Father, we want to be humble before your word.
Father, humble us so that we can listen to your word.
Humble us, Father, still our preconceptions and the limits we want to put on your word.
Father, at the same time, humble us in such a way that we still desire to use the very best of our mind to hear and to understand your word.
And we ask, Father, that your word would be so read and heard by us that it will enter deeply into our lives, into the center of who we are,
and that we would then, in our day-to-day lives, bear much fruit that brings you great glory.
And this we ask in Jesus' name, your Son and our Savior. Amen.
Please be seated.
I don't know how many people read the blog that I write every week.
It's in the bulletin.
This isn't a plug for it or anything, but I make mention to something that happened to me when I was in university.
There were several times in university that I almost lost my faith.
And I record just very briefly one of the incidents that actually took place over several months where I almost lost my faith.
I was familiar with the idea that Jehovah Witnesses didn't believe that Jesus was God and they didn't believe in the Trinity.
But I'd never come across somebody who seemed to know the Bible quite well and who wasn't a Jehovah Witness
and who claimed that the Trinity isn't taught in the Bible and that the Bible doesn't teach and Jesus didn't claim that he was God.
And this caught me by surprise.
And at first I just completely and utterly, I didn't know, I didn't know actually that the word Trinity never is found in the Bible.
And I denied it.
And that's actually a really bad start to a type of a long-time argument or discussion,
that I deny something and it turns out they're right.
And one of the problems I had is that when I started to look into the Bible to see where it taught about the Trinity,
in particular in Jesus being God as well,
the texts that I could come across, they didn't seem to teach what I thought they would teach.
They seemed really weak.
And it was sort of a bit of a dark time for me because I thought maybe I was wrong about this.
And it would, for me, I mean, I would have probably stopped being a Christian, actually, if I'd come to that conclusion.
And so we're going to look at a text today that talks about the Trinity.
And it would be a great help to me if you would open your Bibles to John chapter 3.
And in some ways, I don't know if this was one of the texts that I would have looked at all those years ago,
a long time ago now when I was in university.
I don't know if this would have been one of the texts, but it actually is a really good text to illustrate some of the problems that people have
when they go to the Bible to find proof for the Trinity.
And one of the things, you might not know this, so I'm going to tell you this right now.
This is actually Trinity Sunday in the ancient church year.
And this is the text appointed to be read if you're doing a communion service on Trinity Sunday.
And the interesting thing about it is that this text, as a reading, goes back to the early 400s.
And the early Christians, they were increasingly having to deal with people who were illiterate.
And even those who could read, before the invention of the printing press, people wouldn't have Bibles.
So the early Christians tried to think through what Bible passages would be read on a Sunday when people came to church
that would be read every year so that people would have a basic knowledge and understanding of the important things in the Bible.
You think about it, if you had to go into an area that was illiterate, and even if they could read, they didn't have books,
you might want to think of something like that as well.
It's a very interesting missiological question.
Sorry, I like to use big words occasionally.
So one of the things which puzzled me as I look at this text is it wouldn't normally be a text that I would teach on
if I wanted to try to teach about the Trinity.
In fact, usually I would jump around to a lot of different texts.
But we're just going to sit with this text for about half an hour and just look at it.
Because this, for 1600 years, this would be one of the texts that people would go to if they want to talk about the Trinity.
That's sort of interesting in and of itself, isn't it?
And so let's look at it.
John chapter 3.
But actually, before we read John chapter 3, we're going to start actually in chapter 2, verse 23.
And this is very important.
This is a, I have to be careful.
I can have lots of asides in a sermon.
But this is an important aside.
One of the standard problems that Christians have when they read the Bible is that they forget that the Bible is made up of books.
So John is a book.
John sat down and read it.
He began it, verse 1, and he kept writing until he came to the end.
And we tend to take pieces of the Bible as if they're just quotes.
You know, as if you go to a book of quotations or a web page of quotations,
where it doesn't really matter what quote you read.
But the Bible isn't written as a book of quotes.
It's written as a book.
And if you've ever read John's Gospel, you'll know that Jesus is infuriating in John's Gospel.
Because all the way through John's Gospel, somebody will say to Jesus,
here's my question, here's my problem.
And then the very, very next thing you know is that Jesus is talking about something completely and utterly different.
And it often doesn't seem to make very much sense when you're reading John's Gospel.
Well, if you've been wondering that in your personal devotions, I've now said it out loud.
It often doesn't seem to make any sense.
And the reason it doesn't make any sense is because we've forgotten that it's a book.
And what John does here at the end of chapter 2, he gives us, in a sense, a reading key for the rest of the book.
So let's just read it.
And then you'll see what I mean.
Now, when Jesus was in Jerusalem, this is chapter 2, verse 23.
When Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.
But Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man.
For he himself knew what was in man.
Now there was a man of the Pharisees.
Now, just pause here.
What this text is saying is that you're going to now read, John, in a sense, is saying you're going to read a whole, I'm going to give you now a whole pile of stories about Jesus.
And what you have to understand in all of these stories is that Jesus understands what's actually going on in a human being.
And so what you're going to see is that people will come to Jesus and they think they know what's going on in their lives.
Or at least they want to present a particular picture of themselves to Jesus and they say something.
But Jesus doesn't answer their mere words.
He deals with their heart.
Okay?
It's just as if maybe you have a, you know, in a couple of years, young Everett will come to the parents.
And he might want to be saying this.
But if the parents are wise, they might understand that actually Everett, you know, maybe he's worried that he, I don't know, painted all over the wall.
Or, you know, crayoned all over the wall or something.
And Everett's not really asking or trying to do what he seems to be wanting to do.
He's actually, in a sense, trying to deal with this other thing that's going on in his life.
And a wise parent will try to read beneath the words or behind the words to see what's going on in the heart.
Obviously very hard for us human beings to do.
So all the way through the Gospel of John, that's what Jesus is going to do.
He's going to address the heart issue, not the words, per se.
He goes underneath the words to the heart.
So let's see how this works out with Nicodemus.
And by the way, Nicodemus is a Canadian.
Eh?
You'll see it in a moment.
I mean, technically, he's not really a Canadian.
But what you see here is you see here represented a perfect Canadian.
It goes here, chapter 3, verse 1.
Now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
This man came to Jesus by night and said to him,
Rabbi, or that could also be translated as teacher,
we know that you are a teacher come from God,
for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.
Now, just pause.
Why is he a Canadian?
Well, first, because, you know,
if you were to say what Nicodemus just said,
is that Jesus is a teacher come from God,
you could say that in the editorial room of the Ottawa Citizen
or the National Post or the Globe and Mail.
You could say it on CBC Radio.
You could say it at University of Ottawa
on the philosophy faculty or the religion faculty,
and nobody would raise their eyes at it.
Yeah, Jesus is a teacher come from God.
There's been lots of teachers come from God.
And from an anthropological and sociological point of view,
we're now on very, very familiar territory.
We can have a conversation about teachers who come from God.
It's a very Canadian understanding of who Jesus is.
And so it's very, very interesting that this Canadian is here.
And why specifically is it Canadian?
Because he comes to Jesus at night
when nobody will know that he wants to talk to him.
Because it doesn't bear to be too hung up about Jesus
or too preoccupied about Jesus in public.
Like, people might get worried
that you're one of those fundamentalist types.
So Nicodemus, he wants to talk to Jesus.
He comes at night when nobody can see him.
And he begins, Nicodemus, like in modern cultural context,
Nicodemus would be like a person who has their PhD in philosophy,
also have their PhD in theology.
They're also a lawyer.
And they're also in the cabinet of the province of Ontario.
And they also happen to be very wealthy.
Like, would be Nicodemus all rolled into one.
And so Nicodemus is a member of the elite.
He's very, very well educated.
He comes to Jesus and says,
I want to talk about prophets who come from God.
I want to talk about teachers who teach about God with you, Jesus.
Let's talk about that.
So how does Jesus respond to this?
From a Canadian point of view,
a very reasonable thing to want to talk about.
How does Jesus respond?
Look at verse 3.
We're going to be,
and this is what's so frustrating about Jesus for a lot of us.
He talks like he's a hick from the Appalachian Mountains.
One of those religious whack jobs.
That's a bit frightening for us sophisticated Canadian Christians
to understand that Jesus talks like he's going to one of those weird,
fundamentalist whack jobs.
That in and of itself is a disturbing notion
to a lot of contemporary Christians in Canada.
Here's how Jesus answers this very reasonable discussion
about teachers who teach about God.
He says, verse 3,
Truly, truly, verily, verily, amen, amen,
I say to you, unless one is born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God.
And some of your Bibles probably have a little note.
The words that have been translated in English as born again
can also equally be translated as born from above.
Equally valid way of translating the word.
And so Jesus completely and utterly comes at this
from a very, very, very different way.
Now I want to pause here just for a second.
And if Andrew, you could put up the first point.
God is not a mere object for our minds to play with.
This is going to be one of the powerful themes throughout this.
And in fact, remember I shared with you
that when I started looking into texts,
back in university,
trying to find out whether the Bible taught the Trinity,
if I'm honest,
what was going on in my mind
is that I was treating the topic of God
as if he was an object for my mind to play with.
And I was looking for words
suitable to my way of arguing
and my way of thinking.
And when I didn't see them,
I was disappointed.
I wanted God to have written a part of the Bible
that said the Trinity,
you know, and then have, you know,
43 points or seven points
you need to know about the Trinity
and have it all very nicely logically laid out
so I could win the argument against this person.
In other words,
I wanted to treat this topic
as if God was an object
that my mind could play with.
Now just,
if you think about this for a second,
the Bible teaches that God is a person,
imagine for a moment
that my wife was in here
and she was sitting in that seat
and I was to spend the next 20 minutes
talking about my wife
as if she was an object for my mind to play with,
trying to discuss the pros and cons of her character,
the nature of who she is,
her looks, etc.
That would not go over very well.
In fact,
that would not go over well for me
for the next several decades of my life,
actually,
if I was to treat my wife
as an object for my mind to play with.
Yet that's what we want to do with God.
And so Jesus is going to try to
knock that desire
out from under us.
So this guy wants to just talk about teachers
who talk about God
and Jesus says,
you need to be born again,
you need to be born from above.
Now Nicodemus responds
with a reductio ad absurdum argument.
I mean, he's well educated.
He knows how to have these debates.
In fact, he might even think,
oh, Jesus is doing a very interesting opening move.
Well, I'm going to defeat him.
So Nicodemus says to Jesus,
verse four,
how can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter a second time
into his mother's womb and be born?
Nicodemus takes one of the two senses,
born again or born above.
And if this was being done on TV,
there'd be a convenient little gong right here.
And after Nicodemus has said this to Jesus,
he would have picked up the thing and gone,
gong, got ya.
Big smile, sit down,
waiting for Jesus to come back
because he's made such a good response,
reductio ad absurdum.
And Jesus keeps going after the heart.
Here's how Jesus talks.
And the words in my version,
truly, truly,
if you use the King James version,
it's verily, verily.
I have to say verily, verily.
That sounds so much neater than truly, truly.
It could also be translated as amen, amen.
Verse five,
Jesus answered,
truly, truly,
verily, verily,
amen, amen.
I say to you,
unless one is born of water and the spirit,
he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh
and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
Do not marvel that I said to you,
you must be born again
or you must be born from above.
The wind blows where it wishes
and you hear its sound,
but you do not know where it comes from
or where it goes.
So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.
Now, this is a very odd way for Jesus to answer.
And if you go and look at academic commentaries,
there's been piles of trees killed
and ink spilled on this particular topic
because in a very, very interesting way,
a lot of modern commentators
want to make it look as if Jesus is talking
about something called baptismal regeneration.
That if you baptize somebody with water,
they're automatically saved.
And that's not what this text is talking about at all.
Jesus is Jewish.
John is Jewish.
Jesus is talking to a Jewish scholar.
And Jesus, in a sense,
points to two passages,
more than two passages in what we call the Old Testament,
what the Jewish people call the Tanakh.
If you look in the bulletin,
you'll see that I give the text in Isaiah and Ezekiel.
And that's what Jesus does.
And Nicodemus,
who would have known the Old Testament,
at least the words,
he might not have understood the significance of it,
but he understood,
he would have remembered the words.
And he would have known
that those are very significant texts
because those are texts where God says,
you human beings,
you do not have living hearts.
You inside of you and in your heart,
in the Old Testament,
that's the command center of the individual.
It's not the seat of the emotions.
It's the command center of the person.
It's the command center that directs the will,
that directs the mind,
that directs the affections or the heart and the emotions.
And he says,
God says,
your heart is a dead stone.
That's what you have
at the command center of who you are,
a stone which is dead.
And you need me
to work with water in the spirit
to give you a heart of flesh,
a living heart.
And I will do this.
A time will come.
And he uses this double imagery
of water in the spirit,
of cleansing,
of life in a desert type of area,
the idea of water and life
and the spirit.
And that's the image that he uses
in Isaiah and Ezekiel.
In fact, Andrew,
if you could put up this next point.
By nature,
I have a heart of dead stone.
By grace,
God will give me
a new and living heart.
And in Isaiah and Ezekiel,
it's God that will do this.
God will do something
with water and spirit,
water and breath.
God will do something
because the human problem
is that we have hearts
that are dead,
that are stones.
And we weren't made by God
to have such hearts.
We were made to have
a command center that was alive
and was open to God.
And stones can't turn into life.
It doesn't matter if you have
a tiny stone or a big stone.
It doesn't matter if you put
all sorts of stones together.
You can make stones
as stony as you want.
They just say stones.
They don't come alive.
God has to do a miracle
to turn a heart of stone
into a living heart.
And that's what the Bible says
that God is going to do.
And Jesus, in a sense,
is referring to it.
And he's going to,
in a sense,
as the conversation goes on,
says,
is in effect saying
that his presence there
is the means by which
God is going to do it.
So Nicodemus,
in verse 9,
here's another thing
about reading the Bible.
When you read narratives
or conversations,
a lot of time,
it will come to a fork
in the road.
And you can ask yourself,
when you're reading a narrative
or something like this,
a conversation,
you can ask yourself,
this conversation can go
in one of two ways.
Will Nicodemus continue
to sort of act like
he is the member of the elite,
the faculty,
you know,
part of the philosophy faculty
of the University of Toronto,
part of the law faculty
of the University of Toronto,
the cabinet of the province
of Ontario,
who sits on the board
of very important companies,
who's just talking
to this mere itinerant
Jewish religious teacher,
who obviously is trying
to undercut him
in making Old Testament references.
And will Nicodemus
act like a member
of the elite?
Or will he say,
I need to know
what you're saying.
And in the narratives
in the Bible,
sometimes a fork
towards life is taken
and sometimes a fork
towards death is taken.
What fork does Nicodemus take?
He takes the fork
towards life.
And in verse 9,
he says,
how can these things be?
How can these things be?
And Jesus in verse 10 answers,
are you the teacher of Israel
and yet you do not
understand these things?
In other words,
he knows the words.
He's picked up the reference
to Isaiah and Ezekiel.
He knows the words.
He doesn't understand
what it's going to look like,
how on earth
it could possibly work,
how on earth
it could possibly be something
that Jesus knows something about.
He doesn't know these things.
In other words,
one of the things is
that people,
he's seen some of the miracles
that Jesus has seen,
but he hasn't understood
the miracles.
He doesn't understand
that the miracles
aren't just a mere display of power,
that they're actually,
in every case,
like a sign
that's pointing to something.
And he's merely just seen
the fact that miracles
have happened,
but he hasn't asked himself
a question as to
where the signs point to
and what God is trying
to communicate to him
through these signs.
And so Jesus continues,
Are you the teacher of Israel
and yet you do not understand
these things?
That's verse 10.
Verse 11,
Truly, truly,
verily, verily,
I say to you,
we speak of what we know
and bear witness
to what we have seen,
but you do not receive
our testimony.
If I have told you
earthly things
and you do not believe,
how can you believe
if I tell you
heavenly things?
No one has ascended
into heaven
except he who descended
from heaven,
the Son of Man.
And as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man
be lifted up
that whoever believes in him
may have eternal life.
So,
here's what Jesus is doing
in this conversation.
Andrew,
if you could put up
the next point.
Nicodemus has come
wanting to discuss
the sociological
and anthropological phenomenon
phenomenon of teachers
who teach about God.
He, in a sense,
is maybe trying to pay
Jesus a compliment
that even though
Jesus doesn't have
a PhD from Cambridge
and a PhD from Oxford
and a PhD from the Sorbonne
and that he's not really rich
and he didn't attend
the right schools
when he was a kid,
he's still a pretty smart guy.
And Jesus is trying
to bring Nicodemus
to the point
where he realizes,
and I'm putting it,
because if you're writing this
as your own notes
for yourself,
that's how I put it this way,
I am not in a position
to merely consider
different ways
to ascend to God.
I am not in a position
to merely consider
different ways
to ascend to God.
And it's been
the constant human desire
to figure out a way
to ascend to God.
Some of us want to assist,
you know,
human beings will talk
about ascending to God
through developing
fine aesthetic sensibilities.
Some of it will be
by, in a sense,
as if your wealth
will make you
somehow more God-like.
Some of it will be
through unbelievable
physical mastery.
Some of us,
it will be through mysticism.
Some of us,
it will be through rationalism.
Some of us,
it will be through science
and technology.
Some of us,
it will be through science,
finding out some principle
or some equation
that explains everything.
Some of us,
it will be through sacrifices
or religious activities
or mystical experiences
or all of these types
of things.
And Jesus says,
no one can ascend to God.
You're talking about
ascending to God
and you're stuck
with a stone
where there should be,
as your command center,
where there should be
something alive.
And this goes beyond
the text.
If you read the rest of,
I don't have time to do it
if you read
Pastor John 3.16,
but Andrew,
if you could put up
the next point.
Jesus is also going to
make the point
with Nicodemus
that human beings
are tragically addicted
to hiding
from the living God.
And I put it down,
because I want,
if I'm reading the notes,
I don't want to say,
my wife is tragically addicted
to hiding
from the living God
or my kids are,
or those Muslims
or the gays
or the transgendered
or the rich
or the people
who vote liberal
or,
because that's what we can do.
That's why I always put down
I,
often in my points,
right?
Because I want you
to write it down
if you want to write it down
and it's,
you're speaking
about yourself.
I am tragically addicted
to hiding
from the living God.
I mean,
just think about it
for a second.
One of the reasons
it can take a lifetime
to get to know
another person
is because we as persons
hide from each other.
I mean,
a husband and a wife,
even husbands and wives
who've been married
for many years,
there's things
they hide about themselves
from the other person.
And if we do that
to a person
that we're married to
that we see,
imagine how much
that reveals
about our own
tendency
to try to hide
from God.
And so here I am,
this is what Jesus
is going to talk about
verses 17 on,
the continuation
of the conversation
I'm just trying to give you.
So here,
here,
Nicodemus
is thinking
he can discuss
all these complicated things
but he hasn't looked
at his heart.
He hasn't realized
his heart is dead.
He doesn't realize
that he can't ascend
to God,
that that's not at all
what his position is.
And he doesn't even
understand that
his fundamental problem
isn't ascending to God
but the fact that
he's addicted
to hiding from God.
In fact,
one of the ways
to understand
the book of John
is that
one of the things
which has troubled
many people
is the way that
John keeps referring
to the Jews.
And what you have
to understand
about the book of John
when you read it
is that John,
basically,
there's lots of symbolism
in it.
And John is Jewish,
he's not anti-Jewish,
Jesus is Jewish,
he's not anti-Jewish,
and Jesus isn't anti-Jewish.
And John's gospel
is constantly filled
with Old Testament
references
that he uses
to show that Jesus
is what the whole Bible
is talking about.
when he uses
the word the Jews,
it's a symbol
for human beings
using religion
to hide from God.
Human beings
using spirituality
as a way
to hide from God,
the true and living God.
And that,
whenever you see Jews,
see human beings
organized
in their religion
and spirituality
to hide from God.
that's what he means.
That's how we make it
so that we can understand
how it's easy
for us to develop
church services
that are all about
an emotional experience,
that are all about
an aesthetic experience,
are all about
an intellectual experience,
that are all about
maybe having
some insight
about how to get
a promotion
or how to have
a better marriage.
But they're all
just examples
of moralism
and therapy
with a distant God.
So,
it's talking about
Nicodemus
is one of us.
And,
and so,
so Jesus
is going to
say here then
that no one
has ascended
into heaven,
verse 13,
except he who
descended from heaven,
the Son of Man.
And then in verse 14,
excuse me,
then in verse 14,
he says,
and as Moses
lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man
be lifted up,
that whoever believes
in him
may have eternal life.
And what he's,
and you can look
in your bulletins,
it's in the
Growing in Grace.
I give you the different,
I know it's going deeper,
I give you the different
references here.
It's a story
from the book of Numbers,
Numbers chapter 21.
And the Jewish people
are in the wilderness,
they're under God's judgment
because they didn't want
to enter the promised land,
they turned back,
and now they're under
another particular aspect
of God's judgment,
and as part of God's judgment
for their complete
and utter disbelief,
he sends serpents
as a means of his judgment,
and these serpents,
when they bite,
it's like an infestation
of serpents,
that when they bite,
they're going to bring death.
And they call out to God
for deliverance.
And so God says to Moses,
I will deliver my people,
I want you to take a pole,
and I want you to put the pole
in the center of the camp,
and I want you to make
an image of the serpent,
which is my judgment.
I want to have my judgment,
in a sense,
symbolized as a serpent,
and I want you to put it
on the pole,
like this.
And I want you to put
the serpent,
my means of judgment,
and your need to be judged,
and your need for deliverance,
and I want you to put it
on a pole,
and in the ancient Hebrew,
the serpent would have been red,
the color of atonement,
the color of blood.
And I want you to put it
on the pole
in the center of the camp.
And anybody who looks
at that serpent
that's been lifted up
and put in the center
of the camp on a pole,
and anybody who looks to it,
they won't die
from the serpent's bite.
They'll be delivered.
And Jesus is saying
to Nicodemus,
you come to me
thinking that you can discuss
religious anthropology
and religious sociology
and competing theories
of teachers from God.
You don't realize
that you have a heart of stone.
You don't realize
that you can't ascend to heaven.
You don't realize
that your fundamental problem
is that you're hiding from God.
You don't realize
that you can't fix it.
You want to ascend?
No.
You need God himself
to descend
and then to be lifted up
on a cross
so that those who look
and put their trust
that that will save them,
that they will be saved.
And then in John,
the next verse,
could you actually,
I put it down at the end,
Andrew,
can you fast forward
and put John 3.16
up on the screen, please?
Could you all say this with me?
For God so loved the world
that he gave his one
and only son
that whoever believes in him
shall not perish
but have eternal life.
Can you read that with me again?
It's, you know what,
no religion has a verse like this.
No spirituality
says something as profound
as this.
For God so loved the world
that he gave his one
and only son
that whoever believes in him
shall not perish
but have eternal life.
We want to have
a debate about God
and a debate about how to ascend.
God knows that what we need
is a savior
and that's what he provides
in the person of his son.
Now just before we go back to this,
just in closing,
some of you might be saying,
George, I thought this was
a Trinity sermon.
But you see,
this is why the ancients
were so smart
because they know
that what we want
is to treat God
like an object
that we can have mind games about.
But they weren't dumb.
This text actually perfectly models
how you start to get to know
the Trinity.
Now just,
the first thing about it
is that we human beings,
Andrew,
if you could put up that,
I think it's the fifth point.
When it comes to God,
we humans love
flat earth thinking.
When it comes to God,
we humans love
flat earth thinking.
I was going to try to come up,
I was going to have
a whole list of things.
I realize I have to be careful
with time in this service.
You know what just really
blows your mind?
So when I was coming here
this morning on the Queensway
and I took a corner
a bit fast
and as I took the corner
a bit fast,
you could feel,
I could feel my briefcase
and my other stuff
shifting a little bit,
right?
Because when you're moving fast
and things,
and you turn a corner,
things,
you know,
sort of move.
Do you realize that right now
while we're sitting here
feeling very,
very secure,
the planet is turning
at 1600 kilometers an hour?
1600 kilometers an hour.
One hour from now,
even if you've just sat
on your chair,
an hour,
this afternoon,
if you spend an hour
watching TV,
you've moved 1600 kilometers
in a circle.
You want something else
which is really,
really crazy?
That's just,
we're going like this,
1600 kilometers an hour.
That's how fast
we're turning around the axis.
You know how fast
we are moving through space?
Every second,
the Earth moves
30 kilometers.
Every second,
we go from here
to Carlton Place.
Every second.
But we don't feel anything.
We just feel very secure.
We're in one place.
It's really counterintuitive
to think that we're
on the outside of a planet
the outside of a planet
that's spinning
at 1600 kilometers an hour
while moving through space
at 30 kilometers a second.
And I can well understand
how many people
for a long time
had a hard time
believing that this
could possibly be true.
And, you know,
if you want to talk
to some of the people
who are in sciences
here in the church,
and try to talk
about the nature of light,
try to talk about
quantum things
and quantum particles,
if you want it,
like to understand
that human beings,
it seems so solid.
In fact,
most of us
is empty space
because of the way
atoms and all work
and that we're made up
of things that are
spinning around each other.
Like,
isn't that just unbelievably,
like reality,
is weird.
And yet,
when it comes to God,
we want flatter thinking.
Andrew,
if you could put up
the next point,
please.
The truth about God
as Trinity,
how are we doing?
Not that bad.
The truth about God
as Trinity
develops from precise,
prayerful,
careful thinking
on the data
of Scripture.
So,
just very briefly,
this text.
The Old Testament reference,
what does it very clearly say?
God,
only God
can make you
born again
or make you
have this new heart.
Only God can do it.
And at the same time,
Jesus says
that it's going to be
the Holy Spirit
that does it.
And at the same time,
he says that being born above,
that's going to be something
that God does.
And at the same time,
Jesus says
that when he goes up
on the cross,
he's going to be
the means by which
you have eternal life.
Well,
one moment,
God is going to do it.
The Holy Spirit
is going to do it.
Jesus is going to do it.
And at the same time,
it's very clear
that within the text
that they're all different.
When Jesus says
that he's descended
from heaven,
he doesn't mean
that he's come
from something
like something emotional.
Heaven,
for a Jewish person,
is being right with God.
It's being like
in a sense,
standing right,
just like I'm standing
just like with Brian.
Well,
I could have Brian
come and stand
right here beside me
and if I'm with Brian,
I'm in,
that's the same image.
You're in God's presence.
And Jesus says
he leaves God's presence.
So God is,
he's left God's presence.
So one moment,
Jesus is different than God.
Jesus has left God's presence.
God is going to have
to be the one
to save us.
God is the one
who makes us born
from above.
The Holy Spirit
is the one
who makes us born again.
Jesus is the one
who gives us eternal life.
And the thinking
about the Trinity
emerged
from careful,
prayerful reading
of the data.
And just as
with any human being,
any person,
we reveal ourselves
in bits and pieces.
And for me to know
the mystery of my wife
and for her to know
the mystery of me
is revealed over time
in many,
many different ways
by things we say
and the way we carry ourselves
and how we sit
and how we eat
and how we do this.
And the mystery of the person
is revealed
from all of this.
So it is that
the doctrine of the Trinity
is found in the Bible.
Jesus,
God doesn't write
an Athanasian creed.
He doesn't write
a book of systematic theology.
He reveals himself
in such a way
that our hearts are revealed,
that we have hearts of stone.
Andrew,
could you put up
John 3.16 again?
Could you all read this
with me again?
Actually,
before we read it,
you know what is so wonderful
about this text?
You can be very poor
and go to heaven.
You can be mentally challenged
and go to heaven.
You don't have to have
a university degree.
You don't have to be rich.
You don't have to be married.
You don't have to be single.
You don't have to have
a perfect sexuality.
You don't have to be famous
on the planet.
You don't have to have
athletic prowess.
None of these things
which matter to human beings
do you have to have
to be made right with God.
There's only one thing.
You must be born again.
And there is no one
so far from God
that Jesus isn't sufficient
to make them right,
to make you right with him.
And there is no one
so successful
or so much of a failure
that you don't need
to be born again.
And God does this
in the words of John 3.16.
Could you read it with me,
please, out loud?
For God so loved the world
that he gave his one
and only Son
that whoever believes in him
shall not perish
but have eternal life.
There's the gospel.
It's one of the greatest verses.
Buddhism doesn't have it.
Islam doesn't have it.
Hinduism doesn't have it.
Atheism and agnosticism
doesn't have it.
In fact,
I'm going to talk about this
more in another sermon.
Here's the incoherence
and the great aching need
that modern people have
but don't entirely,
can't articulate it.
Human beings descend from apes,
therefore love one another.
That doesn't make any sense.
Human beings descend from apes,
therefore love one another.
Human beings have this great sense
of their need for love.
And only the scriptures,
only a brilliant text
like John 3.16
explains our great need for love
and our great longing for it
and that God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only son
that whoever believes in him
shall not perish
because we have hearts of stone
but shall have eternal life.
God will give a heart,
a living heart.
Let's just stand, please.
I want to urge you
that if you have never given your life to Jesus,
there is no better time than today
to just, you know,
I'm not going to lead you
in a sinner's prayer
or anything like that.
If the Holy Spirit is convicting you
that you need,
just say, John,
just say,
Father, God,
I have a heart,
I have a heart of stone.
I want what George just talked about.
John 3.16,
I believe it.
I can't even know
if I remember all the words
but God,
what that talked about,
I want that to be for me.
And use your own words
and call out to God
and there is no better time
than today to do it.
No better time than right now.
What's stopping you
from doing it right now?
Let's just bow our heads in prayer.
Father,
thank you so much
that you are our creator.
Thank you so much
that you are our sustainer.
Thank you so much,
Father,
that you made us
to be in a relationship with you.
Thank you, Father,
so much that when you saw
that we desire to be like God,
when we, in a sense,
killed the command center
of our lives
and turned the command center
of our lives
rather than being something
connected to you
into being a heart of stone.
Thank you, Father,
that you saw our desperate need
and seeing our desperate need.
You loved us
and sent your son
to die upon the cross
to be the one
by whom
you can make us
right with yourself.
Thank you, Father,
that he took our judgment
upon himself.
He took our doom.
He took our sickness.
He took our alienation.
And he offered us
his life,
his health,
his strength,
his destiny,
his place for you,
with you.
Father,
thank you for this profound
act of love
and substitution
and exchange.
Father,
make us disciples of Jesus
who are gripped
by this gospel,
who are learning
to live for your glory.
Father,
make us disciples of Jesus
gripped by the gospel,
learning to live
for your glory.
And this we ask
in Jesus' name.
Amen.