The Game Changer

I encourage you to uh take out your Bible and turn to our scripture reading for this morning, which is found in the Gospel of John in the New Testament portion.

And we'll be looking at chapter seventeen, verses one through five and twenty through twenty-six.

John chapter seventeen, uh begin reading in verse one.

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your son, that the son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

And now, if you'll drop down to verses 20 through 26, I do not ask or pray for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

The glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me.

Father, I desire also that they whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

O righteous Father, even though the world doesn't know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.

I made known to them your name, and will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.

Here ends the reading of God's Word.

Well, today, with uh this being a Super Bowl Sunday, I thought it appropriate to um to take up the title of a message today uh with a metaphor from the realm of uh sports, um, the game changer.

And as I thought I thought about game changers, uh, game changers in life are something that happens that has the ability to kind of reorient your whole life from that point on, right?

Uh whether it's getting married or having your first child or losing a child, perhaps, or losing your parents, or these kinds of uh events in life.

There's also game changers within the Christian faith.

Um these are truths that we come to learn, and usually we come to learn them in a lot deeper ways, that have the ability to kind of reshape how we think about and how we practice our walk with God.

I remember having a number of these kinds of experiences since I was converted years ago, and honestly, I felt at times like I was converted all over again for the first time.

Uh it that had that kind of effect on me.

Well, as you saw in the video example here, uh many people have found John 17 to contain truths that have brought their relationship with God to a whole new place, uh, have brought it into a whole new light, and have drawn their hearts to God in a whole new way.

And then I would say that has been true for me as well.

Um, John 17, the truths that are highlighted here have been a kind of game changer for me.

And I hope they have been or will be for you as well.

As we look at John 17, um, many of us are familiar.

If you've grown up in the church, you know this is a special chapter because it contains the whole chapter, virtually is a prayer of Jesus.

And uh it's a prayer he gave on the night before he was arrested in what has become known as the upper room discourse.

And um, it's a very uh valuable, a very insightful, very precious portion of scripture.

You know, it's interesting, we have a few glimpses of Jesus praying in Scripture, right?

I mean, I don't know how many other ones you can think of.

They're really small.

We know that Jesus prayed.

We're told that he prayed all the time, but we're really never given a glimpse very deep into what his prayer life was like.

But here in John 17, we really do get a glimpse of a prayer of Jesus at a very deep level.

Now, one of the things I want to say is I found myself when I was looking at this prayer, thinking, wow, you know, this is going to be a prayer of all prayers.

And um, this prayer, beyond any other prayer in Scripture, will really teach us how to pray.

And I found myself kind of getting really thinking about um, you know, the uh the red letters in this prayer.

But really, amazingly, um what makes John 17 so significant really is not that it's a prayer of Jesus and so it's a higher level prayer than, say, a prayer of David in the Psalms, right?

Or a prayer of Paul in the New Testament.

Because we believe that all scripture is God-breathed, and that a prayer of David is as much a prayer from the Spirit of God as a prayer of Jesus.

So, you know, it's one of the things when if you have a red letter Bible, which I love mine, it's easy to find things, but I, you know, don't look at those words as though they are more weighty than the rest of the words the Spirit of God has given us from the very beginning of this book.

But no, what we get in John 17 and why it's so significant is here we have a picture, a glimpse of the eternal Son who became flesh praying to his father.

So, what is unique about this prayer that is different than you find in the prayers of David is that here we have a glimpse into the Trinity, a glimpse into the inner life of the Trinity.

That's what makes this prayer such a special portion of Scripture and one that I hope you will uh love to spend time in and dive into in the days ahead.

Well, today, as we look at this, uh we hope I hope to have two parts to this today and next week.

And um my purpose today is really twofold.

I want to focus on two questions.

Um, the first is what kind of being is the living God?

What kind of being is he?

We talk about God as a trinity here in our Christian uh churches, but what does that mean?

And practically, what does that mean?

It's all too easy to envision God virtually.

Whatever we say in our profession and in our theology is far too easy to relate to God as though he were a solitary being, a single person God.

And uh so we're going to look a little bit at that today.

What kind of being is the living God?

And the second question flows right out of this.

Why does it matter?

Why does it matter to us today whether God is a triune God or whether he's a solitary single-person God?

Does that really affect, you know, where the rubber meets the road in our Christianity?

And uh, so we will dive into these two questions now.

I have to say here that as we begin looking at this first question, what kind of being is God?

Um really, I have a lot of fear and trepidation, honestly, about just digging into the Trinity and standing up here, you know, a teacher going to lay out what the Trinity is like.

I spent the last several months reading um volumes of books on the Trinity.

And as I came to just prepare this message, I felt like I just hit a wall.

All this stuff was so great and grand.

But at the end of the day, there is so much mystery here that is hard to penetrate.

And uh so um I hope to go no beyond, no further beyond what Scripture gives us, but uh know that in Scripture very often God points us in a direction and he gives us uh what he wants us to know.

But we have a lot more that we would like to know about things uh that um that we simply don't have.

What kind of being is God?

Uh Michael Reeves, who was in the video, who's written a really nice book on the Trinity, by the way, he talks about how there are uh lots of people who believe in a single person God, and we know that.

Um, a God who reigns over the universe, he's a ruler God.

Um our Jewish friends, um, our Muslim friends would fit in this category, and of course, many others uh as well.

Umy view God just as the kind of, as the Almighty, um as the creator, as the ruler.

And I wonder, as I just say these things, let me ask you, what is your dominant vision of God as you think about who God is?

If you could only use one word, and scripture lets us use more than that, and one would never do, but I kind of wonder what is our first, what's our instinct, what's our first word that we throw out there when we think about who God is?

Um but I wonder if God is just a creator?

Um what in the world was God doing before creation?

And um, as was pointed out in the video, um, how would this kind of God ever know how to love or to show kindness if he was just a creator?

Or what if he was just a ruler?

Um, then he would need his creation.

I mean, there would be a sense in which God would need us in order to have something to rule over.

What was he doing before the universe was ever made?

Well, the Bible actually has a very different view about the living God.

And it's a view that uh has been highly criticized.

Um it's a view that has been thought to be just a bunch of hogwash.

Um this view is stated really clearly uh in I think in our E free statement of faith that's on the back of your bulletin.

I'd like to just read this for you here.

Um this is the first point that we have.

We believe in one God, creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And I'll just stop there.

This is the picture that the Bible gives us of the true and living God, that God is in fact one.

He is one God in three equally divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And if we've been in church, we have heard this a lot of times, and I really don't want to spend a long time uh going into the details of that here today.

Um I just want to point out that um a lot of a lot of philosophers and a lot of um religious people have criticized that and said that is hogwash.

The math doesn't add up.

How can you have three and yet be one?

You really have three gods.

Why don't we quit talking about this Trinity stuff and uh move away from that and move on?

And um, but Christians are saying, no, we will never give that ground up.

Um author puts it this way uh amazingly enough, the doctrine of the Trinity turns out to be the source of all that is good in Christianity.

Neither a problem nor a technicality, the triune being of God is the vital oxygen of the Christian life and joy.

The Trinity is the vital oxygen of the Christian life and joy.

Well, to see this, I want us to kind of see how this flows out of the passage this morning.

And um and uh so we're going to turn now and look at some uh places where this comes out.

So I'd ask you to get uh John 17 back out.

I I want you to just take a minute here though, and uh, as you're kind of looking back down there, and I want you to just hear a few statements that Jesus made just before he prayed.

Many of you will know that from John 14 through 16, Jesus had his last lengthy discourse, and he talked an awful lot in there to his disciples about the Trinity.

One of the last things he had to say, and he kept saying that the reason I'm doing this is this, so your joy will be complete.

I want you to have peace, I want you to have joy, I want you to know this.

And so I want you to listen to some things that Jesus says here, but just let it sink in.

Speaking to his disciples, he says, if you had known me, you would have known my father also.

From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

Whoever has seen me has seen the father.

How can you say, show us the father?

Don't you believe that I am in the father and the father is in me?

The words that I say to you, I don't speak of my own authority, but the father who dwells in me does his works.

I will ask the father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

I will not leave you as orphans.

And then finally, it is to your advantage that I go away.

For if I don't go away, the helper will not come to you.

But if I go away, I will send him to you.

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

All that the Father has is mine.

Therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

And so Jesus is um encouraging his disciples about his relationship with the Father, his father's relationship with him, about the Holy Spirit, who, the third member of the Trinity, who was going to be sent, and who was going to take the Father and the Son, what was their glory, and was going to bring it into to dwell within God's people.

Well, now I want us to look at John 17, and we'll just glance at a couple of verses where this is highlighted.

What Jesus says in 17 verse 1 Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you.

And then in verse 5, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

And then in verse 24, Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

And so here you have the Son, the eternal Son, speaking to his Father.

That's very interesting.

This is how God is laid out with Jesus.

He is first and foremost a father, a father who gives life.

And uh Jesus is relating to him in a way of saying that you have given me glory, and I have brought you glory.

And Jesus is talking about how the Father glorifies the Son, and the Son glorifies the Father.

And that is what is on his heart.

The Father and the Son to glorify each other, to exalt each other, to lift each other up, to love each other, to bring each other joy, to value each other, to serve each other, to have a fierce love for one another.

And that is the God we have in Scripture, that we have a glimpse of here in John 17.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that have a fierce love for one another.

Daryl Johnson writes, in the deepest mystery of his being, God is an intimate relationship, a fellowship, a community of love.

And what that means is that at the very center of the universe, there is an intimate relationship.

And uh this is the real game changer right here.

At the center of the universe, there is an intimate relationship.

This makes sense of how God could say to be love.

Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love.

I wonder if we are in a habit of thinking about God in this way.

Do you think about God as this relationship, an intimate relationship at the center of the universe with fierce love for one another, that from all eternity past was perfectly satisfied to love and to honor and to trust and to serve and to bring joy with one another.

I don't even know how to picture that.

I can hardly get my mind wrapped around that, can you?

And uh in fact, one of my favorite writers who writes a lot about the implications of this is Larry Crab.

And really, he's just scrambling for some kind of way to describe this, and he uses this language, and you can't take every connotation with it, but he he says that the that the that the Trinity is in a divine dance from all eternity.

There's this holy dance that's going on.

Father, Son, and Spirit.

And this God, when He created, didn't create out of a need to create.

He created because who He is, He's the kind of God who, in His very nature, flows out.

That's who He is.

He overflows.

He's a fountain that just gushes and pours into.

That's the kind of God He is.

It doesn't surprise us when we read in the New Testament, in Philippians, when we read about Jesus, who we were told that we're to have the same mind that Jesus had, who, being in very nature God, and actually it should be read, who because, I think, I think as a good case can be made for that, who because he was in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but gave himself up.

Yeah, you see?

Because he was God, and that's who God is, he gives, he pours out.

That is the living God.

And that's the little glimpse that we're getting in John 17, between the Son, especially and the Father, pouring into each other, loving each other, trusting each other, glorifying each other.

Their heart is full of each other.

Well, why does this matter to us, okay?

Why does this matter to us today?

Is this just some theology lesson that we have out here?

Um this is huge.

This is absolutely huge.

Because what makes this so huge is that this God who is this way, he creates humanity in his own image, capable of relating.

We're relational beings.

Your dogs and cats aren't.

I'm sorry, they look like they are, but they're not.

We're relational beings.

That's why when our relationships go sour, our lives go sour, right?

Doesn't it make sense to you?

That's the way the center of the universe is.

The living God who made us is that way.

And when he makes us, he's invited us into the dance, to use a Larry Crab Crab term.

He invites us into the dance.

Look at how this is put out here in verse 26 of John 17.

The very last thing Jesus says in this verse, he says, I made known to them, Father, your name, and I will continue to make it known.

That the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.

Have you ever just stopped to let that really soak in?

I don't know.

We were singing this song this morning, the last song that Pat brought to us.

I thought, you know, if we hadn't, if we didn't read this in Scripture, we would think this is just blasphemous.

That God would love us with the same love that He loves Christ.

That He would bring us into Christ, and that Christ brings us to the Father, and that the amazing thing is, is that God actually brings us into the usness of the Trinity.

Some of you, um, okay, I'm friends with some of you, and when when you become of, you become one of my friends, um, you know, you and I, we we do a friendship, but I don't bring you in to the us-ness of my marriage.

That's not how, that's not how human relationships work.

And that's not how God works either.

I mean, uh, well, I'm sorry, God is the opposite of that.

When he brings us to himself, he brings us in the Son, he brings us into the inner relating of the Trinity.

God brings us into the dance of the Trinity.

I mean, you've got to let that truth soak in.

How dearly loved we are and how important relationship with God is.

We talk all the time about becoming a Christian, it means you have to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

I'm not sure we really know what that means.

Especially at the beginning, we're just trying to struggle with what that means.

God reconciles us to himself.

He brings us to himself, and he brings us within the life of the Trinity, and he gives us his own Holy Spirit to live in us.

And indeed, the Father and the Son live in us.

These are just amazing, profound truths that uh that should enlighten our heart and do to when we think about what God has done to us and how important relationship with God is.

When was the last time you had a really solid sense that God had a fierce love for you?

You know, the last time I had that, this is how it happened.

This is kind of an emotion, it wasn't the last time I had this, but this is one of the times that it really happened.

You know, I was I was looking at my wife one day, and I just was overwhelmed with her, with her person.

I was overwhelmed with this amazing woman here, and I, you know, I see her in all that she is.

She's before me, unashamed herself.

And I love her, however imperfectly, but I love her.

And there's sometimes, especially in a marriage, there's just, you can't put words to it, can you?

There is there is uh a sense of love that is overwhelming, that that hits you.

And what dawned on me is that that that is really a glimpse of, I mean, that is a glimpse of a stronger kind of love, of the full, a more full-orbed love, and love is bigger than a feeling.

I'm not just saying that, but but there's something there that we miss in our in our daily human interaction.

That love right there, that glimpse is a glimpse of the love God has for us in Christ.

God loves us with that kind of love.

And He wants us to get that from our head to our heart.

Because if that doesn't get down in your heart, our Christian walk with God is going to be really distorted.

It's going to be discouraging.

And that is one of the problems of living in this fallen world.

I mean, we're not glorified yet.

We have ups and downs.

We have spells when we feel really close to God, right?

And other times we feel like he's a hundred miles away.

But my point to you is never be satisfied when you feel he's a hundred miles away.

Never be satisfied with that.

You were meant, I was meant, to feel and to know and to traffic in the fierce love that God has for us.

We were meant to be before him without shame of any kind.

We were meant to say, get away to those voices in our head that condemn us and say you're not worthy to come before him.

Do you know what you've done?

Do you think God wants anything to do with who you are?

Yes, he does in Christ.

In Christ, he does.

But you know, we can't just flip a switch.

We can't just, you know, we can't give a program that this is beyond our control.

There's a this is one of the biggest parts of dependence that we have.

We depend on the Father, the Son, and the Spirit to draw us to Himself and to draw us into that us-ness of the Trinity in our daily Christian walk.

But do we want it?

Do we want it?

Will we go after it?

We have to cultivate that.

Even if it means crying out to God, Lord, I'm not satisfied.

I feel like my whole life is like performing for you.

All I'm doing is doing following the rules and this and that, and I don't even feel drawn to you.

The first things on my mind in the morning I get out of bed are, oh Lord, bless this person and bless that person.

And why, why, why?

Where's that coming from?

Where's that coming from?

Where is my heart drawn to God?

Drawn to sing his praises.

I hope we will find ways in our Christian life.

People are different.

You've got to find what ways that you can cultivate this, but I would say the most important thing is that you go after it with your prayer life, that you ask God to fill you with his spirit, and that you're not satisfied to know him from a distance.

Maybe it means that you get up and for me, this works well.

I just I just sing.

The first thing I do I want to do is sing in the morning.

I just want to sing to God.

But for others, it will be other things, but it will affect your Christian life.

It will affect everything with your witness, with your life, with how alluring we are to the gospel because of how we live our lives.

Well, I want to bring this to a close by um really with a challenge.

There's, you know, there is a competing vision for what brings life and makes you alive.

There really is.

We saw this in our passage.

Jesus said, Um, O righteous father, the world does not know you.

And he actually had said earlier that to the disciples, he said, you know, the world has seen me and they've hated me, and they've seen my father, and they've hated him.

And Satan himself, who is the ruler of this present age, once was created as a beautiful angelic being and saw the beauty of God, and in his own twisted desires, pushed that away and hated it.

And now he inspires and leads and lies to the sons and daughters of Eve in this world to believe a hollow lie, that life can be found in this life and in whatever is to come by following darkness, by lifting up self.

And all of this is really an unraveling.

And so I don't I think scripture puts it out here before us.

What's going to bring you life?

Which will you choose?

The living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, fiercely loving one another, moving toward opening himself up to us, opening himself up and inviting us to come to him, not just to know him from a distance as a ruler and judge, but to come into the very us of the Trinity for all eternity.

To know that love which was human love, the best love you've ever experienced, is just a reflection, a faint reflection of the love that God has for us and that we will taste face to face in that day.

That's on this hand.

The other hand is that stuff in this world, is that self in this world, is going to bring you life.

Is there a voice in your heart that's telling you that where you're really going, what you're really pursuing, is really your own unraveling.

Come to Christ.

Come to Christ.

Come to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ.

Embrace Him and His work.

And God says, When you do, not only will I remove your guilt and shame because of his work, but I'll give you my own Holy Spirit that I'll pour my love into your heart through him who dwells inside of you.

And you will find an instinct, a deep self in you that cries out, Abba, Father.

And that is eternal life to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

Please join me as I lead us in a closing prayer.

Father, Father, we say that word.

I say that word, I confess, Lord, way, way too casually.

Father.

Lord, these truths are way bigger than what our minds can really take in.

But we ask that you would make them powerful.

We ask, Lord, that for any here who know you not, they might hear the voice of the good shepherd today and fly to you.

The loving Trinity for life.

We prayed in your name.

Amen.

In response.