When I was a college student at the University of Maryland, there was a student club on campus.
! This particular student club did improv comedy.
Once a year, usually in the month of May, they would do a 24-hour performance of improv comedy in the center of campus.
You would be walking back from class in the middle of the day, or you would be coming back late at night from a friend's dorm,
and you would see students in the center of campus doing an improv comedy show, whether their audience was 100 people or zero people.
Improv comedy is, of course, improvisational. It's all made up on the spot.
Often performers take ideas or words from the audience, and they turn it into a scene.
And to do this, you have to not only be funny, but you have to be pretty smart and quick on your feet.
And so it was pretty incredible that this group of students would do this for 24 hours straight.
And if you know anything, if you've heard anything about how people learn to do improv comedy,
you know that one of the core principles is yes and.
Yes and.
It's this dynamic where performers are to build upon each other's performances.
So one person walks out on the stage and starts doing something.
Maybe they're reading a book or driving a car.
And the second person's job is to walk out onto the stage and say yes and.
To accept what the person is doing and to accept it and turn it into something that's creative and funny.
As we've already said, today in the church calendar is Trinity Sunday.
And if I could summarize what Trinity Sunday is all about, it's yes and.
Yes and.
God is one.
Yes and.
And he is also three.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God is three.
Yes and.
He is also one.
And so that's what we're going to look at this morning.
We're going to, from our gospel passage, from John chapter 16, we're going to look at the Trinity.
We're going to look at understanding the Trinity and experiencing the Trinity.
Understanding the Trinity and experiencing the Trinity.
So first of all, understanding the Trinity.
Even though the word Trinity is never used in Scripture, this is nonetheless how God has revealed himself in Scripture.
As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Now it took the church several generations to describe exactly how this is the case, especially in terms of the identity of the Son, who is both human and divine.
How is that possible?
Well, that took several centuries for the church to unpack.
But after reflecting on Scripture for centuries through councils like Nicaea and Chalcedon and Constantinople, the church landed on this yes and way of describing God.
That God is a tri-unity of one essence, one nature, one substance, three persons.
So the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three separate gods.
They're not three equal parts of God where each person of the Trinity is .33333 God.
I debated on how many threes to use because you can keep going.
Nor are they three modes of being where sometimes God acts like a father, sometimes God acts like the Son, or sometimes God acts like the Spirit.
That's a heresy called modalism.
Or my personal favorite heresy, Sibelianism.
Sibelianism is taught by a man named Sibelius, who lived in the third century.
And my favorite heresy is what he taught, which is that in the Old Testament, God acted like the Father.
In the New Testament, God acted like the Son.
And in the church age, our present age, God acts like the Spirit.
Now, we give Sibelius lots of points for creativity.
But we give him zero points for orthodoxy.
Listen to how the 39 Articles of Religion, this is our Anglican confessional statement,
reflects on the orthodox and apostolic definition of the early church councils.
The 39 Articles put it like this.
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness,
the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible.
There's the oneness.
And now here's the yes and.
And in the unity of this Godhead, there are three persons of one substance, power, and eternity.
That's the threeness.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, the document similar to the 39 Articles, puts it like this.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are same in substance, equal in power and glory.
Same in substance, equal in power and glory.
One God, one nature, one essence, three persons.
And you might say, well, Jeff, that's a nice theology lesson,
but what actual difference does that make in my life?
In his book, How to Know a Person, New York Times author David Brooks talks about his personal story,
and he talks about how he grew up in a family, in an educational culture that was very heady,
that was very intellectual, very cerebral, perhaps overly so.
He talks about how he attended undergrad at the University of Chicago as a young man.
And he talks about the University of Chicago as that it's the kind of place where students wear T-shirts that say,
sure, it works in practice, but does it work in theory?
And I think oftentimes when people hear pastors like me talk about God being a Trinity,
sometimes that's the vibe.
It's this kind of like overly theoretical thing that's distanced from my real life.
What difference does it make?
But talking about the Trinity is not an overly theoretical exercise.
It's intensely practical.
Because the yes and of the Trinity is all about love.
It's all about love.
Some religions, like Islam, teach that God is unitarian, one nature, one person.
But if that's true, if God is one person, we have to ask, before the creation of the world, who was God loving?
For there to be love, there has to be a plurality of personhood.
There is the lover and there is the beloved.
And for a Unitarian God to love, he must create another person in order to love.
And so for a Unitarian God, power, not love, is what is most central to his being.
But if God is a Trinity, then love is essential to who he is from all of eternity.
God does not create in order to love.
God creates because he is love.
He creates as an overflow of the love that is central to his being.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit exist in a mutually indwelling, mutually glorifying, eternal dance of divine love.
From all of eternity, the Father has loved and glorified the Son.
And the Son has loved and glorified the Father.
And they love and glorify one another through the Spirit.
The whole purpose of creation, the whole purpose of redemption, the whole purpose of existence is to bring you and I to catch us up into this eternal dance of love.
That we might experience the mutually indwelling, the mutually glorifying love of the Trinity.
This is the reason for all that exists.
This is the reason why you and I exist.
And all of this is important to understand what is going on in our gospel passage in John chapter 16 and what's going on in John chapters 13 through 17 more broadly.
Where our understanding of the Trinity intersects with our experience of the Trinity.
And that's what we're going to look at secondly.
Our experience of the Trinity.
Experiencing the Trinity.
If you read the Gospel of John, you'll notice that John chapters 13 through 17 are kind of a cohesive unit.
They're known as the upper room discourse.
They're actually all one scene.
They're not individual discourses.
They're all one scene on the night before Jesus is arrested and betrayed.
Where he gathers with his disciples in the upper room to eat the Passover meal.
And he gathers to eat with them one last time.
To fellowship with them.
And to teach them.
And these five chapters are amazing.
You could spend a lifetime studying these five chapters.
They're incredibly rich.
And a lot of it is this deep theological teaching from Jesus to his disciples on the nature and work of the Trinity.
And across chapters 13 through 17, Jesus teaches us a lot about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
But here in our Gospel passage, in the first half of John chapter 16, he zooms in.
He zooms in on the work of the Holy Spirit.
In this scene, Jesus is telling his disciples that he is soon going to leave them.
After his death and resurrection, he's going to return back to the Father in his ascension.
And in verses 5 through 6, he acknowledges that his disciples are grieved about this.
They don't want him to leave.
And this is understandable, right?
I mean, they've been with him the past several years.
They've grown close to him.
Of course, they wouldn't want him to leave.
But in verse 7, Jesus says something incredibly surprising.
If you look in your bulletin or in your copy of God's Word, notice what Jesus says in verse 7.
He says,
It is to your advantage.
It's to your advantage that I go away.
For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send him to you.
And you can imagine kind of the disciples' surprise as they hear this.
I mean, you can imagine them saying,
What do you mean?
What do you mean it's to our advantage that you go away?
Wouldn't it be so much better if you stuck around?
I mean, we could just keep this party going.
We could keep doing all the amazing stuff that we've seen you do the past few years.
You could do your thing.
You could teach people, heal people, raise the dead, change lives.
And we'll keep hanging out with you and drawing the crowds.
You know?
Take this show on tour throughout the Roman Empire.
What do you mean it's better?
What do you mean it's better that you leave?
Jesus says, No, it's for your benefit that I go and ascend to the Father so I can send the Holy Spirit.
There is something about the work of the Holy Spirit.
That it is better for the Holy Spirit to be in us than physically beside us.
There is something about the work of the Holy Spirit.
It's better for the Holy Spirit to be in us than physically beside us.
But how could that be?
I mean, if I think about my own life, I could think about a hundred situations where it would be so helpful.
It would be so helpful to have Jesus physically right beside me.
I mean, some of you can probably think about situations or circumstances in your own life.
Where it would be so helpful to have Jesus right there with you.
Perhaps in dealing with sickness or pain.
Perhaps dealing with frustrations at work.
Perhaps even applying for a job.
Perhaps walking through grief or loss.
I mean, isn't this Martha and Mary's question to Jesus when their brother Lazarus dies?
Lord, if you had been here.
Right?
Lord, if you had been here.
So then why is the Holy Spirit in us better than Jesus beside us?
Well, there's a lot that we could say about that.
The Bible has a lot to say about the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
There are lots of different ways that we could answer that question.
But what does Jesus specifically focus on in the rest of our passage?
What does he specifically say in verses 8 through 15?
In verses 8 through 15, Jesus says,
It's to our advantage that he returns to the Father and sends the Spirit.
Because of the Spirit work of illumination.
Illumination.
Illumination is this theological word that means that the Holy Spirit does two things.
The Holy Spirit shows us our need for Jesus.
And it shows us all that we have in Jesus.
Shows us all that we need.
Shows us that we need Jesus.
And shows us all that we have in Jesus.
And this is what we see as we read the rest of the passages.
Verses 8 through 15.
Verse 8.
And when he, that is the Holy Spirit,
When he comes,
He will convict the world
Concerning sin
And righteousness
And judgment.
The Holy Spirit has to do this because on our own,
We can't know that we are sinners who need a Savior.
Despite our intellect and our reason,
Our fallen nature can't quite comprehend this reality.
We need the Holy Spirit
To enlighten and to illumine our hearts to this reality.
To convict us of our sin
And to show us our need for righteousness.
To show us our need for a Savior.
But the Holy Spirit not only shows us
Our need for Jesus.
The Holy Spirit also shows us
All that we have in Jesus.
He shows us all that we have in Jesus.
This is what
Jesus teaches in verse 14.
He, the Holy Spirit,
Will glorify me.
That's Jesus.
He will glorify me
For he will take what is mine
And declare it to you.
He will take what is mine
And declare it to you.
What is the job of the Holy Spirit?
The job of the Holy Spirit
Is to glorify Jesus
By taking what belongs to him
And sharing it with us.
And as the Holy Spirit
Shows us the glory of Jesus
And shares with us
All that belongs to Jesus,
We also see the glory of the Father.
That's what comes next in verse 15.
Verse 15 says
All that the Father has is mine
And therefore I said
That he will take what is mine
And declare it to you.
The illuminating work of the Holy Spirit
Catches us up into the life of the Trinity.
This is the way the Apostle Paul
The Apostle Paul says it like this
In 2 Corinthians 4 verse 6
For God who said
Let light shine out of darkness
That's a reference to creation
In Genesis 1
For God who said
Let light shine out of darkness
Made his light shine in our hearts
To give us
And the Spirit is like this giant spotlight
This giant spotlight
That shines on Jesus
To help us to see him
In all of his beauty
And all of his glory.
Not just so that we understand
Not just so that we have right thinking
But so that we love him
And worship him
And adore him
And obey him.
And so that we experience
His love for us.
That's what Paul says
In Romans 5.
Romans 5 verse 5
Says this
That God's love
God's love
Has been poured out
Into our hearts
Through what?
Through who?
Through the Holy Spirit.
God pours out his love
Into our hearts
Through the Holy Spirit.
Theologians across church history
Have reflected
On the illuminating work
Of the Holy Spirit
As having both light
And heat.
Light and heat.
Through the light of the Holy Spirit
We see who Jesus is.
All that he has accomplished for us.
And through the heat
Through the heat of the Holy Spirit
We feel and experience
The love of Christ for us.
So listen to Jonathan Edwards
Say it like this.
I've edited this quote
To make it a bit clearer.
Listen to Jonathan Edwards
Say it like this.
As flowers on a pleasant spring day
Open up to the sun
To be filled with its warmth and light
And to flourish in beauty
And fragrance by its rays.
So every Christian
Is a flower in the garden of God.
Opening up our hearts
To be filled with God's love
Through the Spirit.
It's a beautiful image.
Listen to how Charles Spurgeon
Charles Spurgeon says it like this.
It is ever the Holy Spirit's work.
I love this.
It is ever the Holy Spirit's work
To turn our eyes away from self
And toward Jesus.
We shall never find happiness
By looking at our own prayers
Our own doings
Our own feelings.
It is what Jesus is.
Not what we are.
That brings rest to our souls.
It is what Jesus is.
Not what we are.
That brings rest to our souls.
Okay, can we just hang out there for a second?
Because I think that we live
In a culture
That places a huge emphasis
On self-improvement
And self-optimization.
If you're not happy with who you are
Or where you're at in life
Then you need to work on
Optimizing your life
And you can find
All sorts of books
And podcasts
And YouTube videos
And social media posts
About how to optimize your diet
How to optimize your
Your workout routines
Your schedule
Your fashion
How you clean your house
How you organize your closet
How to swing a golf club
That last one was purely theoretical
Just
One
No, that last one was me
Now
The self-optimization
Now all of this is bad
Some of it can be helpful
But how often
Do we look to self-optimization
And self-improvement
As the thing
That is going to bring rest to our souls?
I think whether we say it out loud or not
I think that
This often looks like statements
That begin with
If I could just
Get this one thing in my life
Figured out or organized
If I could just
Lose this much weight
If I could just
Figure out the
Perfect schedule for all my kids
If I could just
Wake up
Do a cold plunge
Brew the perfect coffee
Do the right exercise routine
Write out my goals for the day
All before 6am
If I could just do that
Then my life would be
Better
Then I would finally be at rest
Or as Christians
We over-spiritualize
Self-optimization
If I could just
Get my spiritual disciplines in order
Or if I could just
Pray enough
Or just kind of
Find the right devotional practice
But how many of us
Have
Tried to optimize
These parts of our lives
Maybe we've tried and failed
Or maybe we've even succeeded
But how many of us
Have done this
And realized
That
That's not it
That it doesn't
Actually bring
The deep rest
To our souls
That we long for
May I suggest
To you
From John chapter 16
That this is because
Transformation
Doesn't happen
Through self-optimization
Transformation
Doesn't happen
By shining the spotlight
More on ourselves
Transformation
Happens
By shining the spotlight
More on the beauty
And the glory
Of Jesus
It is what
Jesus is
Not what we are
That brings rest
To our soul
What our hearts
Most need
Is not
To optimize
Or improve ourselves
But to behold
The beauty
And the glory
Of God
In the face
Of Jesus Christ
And I think
That's what
John
Jesus in John chapter 16
Is saying
That this is
What the Holy Spirit
Does
That he takes
What belongs
To Jesus
And he shows it
To us
And he shares it
With us
And this is why
The Trinity
Is so amazing
This is why
The Trinity
Is so incredible
This is why
The Holy Spirit
In us
Is even better
Than Jesus
Beside us
It is because
Jesus ascends
Because Jesus ascends
And goes back
To the glory
Of the Father
It is because
He does that
That he can share
All that belongs
To him
With us
All the benefits
Of his saving work
All that he has
In the Father
He shares that
With us
By pouring
Out his Spirit
On us
And I think
That this is
Ultimately
Why
Improv comedy
Ultimately
Points us to God
Because the Trinity
Is the ultimate
Yes
And
Performance
The eternal
Life and love
Of God
Overflows into
Our lives
By catching us
Up into this
Dance
Of Father
Son
And Holy Spirit
Who mutually
Indwell
And mutually
Glorify one another
In an eternal
Dance
Of love
And the difference
That this makes
In our lives
Is that we are
Fundamentally
Not
Self
Optimizers
We are not
Fundamentally
Self
Improvers
But we are
Glory
Gazers
We are
Glory
Gazers
What is it
About the beauty
And the glory
Of Jesus
That your heart
Needs to gaze
At this morning
What aspect
Of his
Nature
What aspect
Of his
Character
What aspect
Of his
Finished work
Does your heart
Need to gaze
At and to
Behold
This morning
Through the
Illuminating
Work of the
Holy Spirit
Perhaps
It's his
Love
For you
As your
Bridegroom
Perhaps
It's his
Forgiveness
And mercy
For you
As your
Savior
Perhaps
It's his
Justice
And authority
As your
King
Perhaps
It's his
Tenderness
For you
As your
Shepherd
It is
Who
Jesus
Is
Not
What
We
Are
That
Brings
Rest
To
Our
Souls
Let me
Close
With the
Words
From this
Wonderful
Hymn
Turn
Your
Eyes
Upon
Jesus
Look
Full
In his
Wonderful
Face
And the
Things
Of the
Earth
Will
Grow
Strangely
Dim
In the
Light
Of his
Glory
And grace
Pray with
Me
Father
Son
And Holy
Spirits
We
Worship
You
And adore
You
Thank you
That you
Have
Invited
Us
Into
Your
Mutually
Indwelling
Mutually
Glorifying
Dance
Of
Love
Thank you
That because
Of Jesus
You send
Your spirit
To illuminate
Our hearts
And to
Illuminate
Jesus
Your glory
Help us
To gaze
Upon you
And behold
You
And be
Transformed
To be
More like
You
And we
Pray all
This in the
Name of the
Father and the
Son and the
Holy Spirit
Amen
Yes