, and then those who choose to become Christians, the Father chooses them. So the Son's working on one group, everybody, the Spirit's working on a second group, those who hear the preaching, and then finally the Father works on the last group, those who decide they're going to become Christians. They're not on the same page. They're not working together to accomplish the same goals as in the Bible. But the members of the Trinity are so closely intertwined that not only are they inseparable, but their work together is inseparable. In fact, there are some passages in Scripture which, if you thought about them, you'd go, yeah, that's true. For example, our Lord promised His disciples that they would be brought to trial for their Christian faith, but not to worry that they would be given divine assistance. You've read that passage. Don't worry what you're going to say when you have to, because God's going to be with you. But if you actually read different verses, you recognize, well, different members of the Godhead are going to be with me. In Matthew 10, 20, Jesus said, it is not you that speak with the Spirit of your Father that speaks through you. But in Mark 13, 11, Jesus says, it's not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. And then in Luke 21, 15, Jesus tells the 12, don't worry, I will give you a mouth. Now all three members of the Trinity are working on the same project here. We want to make sure that the testimony is given when you're brought before kings and authorities. For example, in the ministry of Jesus casting out demons, At one place he says, I cast out demons by the Spirit of God. And yet also it says that the Father was doing the works that Jesus was doing. He says, I can do nothing of myself but the Father who teaches me. So who's doing these things? Is Jesus casting out the demon? Is the Holy Spirit working through Jesus to cast out the demon? Is the Father working through Jesus to cast out the demon? Yes, they're all true. The members of the Trinity are on the same page together. They're like the most intimately attached husband and wife who always manage to do things together. They don't divide up in how they treat their kids. They don't divide up in their view of the Christian life. They're on the same page together. They're working together. They're seeking to accomplish the same thing. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not divided in their works in the world. And if ever you hear someone who divides up or separates apart the members of the Trinity, you know that you're hearing bad theology. The first point I'll just review, the eternal relationships within the Godhead are the basis of all reality and they're relationships of love. Absolute love, perfect love, has always existed. Men didn't invent love. Pop music didn't invent the idea of love. Pop music is such a pale reflection of the love that really exists. From eternity past, there has always been love. And in fact, you ask the question, why did God create human beings? To know him and to love him. But a bunch of them follow the devil and rebellion and the whole planet is plunged into darkness and nobody wants to relate to them. Fine. I'll save a people. I'll send my Son to save them. My Son and I will send the Spirit to make sure that all whom the Father, all whom the Son saved by His life and death and resurrection will be saved and will come to Christ. And they will know me forever, and I will love them like I love my Son." If that wasn't in the Bible, you'd say it was the fairy tale of fairy tales. The Bible says that God has a general love for all that He has created. Everything, every slug, every human being. but he has a special love for his elect, like he loves the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are saving a people so that for all eternity in the future, they can enjoy what it means to know God. In fact, you could summarize the Gospel of John, Jesus says, the reason I came to earth was that you could know my Father, because there's nothing greater in all of existence than to know and be loved by my Father. I have come to save you so you can know Him, like I do." Whoa. In Ephesians 3.10, it says that the angels in heaven are marveling at what God's doing in Christ, because angels are greater creatures than human beings. Angels are supernatural creatures. We're natural creatures. Angels can do more things than we can do. They're a higher order of being, so to speak. But what the angels are marveling at is there is no plan revealed in scripture, no action in scripture, whereby God is going to save the devil and the fallen angels. It says in Revelation that the lake of fire was created for the devil and the fallen angels, and fallen human beings who never come to Christ are thrown there too. God has decided that he's going to save people who are lower than the angels. And what does he do with them? It's like, is your goal, it's like, oh, if I can just get to heaven, maybe I can ride in the back of a garbage truck in heaven. Or maybe if they need to sweep out the divine stables, you go, are there stables in heaven? Well, we know in Revelation Christ was riding a great white horse, maybe there's at least one horse in heaven. Somebody's got to clean out that stable. But that'd be grace. If I could clean out God's stables for eternity, that would be grace. But he says, you're not going to be a stable boy, and you're not going to be a garbage collector. I'm going to treat you like the Lord Jesus Christ. You're going to live in the big house. You're a member of the divine family, so to speak, but you're not God divine. But I will treat you as I would treat my son. Folks, this is Bible truth. This is not something I made up. This is not fairytale stuff. This is Bible truth. It's the gospel. And the angels are going, Christ got up and divested himself of his glory and came to earth and to save them, and then he's taking them back to heaven and they're going to be members of the family of God forever. And the angels are speechless to see these things. What are some of the implications of these relationships? Well, the first implication is that relationship is at the center of reality. All reality. God is, and forever has been, relational. He's not static. People say, He doesn't change, He's just frozen. That's not true. He's always been loving and relational. And at the heart of being relational means that I'm other-person centered. I can't be self-centered and be relational. That makes for bad relationships. I have to be other-person centered to have a successful relationship. The Father loves the Son and gives Him everything. The Son also does all that pleases the Father. The Spirit takes the things of the Son and shows them to us. The Spirit doesn't come to glorify Himself. You know, I wish for all of the zeal of our Pentecostal brothers and sisters, I wish you could get it in some of their mushy heads that the Spirit doesn't come to glorify the Spirit. He comes to glorify Christ. He's other-person centered in the Trinity. He's not self-centered as they would have us to think. Personal relationships can be seen to be ultimate, the most real things that are. We are most like our God and we are loving, self-sacrificing, loving, self-sacrificing. We are most like our God and we are in loving, self-sacrificing relationships with other creatures made in his image. You are never more God-like or Christ-like than when you're loving somebody in an other-focused relationship, and you're not just using them selfishly, but you're loving them. That shows the image of God in you. If your person says, well, I'm not very relational, well, I would think that these doctrines would make you want to work on that. You know, old dogs can learn new tricks. I'm getting to be an old dog. I'm trying to learn new tricks in my old age. If I wasn't relational, I would want to be relational because that's what I'm God-like. The three members, the second point, the three members of the Trinity communicate among themselves and can be understood. In a relationship there's communication. It's not like there's three electrodes there, once in a while, a spark arcs out from one to the other, and that's... No, they not only have an intimate, loving relationship, but they communicate. They communicate. We hear that the father, son saying, I always do what the father tells me. I always do what I see the father doing. We hear, this is my beloved son, with him I am well pleased. And I believe on Judgment Day, it will be said of each believer, This is my son. This is my daughter. With him or with her, I am well pleased. Not because of me, but because of Christ. We're created in the image of God, and that means that we're created to be relational. To be relational means that you have to be rational. You have to think. You have to think about what you're going to say. We know that God is rational, and He communicates with rational creatures. But the fall messed that up. as Francis Schaeffer used to say, that Adam and Eve could talk to God, just talk to Him because they're there in the garden and in His presence, so to speak. But when sin came, not only were they thrust out of the garden, but Francis Schaeffer would say, a thick, impenetrable, concrete slab full of rebar was now between us and God. And you've heard people say, well, I used to feel like my prayers were just bouncing off the ceiling. Well, they're bouncing off this impenetrable slab caused by God's offense at our sin. God's a God of mercy and grace, but He's also holy, holy, holy. And so how is this impenetrable slab of offense caused by my sin going to be penetrated? Well, it required the work of Christ to come and take His sledgehammer and destroy that barrier so that a believing sinner can come to God solely on the work of Christ. You could have had the worst week of your life and come to Christ today. Because Christianity is not based on your performance, it's based on the kind of Savior Christ is. I could have had the worst week of my life this week, done the most awful things of my life this week, and still come to Christ. Because it's not based on me, it's based on Christ. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Paul said this is a trustworthy statement. Amen. You know, to communicate with God, I need help because he gave me a book, 66 booklets make up this book. One co-author, thankfully, the same guy who was there to help Isaiah write Isaiah was there to help John write John. God the Holy Spirit was co-author of each book, the ghost writer, so to speak, and the holy ghost writer. That was about as much humor as you're going to get this message, so you better jump on that. that the Holy Spirit inspired each of these books, but because sin still is in me, when I come to read it, I can struggle to understand it. No, I think it was better the other way. And did you ever read the Bible before you were a Christian? I was like, boring. And you can put four O's in the boring. I don't get it. What's this book about? I had a man come to me. He had been a captain in the army. He had been in combat. He was an executive with AT&T. His wife had become a Christian and they'd had a rocky relationship. He had been unfaithful to her. It had almost destroyed their marriage. And he started coming to the church I was pastoring and he started meeting with me and we started talking about these things. And I said, I have an assignment for you. I want you to go home and we won't meet for two weeks. And he was an intelligent guy. So I want you to read the Gospel of John. And when you're through with that, I want you to read the Book of Romans. But you must do this one thing or it won't do you any good. This book says that there's something wrong with your heart. It's twisted. And 2 and 2 will be 5. It will be 87. It will be anything but 4 unless God works in your heart. So ask God the Holy Spirit to graciously overcome the twistedness that sin has caused in you and help you to understand what you're reading. Can you do that? Yeah, I can do that. Two weeks later I see him. He's beaming. Why? I get it. I've come to Christ. Christ has saved me. Because when he read it this time, God the Holy Spirit was helping him. The co-author of every book of the Bible was helping him. I need the work of God the Holy Spirit to help me understand this revelation. I can't understand God unless he reveals himself to me. And he's revealed himself to me in a book and in the person of Christ, which is described in this book, but I need God, the Holy Spirit's help to help me to understand the work of the Son. A third point is there is order in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity. There is order in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity. What do I mean by that? Well, sometimes people scramble the Trinity and make them kind of like scrambled eggs. What do I mean? I've been at prayer meeting and I've heard people say, Father, thank you for dying on the cross. God the Father did not die on the cross. God the Son died on the cross. Well, it makes a difference. If you came up to me and thanked me for lunch today, I had nothing to do with lunch. My wife fixed lunch. Well, you and your wife, you're kind of the same. Why don't you thank the person who really did it? You see my point. And sometimes we're just sloppy in our prayer life. We just kind of attribute things to one member of the Trinity that Scripture doesn't attribute to them. The Father didn't die on the cross. The Father sent the Son. It's bad theology to say that the Father doesn't like you, but the Son did, and once the Son saved you, the Father starts liking you. God the Father sent His Son to save you because He loved you before time. And God the Holy Spirit came and worked in your heart because the Father and the Son had already worked on you. The members of the Holy Trinity are identical in power, glory, and ability, but they're not interchangeable. God is a God of order and unity, and He's not the God of confusion and chaos, and I just wanted us to be careful not to disrupt this order and co-inherence by mixing up who they are and what they do. Now it's true that all three members of the Trinity were involved in the creation and all three members of the Trinity are involved in our salvation. The Father elects us and sends the Son. The Son willingly goes and sacrifices and dies for us and substitutes for us and then goes back to heaven and the Father and the Son together send the Holy Spirit who worked in our hearts so we would even care that Jesus came and died for us. You and I could have been standing at the foot of the cross, and if God the Holy Spirit didn't help us, we'd be as dumb as any of those other people who were standing and go, I don't see what some dead Jew on the cross has to do with me. He's there for his own sins. We wouldn't get it. We're not any more smart or discerning. When the movie The Passion of the Christ came out a few years ago, people said, revival is going to come because they're going to portray Christ on the cross dying. If God the Holy Spirit doesn't open your eyes and unstop your ears and give you a new heart, you won't get diddly. And I didn't see any nationwide revival come out of that movie. God the Holy Spirit has to work in a person's heart. The Father sends the Son, the Son comes, the Father and the Son send the Spirit, and He makes us care. Even though the Father had already elected us and the Son had died for us, we still had to get it and we still had to repent and believe. A fourth practical application is that the phrase, God is love, would make no sense unless God were a trinity. You could say, respectfully, the father's been polishing his love from eternity past. The son has been polishing his love since eternity past. The spirit has been polishing his love since eternity past. A static monad, a static being like Allah, relates to no one and loves no one. Years ago I was on a flight from Atlanta to I think it was Philadelphia. And the lady seated next to me was very well dressed and I could tell she was wealthy. And I'm not usually anti-social when I fly, so I tried to strike up a little bit of a conversation. It became quickly evident that she was a Muslim and that she was wealthy. And then my kids all have their PhDs and they went to Harvard and Georgetown and we have a lot of money. I kind of got the drift of what was important to her, PhDs and money, and we're Muslims. So I was trying to think, well, I have some responsibility to witness to her. What should I say so I'm, you know, we're flying and I get out my Bible and I'm reading my Bible and I'm seeing her out of the corner of my eye watching me read my Bible so she knows I'm one of the people of the book like Jews and Christians. But what am I going to say to her? Am I going to hold up a silver cross like to a vampire and, you know, zap her or make some derogatory remark about Allah or Mohammed? Let's get in a brawl here just before we land and we'll both be kicked off the flight. And then the Holy Spirit gave me a flash of insight. You know, I have a lightning-like mind. It's one flash, then total darkness. Anyway, so I had this flash of insight. That was number two. The flash of insight. And I looked at her and I said, when I got through reading, after about 20 to 30 minutes, I said, I've been a Christian since 1969, which about this time would have been 35 years, maybe, into the relationship. And I said, by God's grace, I've come to experience Him more and more. and by His grace to love Him more and more. Tell me, how is it with you and Allah?" And she kind of put her head down. She said, well, we don't conceive of knowing Allah that way. You don't really know Him personally. You don't love Him and He doesn't love you. She said, I hope I serve Him better after all these years. I'm just a servant. I don't know Him. I don't love Him. He doesn't love me. It's just something you do to get to paradise. And I knew I had her. I wanted something that would niggle into her brain and get her thinking about, well, there's a deficiency here. This guy knows God, loves God, experiences God's love and loves Him back. I don't know squat. Such a being as Allah would need to create people in order to have relationships. Allah is the ultimate narcissist. Everything's about him. You know, the story of Narcissus was a man who looked down a well and saw his own reflection. Oh, what a handsome fellow. And was admiring how good-looking this guy was and fell down the well and drowned. His own being in love with himself, so to speak, brought about his death. And Allah would bring about the death of everybody who was really into it because he's all about himself. He's not into you. It's all about loving himself. But thankfully, our God is a God who has always loved others as part of who He is. The Father has always loved the Son, and the Son has always loved the Father. It's just unthinkable. There's no millisecond when they're not loving each other. A fifth thing to point out about the basis of who our God is, is that most of the attributes of God are relational attributes. Now, God is not a God of parts. Brandon did a great job of explaining that to us. When you think of attributes or aspects of all of His being, for example, the word love. Love is a relational term. Love has to do with loving people. loving beings, loving God, loving people. It's a relational term. You can't love in isolation. Justice is a mode of relationship. You can't be just and fair and righteous in isolation. Mercy. He was merciful. To what? His computer? Well, that's a thing. You're only merciful in regards to people, to other beings. Kindness and goodness are relational terms. You can't be them in isolation. You can't be kind to adore. That doesn't work. You're only kind in relationship with other beings. Self-sacrificing is a relational quality. You can't be self-sacrificing unto yourself. Faithfulness is a relational quality. Long-suffering and patience are relational qualities. be long-suffering with someone like me would be a relational quality. You can't be long-suffering with a hammer. So much of who God is are really relational qualities and different aspects of His being a relational God. Number six, as in so many ways, the ways of God and His relationships are so different, sometimes upside down and opposite to the way the world thinks relationships should be. Human-based psychology and sociology says that you must express yourself and assert yourself to be fully alive, to be fully human. In the 60s, it was do your own thing, ad nauseum. And then the 70s and psychology, you have to express yourself to be real and authentic. To actualize your potential, you must rid your life of anything that hems you in or ties you down. You cannot be a real person as long as you spend time giving to others. I must first of all learn to love myself before I can learn to love you. That's terrible. Theology and psychology. But that's what we've been taught for 40 years in America. God's Word reveals that the true and living God shows that he's fully alive by loving and serving others. God's not all about himself. There's not an eternal group hug in heaven while the rest of the world goes to hell. Think about it. God could be loving and relational and just relate to Himself, but He created us to know Him. We were created to be in relationship with God. Sin thwarted that, and so God says, I'm going to overcome sin. I'm going to overcome the devil at the expense of my son. But relationships with these people are so important to me. I want them to behold my glory. I want them to experience what it means to be loved by God Himself. Every religion and cult teaches you to center on yourself, meditate upon yourself, worship yourself. Repeat the mantra over and over again, God dwells within you as you. You are your own God. Self-realization, so-called, or self-expression has been in vogue for 35 or 40 years. Books, movies, magazine articles at the checkout line, television, the tidal wave of our whole culture has preached to you that the ideal is to love yourself, express yourself, liberate yourself from anything that might inhibit you, even if it's another person. Dear, I love you too much to stand in your way of becoming who you are, and I know you don't want to stand in the way of me being who I am, and so I'm leaving you." Huh? That would be gobbledygook in most centuries, and that's been the psychology of the last 40 years. Even a relationship that's covenantal, like marriage. I'm not committed to it. You stand in the way of me being all that I should be. Jesus expressing the will of God from eternity past says that you should forget about yourself and learn to serve others. We're to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, strength, et cetera, and we're to love our neighbor as we already love ourself. The Bible assumes you already love yourself. You don't need to work on yourself. You don't need to take a psychology course, go to a shrink, read a book on how to love yourself. The Bible assumes you do. The reason why you don't run across the street during five o'clock rush hour is because you love yourself and don't want to be splattered on the pavement. There's all kinds of things we do to show we love ourselves. The trick is, how do I love other people? Because I'm so selfishly self-centered, so self-focused, so in love with myself and could care less about other people. God says, if you will follow me and do what I say, I will bless you with my intimacy even though people may revile you and call you weak and foolish. And even if you should be killed or die in the process of serving others, then I will still love you forever. I have the promise of the love, the absolute love of Almighty God, even if fellow human beings stop loving me or never start loving me. Jesus most certainly was not self-focused when he left heaven and came to earth, did he? Well, I don't know if I want to go down there. They're a bunch of sinners, and that place stinks. They all reek with sin, and I don't really want to go down there. Any of you angels want to go down there and take on this? No? Okay. Well, I guess I'll go. It's not how we understand the Bible to teach. As one member of the Holy Trinity, Jesus reminds us of the eternal reality that seeks the welfare of others. He was just manifesting the kind of love He and the Father and the Spirit had always had. Reality made up of a God who is good, faithful, loving, and just is not about just serving myself, but about serving others. And sometimes it takes us our whole life to learn that. That's why marriages get better over the years rather than worse, or they should, because when you first get married, you're kind of in love with the other person, but you don't get it that much, and learning to serve another person. I think moms have a great opportunity here. I had the opportunity to hear Sarah Palin speak the other night, and she said one of the greatest Learning curves of her life came when she had her first child, and she realized that she existed to serve this child. The child didn't exist to serve her. And mothers have that opportunity that men don't have, although if they pay attention to their wife, they can learn to be serving others. But you know, the churches have not looked at the Bible, they've looked at counseling centers, they've looked at the culture, and people have been taught all kinds of false things about what it means to love other people. Well, you know, you need to learn to love yourself, and so we're going to spend 16 weeks in Sunday school about learning to love yourself. And we don't want to create a bunch of narcissistic people, we want to create Christians who are like their God and Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. So learning to love God teaches us how to be other person centered. For example, think if you jumped out of an airplane without a parachute. Other people believe in gravity. I do not. And I'm jumping out of this airplane. Bad things would happen, it's just axiomatic. But trying to have personal relationships on the basis of similarly false premises, disregarding God's Word and saying, I'm going to have a relationship but it's not going to be based upon what the Bible says, I'm going to go with the wisdom of this world and my own wisdom. Then you can expect that relationship to crash and burn because God's wisdom is to make this relationship work, you have to be other person centered. And where is the strength going to come from to love this other person? We used to do seminars in high schools and on college campuses, and the question is, you listen to the radio and people say, well, we need to have love. That's fine. But who's going to start the loving and who's going to keep it going? You? You? Are you going to have enough love to love this other person despite who they are and love them perpetually till the end of your life? No human being since the fall has that capacity. I need God, the Holy Spirit's love, to love my wife all these years, or to love you even a modicum. I need somebody who will start the loving and keep the loving going in me. And it's the love of God manifested in a believer's life. We need to learn from God how to have a relationship, not from the culture or secular psychology. The seventh and last point about what we can learn about the relationships of the Trinity is that, and this is a brief thing for those of you who might be interested in philosophy, but philosophers for thousands of years have wondered, why is the world the way that it is? Why is there many things and not just one thing? How can the universal and the particulars all exist? Or put it one way, Plato said, behind everything that exists was an ideal of that. Behind every chair was an ideal chair in heaven, so to speak. And Aristotle, his disciple and student, came along and said, no, it's all about the particulars. There's all these chairs, and there must be a chair somewhere else. But Plato said, no, there's a chair in heaven, so there's chairs on earth. And a lot of us go, who cares? But questions about why things are the way they are. Why are human beings constructed the way they are? Why do people get lonely? I want other people in my life. Why are we torn up when people reject us and trash a relationship? Because relationships matter to us even when we say they're not that important. But why are they important to us and why should they be important to us? Because they're important to the God who made us in his image and calls us to love one another as we are already loved by him and we already love ourselves. We have a reality that there is one God and three distinct persons who have always loved each other, and that is reality. And we're to learn to live in this reality by learning to love others with the love that we experience from Him, the self-sacrificing, other-person-centered love. Christianity is based upon the revelation of the Bible, and the reality that it teaches, and the reality that it teaches is Everything boils down to relationships within the Trinity and then His relationships with us. You can't spend too much time working on relationships because it is reality. Again, that's just a few aspects of the doctrine of our great God. Let's pray that God would help us to apply it in our lives this week. Father, I said a few things over and over again from different angles. I hope that you would put it in our hearts to help us. Apart from the revelation in the Bible, apart from what you show there, we would never have met anybody like you. Because sin has cut off the human beings on this planet from knowing you, we would have never met anybody like you if we hadn't come into contact with the Bible and what it shows us about who God is and what He's like. There's a plurality in unity. There is an eternal love, an eternal sacrifice for others, an eternal self-giving. Lord, I have fallen so far short of that. By your grace, I'm not totally ignorant, and by your grace, I'm not totally unknowing of these things, but I want to be more of that kind of man. I pray that you would help each believer here to become more of a relational person, less self-protective, less self-focused, less self-ish, and more giving to others, because we've experienced your grace through Christ, because God the Holy Spirit sheds the love of Christ abroad in our hearts. Lord, would you make Trinity Reformed Baptist Church into a potent force, even among people who don't understand or hate the doctrines that are expressed in the Bible and in this church, but they have to admit they are a uniquely loving, giving, relational congregation. Their marriages are good. Their families are healthy. They love one another in a unique way. Lord, would You take glory for Yourself this way? We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.