The Giving Trinity

[0:00] I'd like to invite you to join me in prayer as we prepare to open God's Word and to listen and to receive what he has for us.

[0:12] Our God and our Father, we're glad. We're glad that you are a God who is a giving God, a God who is a creating God. We're glad that you in eternity are not alone, but a Father, Son, and Spirit.

[0:26] Lord God, I pray that you would open our eyes to see you as you really are, to see the goodness, the love that is present in eternity with you, to learn how we too can learn to relate to one another with the same sort of love, the same sort of generosity, the same sort of holiness that has always been present with you.

[0:56] Lord God, we are so unfamiliar with this, so quick to settle for the kinds of relationships that we have endured our whole lives.

[1:07] We have settled for a false sense of normal. Lord God, would you just recalibrate our sense of what it looks like to truly be the people of the living God, what it truly looks like to be people who are born of his Spirit.

[1:27] Lord, give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to understand, all that you have for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Well, I'll start out by mentioning a time that this was about a year ago, I believe, when I was at a bookstore down in Portland.

[1:48] And this was the first time at that bookstore when I was introduced to the popular children's book, The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. And I'd never read that book before.

[2:02] I'd heard about it, but I'd never read it before. And so I had a few minutes to kill. And so I took it down from the shelf and I decided, hey, I've got time, I'll read this children's book here in this crowded bookstore.

[2:16] Now, have you ever taken a book, started reading it in a busy place, and you were so captivated, you were so moved that it felt like you just completely forgot where you were?

[2:30] That was me, you know, a 35-year-old man reading a children's book in the middle of a busy Portland bookstore and just trying to hold it together. It just really, it just really hit me hard, this book, The Giving Tree.

[2:43] And I think it's just its simplicity is what captivated me. It tells the simple story of a tree that just continues to express love to a young boy that it gives of itself to him as he grows up.

[2:57] It's fruit, it's branches, it's trunk. The tree is happy to give everything that it has to the boy. Now, since that time, I've read some people who have criticized the book.

[3:11] They've pointed out that, man, this boy seems to be using the tree. The tree seems to be willing to be used. But I think that's kind of missing the point because the book is not titled The Taking Boy.

[3:25] It's not about the boy who takes. It's titled The Giving Tree. It's emphasis is on a tree whose very nature, whose very heart, whose very disposition, whose joy is to give.

[3:39] And to give abundantly, overflowingly. And it reminds me of that very famous verse about a giving God, John 3, 16.

[3:51] For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

[4:04] So last week, we learned that the one true God, he is like that giving tree. This God is a giving trinity.

[4:15] He's a giving trinity. The one true God is a God whose very nature is to love. Because in eternity, this God exists in relationship.

[4:29] This God exists in a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In eternity, there is only one being we can call God.

[4:42] The Lord our God, the Lord is one. In eternity, this God is three divine persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And each of these three persons is fully God.

[4:58] So it's not as though we are here worshiping three gods. No, there is only one being that we can call God. And it's not as though this God is a single person who appears in three different ways.

[5:14] Sometimes he's like a father. Sometimes he's like a son. Sometimes he's like a spirit. No, the Father, Son, and Spirit are three distinct persons. They are distinct from one another. And it's not as though each of these three persons is maybe partly God.

[5:29] Like the Father is one-third God. Or the Son possesses some attributes of God, but not all of them. No, each of the three is fully God.

[5:39] This is the God who in eternity enjoys perfect harmony, perfect peace, perfect love within that Trinitarian relationship.

[5:52] And yet, in this God, we have a father who loves his son. And so his plan, his purpose in mind for his son is this.

[6:06] He is going to give his son a world, a gift for him. The creation of our universe, we saw last week. It's the story of how a father gives a world to his son.

[6:19] That's why God created everything you see around you, including you yourself. And we learned last week, too, that God created human beings to surround his son with brothers and sisters.

[6:36] And yet, one thing we find when we look at the book of Genesis, when we look at Genesis chapter 2, is that we see human beings in their original state. They're a lot like little children, in a way.

[6:47] They have some growing up to do. In Genesis 2, we're told, The man and his wife, and these are Adam and Eve, the first human beings, the man and his wife, they were both naked and were not ashamed.

[7:00] They're like young children, naked and not ashamed. And like children, they are unproven. And even more so than children are, they were innocent. They had not conceived of all the ways one can sin and hurt one another and rebel against God.

[7:18] But they have not yet become wise. They have not yet become proven. They have not yet reached a state of perfect maturity. In the Old Testament, a child is often described as someone who doesn't have the wisdom yet to tell what's good and what's bad.

[7:37] So, for example, in Hebrews chapter 5, we ourselves are told, Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

[7:53] To distinguish good from evil. And so, will Adam and Eve, will this first man and woman, are they going to grow into this perfect maturity? Are they going to continue on the path that God has set them on?

[8:05] Are they going to exercise dominion over God's world in a way that nourishes and cares and reflects the love of the Trinity? Or, when they face their first test, are they going to turn away from the harmony, from the joy that they have in God?

[8:27] Are they instead going to become self-absorbed, self-oriented, self-loving? They're like this raw vein of gold extracted from the earth.

[8:40] And they are about to be exposed to heat. And heat is necessary for them to be refined and formed into the right shape of maturity and beauty. But this heat can melt them down into nothing at all.

[8:56] The testing and proving of humanity comes in the form of a serpent who enters the garden in which God has placed them. And that's what we are told in Genesis chapter 2.

[9:08] The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

[9:27] For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. So the man and the woman, they are not ready yet to take on this responsibility of knowing, discerning, deciding between good and evil, between what is good, what is bad.

[9:43] Their path to that maturity must be a path of dependence, of entrusting themselves to the wisdom of a loving, life-giving God.

[9:54] Will they try to claim power and authority for themselves independent of God? Or are they going to remain humble, trusting, believing that God is going to continue to give what is good in his proper time?

[10:13] What's at stake here is, is this God really a giving trinity? Is this God really a God of love, of kindness, and a God who is wise and knows what's best?

[10:25] Well, we're told in Genesis chapter 3, He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

[10:43] And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

[10:59] But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die? For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

[11:13] And so here, their trust in God's character is tested. Do they believe that God is gracious? Or do they think he is miserly?

[11:27] Does this God speak the truth and fully disclose his heart? Or does he withhold the truth? And is he full of empty threats?

[11:39] Does this God have your good in mind? Or is he just trying to keep you down? Well, the woman makes her choice. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

[12:03] And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. So she does not share the love of the Trinity. She does not share the love of the Father for the Son.

[12:15] She does not share the trust they have in one another. She does not share the longing of the Son to glorify the Father, the joy of the Spirit in the Father and the Son.

[12:27] She is moved not by a love for God, not by a delight in him. She is moved by a love for this fruit, the delight in, oh, what this could give her.

[12:41] Independence from God, separation from him. The fruit is promising her, you can go your own way. And now there's a song running through your head, since I've said that.

[12:56] And just like in the song, you can go your own way. There are consequences of seeking this sort of twisted liberation. There are disastrous consequences when man treats God as something other than a good and gracious Father.

[13:13] What happens is that all of our relationships have become warped in one way or another.

[13:24] That's what happens to Adam and Eve. The ability to see one another, it now becomes not a reassurance, but a threat. They have to hide.

[13:37] They have to cover themselves behind fig leaves, and when that's not enough, behind tree trunks. They are no longer safe. They are no longer safe from one another. They are especially no longer safe from the God who arrives in the garden.

[13:53] When hiding no longer works, they invent a new tactic, blame shifting. They shift the blame to one another. They are imitating their new father, the devil, by accusing one another, even accusing God, in order to vindicate themselves.

[14:12] They really aren't that much different from us. We have followed in their footsteps. And then God responds by cursing them and their relationships with one another, with him, with the created world.

[14:32] Now they are subject to death and to disease, just as we are experiencing today. Now they are subject to endless conflict and violence.

[14:45] And above all, they are driven out from the presence of the Lord, from the overflowing relationship of this giving trinity. God, what he is doing in this is God is handing them over to become what they wanted to be.

[15:04] One of the worst things God can ever do for us is say to us, your will be done. I will hand you over to what you want to be. Their son, Cain, he no longer looks at his brother with eyes of love and delight and harmony, but with jealousy.

[15:25] He murders his brother. And then he turns and tells God, am I my brother's keeper? As though he has nothing to do with him. He too is driven from the presence of the Lord.

[15:37] His descendant, Lamech, he even goes so far as to write a song, boasting, celebrating his murder of another man in Genesis chapter five.

[15:50] And so not only has mankind become subject to death, we ourselves have become an unwarranted agent of death as well, an unauthorized agent of death.

[16:03] Here is what death is. Fundamentally, we have to understand what death is and how anti-Trinitarian it is. Death is separation.

[16:17] Death is the severing of what God made to go together. Death is the severing of soul from body. The soul and body, they just ought to be together in a human being.

[16:32] And when the body expires and fails, we call it death. Death is the severing of one person from another. Parted not only by mortality, but parted by breaches in our relationships, in conflict, in divorce.

[16:51] Death is the severing of a human being, finally and ultimately from the God who made him. Cut off from the good presence of God.

[17:03] Death is a horrible, horrible thing. And it is the result of sin. It is the judgment against us because of sin. It is the violation.

[17:14] Sin is the violation of God's law. And lest we think, oh, man, that talk of law, that's so constricting, that's so impersonal. All the law is at its heart is this.

[17:29] It is a code of right expectations for our relationships. It's just a code of right expectations for our relationships. Law is very relational. It's all relational. And we all carry into all of our relationships expectations.

[17:43] But the one whose expectations matter is the Lord. And it is his law that matters. And sin is a violation of that. The wages of sin is death.

[17:56] It is an offense against a holy and life-giving God. It is an offense against a father who created us to love, to honor his son. What sin is, is it's an attempt to sever the ties that bind, to cast aside that Trinitarian love, that perfect holiness and harmony and delight in one another, and to warp it in some way, to use it for our own advantage.

[18:25] Last week, I asked the question. I concluded with this question. Why doesn't this world seem that beautiful? If God created this world as a good gift for his son, why doesn't it seem that way?

[18:38] Why all the ugliness? Why all the misery? Why all the suffering, the disease and death, the conflict and despair, the oppression of the wicked? What has marred this masterpiece of a triune God?

[18:50] What has ruined the gift the father has given to his son? And the answer is this. We did. We did this.

[19:01] You and I did it. We have followed in the footsteps of our father, Adam, and willingly followed in his footsteps. We have inherited not only his guilt, but his depraved nature.

[19:14] There is no part of us that has not been affected or twisted by sin in some way. We are told in Romans chapter five, sin came into the world through one man and death through sin.

[19:31] And so death spread to all men because all sinned. All of that ugliness, all of that misery, all of that suffering, all that death that we see and experience, it is a curse that tells the truth about what we have become.

[19:50] Do you know we need this? Strangely enough, we need this curse. Because without that, we would be like a child who was born without the ability to feel pain.

[20:02] Unless you think that's a good thing. I've read stories, accounts of children who are born, and there is some sort of defect where they are no longer able to experience pain. And what happens is a horror.

[20:16] They are unable to recognize the harm in what they do. They are unable to tell that anything is wrong. When they cut themselves on a sharp edge, when they place their hands on a hot stove.

[20:32] Children born without the ability to feel pain, they do not usually survive long into adulthood. We need to see and experience the truth, that all this misery we see around us, it is a God-given signal, it is a warning sign to people whose minds, our minds are too warped to understand any other way.

[20:54] It is a sign that says, something has gone horribly wrong. Our world has been corrupted. We are no longer the people that our God made us to be. We are no longer worthy of his son.

[21:06] We are no longer that absolute good that God originally made us to be. We have become a corrupted good. God is right to feel wrath against us.

[21:18] God will be right one day to condemn all those who have to stand only on their own merits. We are worthy of nothing more than that.

[21:31] And yet, God does not leave us in our sin. He could. He could turn his back on us, and he is free to do it, and he is fully within his rights to do it, but he is a giving God.

[21:45] And so now, we can return to those words from John 3, verse 16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

[22:09] I was talking this week with a few of you as we were discussing this verse, and one of you pointed out to me the irony of the verse here.

[22:20] The same God who made the world as a gift for his son, he has now given his son as a gift to the world.

[22:32] The world a gift to his son, and now his son a gift to the world. And just like the giving tree, he gives his son freely, the one he loves and treasures.

[22:46] He gives not out of compulsion, but just because he is gracious, and he is a giver. He gives his son to those who don't deserve him.

[22:59] Here's what the author Tim Chester tells us. God is not only loving, he is love. For he is an eternal community of loving relationships.

[23:14] When he loves us, he does not do so because some quality in us draws forth his love. Indeed, the opposite is the case.

[23:24] God loves us despite who we are. God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

[23:37] God is not love in the same way that he is wrath. His wrath is a response to our sin. But his love is not a response to us.

[23:49] His love does not depend on the loveliness of the one he loves. It is an act of pure grace. He loves because he is love, not because we are lovely.

[24:05] And he is love because he is an eternal trinity of persons in loving relationship. So how does he do this?

[24:20] How is a father's gift of his son going to give us life? What good will that do? How does a son's freely chosen obedience to his father, how does it save us from our sin?

[24:32] Well, here's what Jesus Christ, here is what the son of God tells us in John chapter 12. When Jesus hears that there are people coming to Jerusalem, coming from outside the nation of Israel, these Greeks who are wanting to see him, Jesus senses that the time has come for him to die for our sake, to draw people, not just from Israel, but people from all nations together.

[25:03] And that includes you and me. And here's what we read in John 12. Now, among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

[25:20] Philip went and told Andrew. Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, And then he adds shortly afterward, And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

[25:58] He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. What's happening here is that the son of God is going to be lifted up on a cross, to be crucified as a vile criminal, to be subjected to death.

[26:23] And since the son of God has also become fully human, 100% God and 100% man, he can now represent us all.

[26:35] He can take the penalty for sin, for everyone who believes in his name, for everyone who is united with him by faith, and counted with him.

[26:48] He endured the full wrath of God on that cross. He endured the full fury of hell. And that is where he died, where he endured that severing and that separation.

[27:02] How can he do all this? How can the son love to the bitter end? How can he give himself, even in a situation which you and I, if we were in his place, we would just try to get out of there.

[27:19] We would just try to save ourselves. Because not only is he the son of God, but he has done exactly what our father Adam ought to have done.

[27:39] He has chosen not to declare independence from God. He has instead humbled himself. He has entrusted himself to his father.

[27:52] That's who he is. That's his heart. And his father even sent the Holy Spirit to be with him, to empower him for his ministry on earth, to bring him to the cross.

[28:10] And that's why we were told in John chapter one, these things about Jesus' baptism. We're told, here's what John the Baptist said. John bore witness.

[28:21] I saw the spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. That's on Christ. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, he in whom you see the spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

[28:44] And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the son of God. And so this son, given the power, given the wisdom of the spirit of God, dependent on his father, dependent on the spirit, he is able to do everything that our father Adam did not do.

[29:10] He is able to do everything that you and I cannot do apart from him. We cannot do any of this. We cannot fully honor God.

[29:22] We cannot love the way he loves and the feeble strength of our own flesh. This is how the son can live and die for us. But why? Why would he do this?

[29:33] There are some false teachers who would say, who portray this as though his arm is somehow twisted by his father.

[29:46] Let's say, there's no way he could be dying on the cross as a substitute for us. There is no way he could be taking on himself the wrath of God because that would make him some sort of victim of some sort of cosmic child abuse from a cruel father.

[30:03] Never. Listen to him. Listen to what he says. That is not the way Jesus looks at what he is doing, about why he is enduring all the anxiety, all the horror, all the suffering, all the shame.

[30:17] In John 12, he tells us, now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this purpose, I have come to this hour.

[30:33] Father, glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven. I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.

[30:44] So what motivates the son? What moves him? What keeps him heading towards the cross? Even when his mind is racing, his body is trembling, tears are streaming down his face.

[30:58] He is sweating blood in Gethsemane. Oh, it is this aching desire in his heart. Father, glorify your name. Your name.

[31:08] He did it for his father. He did it because it is his joy. To do his father's will. He entrusts himself to his father freely, fully.

[31:27] That is why the apostle Paul just stops and marvels with these words in Romans chapter 5. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

[31:49] For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

[32:05] Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

[32:17] For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

[32:30] More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Our Lord Jesus Christ, he did not stay dead.

[32:50] He rose from the dead just as his father willed. And we who are united to him by faith, his journey is our journey.

[33:02] We too will receive new life and we even have a taste of it right now. We too know that though we die, one day we will rise again from the dead.

[33:16] Jesus ascended into heaven. He is seated now at the right hand of the throne of God forever in the presence of God and that is where we belong.

[33:28] We belong with him there. The result of all this is that we are reconciled to God. We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

[33:43] The relationship is restored. We rejoice in him not only because of what he has done, now that we are reconciled, we can come to know him.

[33:57] We can now start getting to know him, start to enjoy him, start to love him as he truly is. I think many of us here now have never been, perhaps if you're listening, you have never truly been reconciled to God.

[34:15] There has always been this distance, this gap between you and God. And down in his heart, if someone were to ask you, do you, do you know him? Do you enjoy him?

[34:29] You would have to say, no, not really. In fact, not at all. I just try not to think too much about him.

[34:39] But the author, Michael Reeves, tells us, the father sent his son to make himself known.

[34:54] Meaning not that he wanted simply to download some information about himself, but that the love the father eternally had for the son might be in those who believe in him.

[35:06] And that we might enjoy the son as the father always has. Here then is a salvation no single person God could offer even if they wanted to.

[35:20] The father so delights in his eternal love for the son that he desires to share it with all who will believe. Ultimately, the father sent the son because the father so loved the son and wanted to share that love and fellowship.

[35:42] His love for the world is the overflow of his almighty love for his son. And so, all that Jesus Christ has done on our behalf, all of it, it is a work of God.

[36:00] The atonement that Jesus Christ did, the work that he has done to save us, to reconcile us to God, to deal with our sin. It is all the work of a God who is a trinity.

[36:14] If you lose the trinity, if you lose sight of it, if you no longer grasp this doctrine, if you no longer understand who this God is, your understanding of all that God has done for you, all that is available for you, the reconciliation he has, the joy he has for you, it's going to become a faint and pathetic shadow of what it ought to be.

[36:41] We need to know that Jesus Christ died as a substitute for us. His death is a substitute. It shows how our salvation begins, how it's achieved.

[36:52] Here's what Tim Chester tells us. He says, in this substitutionary view, atonement is a transaction between God and God, between the Father and the Son through the Spirit.

[37:08] It is an event within God. Salvation starts with God, is achieved by God, and is applied by God.

[37:21] This is why, yet another reason, why this relationship within God, this Trinity, it is the most important relationship in the world to you.

[37:35] This God saved us, and if you are a believer in Christ, transformed by him, this God saved you, and is saving you, because this God is a giving Trinity.

[37:53] How then are we to respond? How are we to respond to all of this? We are made new, and we are not made new so that we can now say, all right, I'm freed from sin.

[38:09] I'm a Christian now, so now I can just go on living my life how I want. We are not free to be independent from God the Son. We are not free to look at him and say, all right, this Jesus is a compassionate fellow, he's great, I'm glad Jesus is on my side, and now I'm just going to continue going on with my life as before, but now Jesus is my mascot.

[38:33] Now I call myself by his name and just keep living the way I always did, and keep setting my own agenda. That is not the life of the Trinity.

[38:45] Trinity. That is not the way the Son relates to his Father, to the Spirit. That is not the way the Spirit relates to Father and Son. We are made new for this purpose, not to be independent from God the Son, but to cling to the Son whom God has given, to hold fast to him, to look to him, to learn from him, to identify ourselves with him, to desire him, to love him, to glory in him, to boast in him.

[39:15] Let him who boasts boast in the Lord. First, for anything else, believe in the Son whom God has given.

[39:28] You must believe in him. To believe in him is to have eternal life, life that is good and abundant and unending, the good life. not to believe in the Son.

[39:41] If you do not believe in him, it is to remain condemned, to remain severed from the life of the giving Trinity, severed by your own will.

[39:56] That is what we are told in John chapter 3. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

[40:13] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned.

[40:28] But whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. So believe in the one and only precious Son of God.

[40:43] Entrust yourself to him. Know that he is good. This is the only way to receiving new life in Christ. This is the only way to being transformed.

[40:53] This is the only way to escape the growing madness of our world. This life is given by the Holy Spirit whom the Son alone can give to us.

[41:07] We'll learn next week when we come back again next week how the Trinity is going to lead us into a new way of life. Life in this present age and life in the age to come.

[41:19] A new way of life through the power and joy of this God-given Holy Spirit, this third person of the Trinity. Trinity. But for now, we must respond to the Son.

[41:33] What will we do with the Son of God? Will we dismiss him? By dismissing, will we communicate that he is not that good?

[41:49] That he is not delightful? That he is not worthy? Or will we embrace him? We respond by following the pathway first walked by the Son of God.

[42:06] If we are united with him by faith, then we will remain with him. The pathway that he walked is one of suffering, shame, and death. This is a pathway in which death is the way to new life, it is the way to glory.

[42:23] We're not walking that pathway out of a sense of dourness, but out of a longing and a hope for the future.

[42:35] You see, you and I, we don't want that pathway, we want the cheap road, the fast road to glory. At the end of John chapter 12, we are told that many people liked Jesus.

[42:47] A lot of people really liked him, but few of them were willing to entrust themselves to him. Few of them were willing to take up their cross and follow him. We read at the end of John chapter 12, many, even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue, for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

[43:17] man, if there is something that trips us up more than possibly anything else that is this, we love the glory that comes from man. The status, the honor, the sense that life is worth living, our eyes light up because of what other people can give us, what the world can give us, and our eyes do not light up when we think through what God can give us.

[43:45] you and I, we are well attuned to that road of a false and fleeting glory. We are well attuned to an ethic of self-preservation, but Jesus, he not only told his disciples that he was going to endure death, but Jesus called them to join him there, to walk with him on that road.

[44:07] Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains. Alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

[44:20] Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me.

[44:33] And where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. we have to open the pages of scripture, we have to read closely the words and actions of Jesus, because we want to see this perfect image of God, how he shows us the way to die, the way to bear much fruit.

[45:05] He tells us, where I am, there will my servant be also. And so there we will be, there we will be with him forever. There will the Father honor us.

[45:18] There will we be caught up in the joyful fellowship of this giving trinity. Father, I know that you are a God who is good, who is delightful.

[45:31] In our efforts to find life apart from you. We have sought glory anywhere and everywhere but in you. We don't want to walk the path that Jesus walked.

[45:49] But he is good and he shows us the way. Lord, I pray that everyone who listens, who believes in him and knows him, may long to be with him where he is.

[46:00] to walk that same pathway, to lay down their lives, to give generously and freely, to honor you at cost to themselves, to love others at cost to themselves.

[46:16] And to do it, not out of a sense of drudgery, not out of a sense of mere duty, but out of a sense of hope and joy and a sense that, yes, I get to, be with Christ and I delight in him.

[46:33] Lord God, show us that you are a God who gives freely more than we could ever ask and imagine to all those who long to be with your son, who have put their faith and trust in him, who receive forgiveness of sins and life in his name, who boast no longer in their own good works, who boast no longer in what the world can offer to them, but who boast only in Jesus Christ.

[47:02] And I pray that anyone who listens to this, who does not know Jesus Christ, who hears these words and it sounds like a foreign language, or it sounds offensive, or it sounds just weird and twisted and wrong, I pray, Lord, that you would open their eyes to see that there is something so much better, that you are a God who truly is a giving trinity, and that everything else that we have talked about today flows out of that, captivate them by the beauty of father, son, and spirit, captivate them and win over their hearts, we pray, Lord, amen.