The Triune God

Let me ask you this morning to open your Bibles to the book of 2 Corinthians, chapter 13,.

2 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

And then we're going to read a verse from 1 John, 2 Corinthians 13.

Before I read the Scripture, we are engaged for a few weeks in a glorious study of the person of our God.

We're asking a simple question in this series Who is our God?

By the way, i know by now I've now been here for about three months and I know there's two groups of people right now.

There's people that probably are enjoying the teaching and there's some that have a headache, and I understand that, and I'll say two things.

I'll try to be more sensitive to those with a headache, but I want to challenge you to expand your mind, and I hope that you will, because how many discovered when you use your brain really to think, it hurts, and so I am aware of that.

But I'm also aware that I need to be sensitive to our hearers.

So, having said that, theology is for everyone, people say to me I can't understand.

The book of Ephesians or Romans is too deep, and I tell them the people it was read to were illiterate pagans with no college degree.

It was written for Christians, so keep that in mind as you read the Bible when you get overwhelmed And there are things in the Bible not easy to understand.

Don't mistake what I'm saying.

But if you exercise your mind and pray in the Holy Ghost and ask the Lord to open your eyes to the meaning of Scripture and study, which is part of our responsibility, new worlds open up new vistas of understanding.

I like to just get things from God and God gives it, but he also requires us to stretch and grow and study and apply ourselves.

So I know that you can get a headache listening to me, but I would like to challenge you to be expansive.

Right before Shelley and I left Florida, a man came to pick up something from our house.

He was the maintenance guy in our church And he said the first six months I came to the church and sat in your Bible study.

I couldn't understand a word you were saying and you gave me a headache.

I said, oh boy, thank you Jesus, and I know there's people here saying that.

But then he said but I started listening and applying myself and felt by the Spirit I needed this and I needed to be there.

And he said it's changed my life And I don't think that has anything to do with me.

I think it has to do with the decision he made to grow.

Now we are studying the person of our God in Scripture And I am not interested in giving you theology so you can become an academic and you can have a fat head and tell people that you know God and others don't.

I am interested in growing in the knowledge of God so we can have a God encounter.

And, by the way, just you need to know that every morning this staff, tuesday through Friday, meets at 9 am and prays for Trinity.

We've instituted that over the last two months And we are praying that Trinity chapel.

Every person has a God encounter And that may be a different experience for different people.

That's fine.

God has a lot of experience, but more than that, it has to do with growing in our understanding, through the Scriptures, of who our God is.

And this morning, what I will say will be short and sweet, but it is vital to the knowledge of God.

We were so impressed with this attribute of God that we named our church after it.

What do you think I'm going to talk about?

I want to talk about chapels Hey, that's our name.

I want to talk about the blessed Trinity, the fact that our God is the triune God And there is none like Him.

I love the songs that Aaron led us in this morning about the uniqueness of God, and there's a mystery here that I will not solve.

The church for two millennium has not solved it.

It is unlikely that I will.

But I have one aim this morning to expand your understanding to the Trinity so you fall on your face and worship each blessed person of the triune God, the fact that our God is one divine essence subsisting in three blessed persons.

Let's read 2 Corinthians 13, verse 14.

2 Corinthians 13:14

The grace this is Paul's closing benediction to the letter of 2 Corinthians The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

And one other verse quickly, one verse in 1 John, chapter 4, verse 16.

1 John 4:16

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him.

Father, breathe on my meager words this morning and direct your people, by an operation of the power of the Spirit, into the very essence of your triuneness.

God, help us to understand this morning that this is not a mere concept for academics, but it is essential for us to know, if we're to worship and serve you properly, that you exist as three blessed persons.

Open our eyes to see you as you are, as the triune God.

We ask it in Jesus' mighty name and everyone said Amen.

In the year 325, the absolute unthinkable occurred in the Christian church.

There was never a Christian that could have anticipated or fathomed what happened.

In 325 AD, a Roman emperor, after confessing allegiance to the Christian faith, convened a council of Christian church bishops in order to settle theological matters and controversies that were raging among the churches in his day.

That Constantine, this Roman emperor, did that and is amazing, especially when you consider that the emperor prior to him persecuted the Christian church bitterly.

His name was Diocletian.

Now, how did this come about?

We have to go back about 13 years before this council, when Constantine was facing his dreaded enemy, maxentius, for supremacy in the West.

I don't want to bore you with all the history, but it's true And as the story goes, while Constantine was marching towards Rome, he either saw or had a dream.

There's differing counts of the story and some actually say he had a vision And in that vision or dream, whatever it was, he saw the symbol of Christ shining in the sky, above the sun, and he heard the words in this sign conquer.

And he said.

He was immediately instructed to paint the symbol that he had seen in the heavens on the shields of his soldiers.

Well, he did and went out into battle against this enemy, maxentius, and following painting the vision on the symbol on the shields of his soldiers, constantine who, by the way, was outnumbered four to one when he faced Maxentius conquered and defeated his enemy at the Battle of Milvian Bridge.

And you can imagine how Constantine responded to his victory He concluded completely that his victory was related to the vision he had previously seen the night before.

So, upon returning to Rome, constantine issued what was called the Edict of Milan, which had removed all penalties from professing Christians, who were under severe penalties prior, and he returned church property to Christians and he ushered in a new period of tolerance for the Christian church.

Now, we will never know if the vision that Constantine saw was real.

In fact, we don't really know if he ever was an authentic believer And in fact he wasn't baptized till he was on his deathbed.

But what we do know is the same Roman emperor convened a Christian Council or conference 13 years later, in the year 325.

And here's why he convened the conference.

There was a man in the Christian church who was a bishop in the east.

His name was Arius, and Arius, his teaching, was spreading like wildfire throughout the Christian church.

And that was a problem, because here's what Arius was teaching in the churches in the east He was teaching that there was a time before the Son of God appeared on earth, when the Son of God, when only the Father, existed.

In other words, what Arius was teaching is that the Son of God had a definitive beginning and therefore was not the eternal Son of God, one with the Father from eternity past.

So Constantine, guided more by motivated more by political ambition than theological purity, convened the conference of Nicene, the Nicene Council, in what is today modern Turkey, and bishops came from all over the Roman world.

I want you to reflect in this scene on your mind.

It is fascinating.

I wish I had a Polaroid to show you.

Imagine a Roman bishop excuse me, a Roman emperor receiving Christian bishops sitting in his presence, some of whom, some of these bishops, had the wounds in their bodies from previous persecutions And they are now sitting before a Roman emperor who has convened them to discuss Christian theology.

Now, there were several things in Nicaea that were discussed, but the central controversy remained around the teachings of this man named Arius.

It all centered around one issue, and I want you to understand that it will segue into our teaching this morning.

The question that the church came together by Constantine to discuss was simply this What was the exact nature of the relationship of the Son to the Father?

And this council met for a good period of time and analyzed that question in the light of the Bible, in the light of apostolic teaching, and the council came to this conclusion.

They affirmed and declared what it believed to be the teaching of the apostles regarding who Jesus Christ, and they came down, thankfully, on the side that Jesus Christ is the one true God in deity with the Father.

And what emerged from Nicaea in the year 325 AD is what could only be called the earliest Trinitarian Creed, a statement from the church that began.

Now, this wasn't the first time the subject had been discussed.

There were theologians in the second, third century discussing the Trinity, but Nicaea gave us the first creed, the first attempt at the church to formulate this blessed doctrine that there is one God, but that one God eternally exists as three blessed persons.

And I love the Nicene Creed.

This is the creed.

That summarized the teaching It said.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.

I love this God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made of one being with the Father.

Through him, all things were made for us and for our salvation.

He came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.

For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day He rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who, with the Father and Son, is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Catholic there just means universal.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come Amen.

Now, really to summarize it, Nicene simply said in this creed And in other documents they issued, that God eternally exists as three persons Father, son and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God.

Yet there is one God And there is no doctrine.

I have to tell you that is more difficult for Jews than the doctrine of the Trinity, because as Jews we grew up knowing that one thing about our religion that we are fiercely monotheistic.

Monotheistic means we believe there is only one God, and I have talked to my Jewish brethren till I'm blue in the face and they can't get past the Trinity.

But what is interesting that I tell Jews that really blows their minds is the greatest statement in the Bible about the oneness of God is Trinitarian, like the holiest verse in Judaism.

If you're a Jew I don't know if you ever go to a Jewish home there's a little thing on the door called the mezuzah.

You ever seen it?

It's literally a little container that has Scripture in it and you put it on the doorpost of your house obeying Deuteronomy 6, where God said you shall write these laws on the doorpost of your house And inside the mezuzah is the holiest verse in the Bible for Jews.

You know what it is Deuteronomy 6,4.

Shema Yisrael, adonai Eloheinu, adonai Echad, here, oh, israel, the Lord, our God.

The Lord is one, and Jews say He's one.

Your Trinity is bankrupt.

Get it out of my face.

God is one, but here's the question I want to bring to you this morning What kind of one is God?

Because the word one.

It is interesting in Hebrew.

There's a word in Hebrew for one, that is the word for absolute numerical oneness.

You're talking about one thing and it's the Hebrew word yachid And it means one, but it really is one, not many becoming one, but just one, like it's used when God said to Abraham take now your son Isaac, your only son, and the word there is yachid.

There's one, you have no other.

But in the verse that Judaism is based on Deuteronomy 6,4, the word for one is not yachid, meaning one thing only, it's echad.

I know I'm really assaulting you with these Hebrew words.

You don't have to write them down, but what I do want you to know is echad.

Echad is a composite one.

It's the word Moses used about marriage.

You remember how marriage is defined A man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one echad, bosar, echad, one flesh.

Here one is echad because God is describing two things that are separate, yet they are one Man and woman come together.

We learned a little about that in our tech class this morning as Tom was teaching it.

This word echad is always used for compound unity.

Moses sent spies to go bring back some fruit from the land, and the Bible says they cut down one cluster of grapes in Hebrew, eskel, echad.

One cluster, yes, one cluster, but many grapes.

Two people, man and woman, one marriage.

I'm looking at one church this morning, but there are many compounded into this oneness.

So even back in Moses day, the very verse that Jews are fiercely, or they use fiercely to protect their doctrine of monotheism, the truth is, that very verse indicates that God is not a yahid, he's an echad.

I'm trying to figure out why.

You thought that was funny.

I thought it was profound.

Okay, now when we come to the New Testament.

The New Testament makes it clear let me go on record you will not find the word trinity in the Bible.

It is not a biblical word, but the concept is biblical and true And you will find it throughout the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament.

But the New Testament goes beyond just simply declaring God is triune.

It actually gives us a philosophical reason why God must be trinity.

It's one thing to say God is a trinity, but I'm asking you this question this morning why is he triune?

Why must God be more than one person?

The Bible actually answers that in the text we looked at this morning.

John 1, john 4, 16 told us God is love.

Now it doesn't say God has love, which is true, but it didn't say that.

It didn't say God has love for people or God is loving to people.

It said God is love.

Now I want to blow your mind and ask you a question.

Before God created you and I, before man lived on this earth, in Genesis 1, before there was human beings, how could God be love if there were no human beings to love?

Because love, by its very definition, demands an object.

How many know what love is?

Love is the ability or love is.

When I place someone above myself, when I say I love my wife, i'm placing her above myself, i am saying she is worthy of affection beyond me.

So when you say God is love, you are not merely saying that started when he created.

You are saying that even an eternity passed before there were human beings to be the object of his love.

God is love even then.

But the question is, who did he love?

Because you can't have love unless you have an object to place your love on.

Have I lost you completely?

So the question I want to ask you and maybe CS Lewis stated it best in one of his books when he said quote the words God is love have no real meaning unless God contains at least two persons.

Love is something that one person has for another person.

If God was a single person before the world was, then he was not love.

That is why, if you know nothing else about the Godhead, you know from the Old Testament that the object of Father's love, affection, intimacy, before before he created, was the Son.

The Son is not just the one who redeems men.

He existed before creation and God was head over heels in love with his Son before human beings were on the planet.

We can see this all through the Scriptures.

Read sometime Proverbs 8.

It's amazing how God is.

The Father is there and delighting in the Son.

Now how does the Holy Spirit come on this, this kind of where's he fit in?

Because God is not only Father loving Son and Son loving Father, but there's someone else called the Holy Spirit, and the New Testament says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son.

Now if you want to understand who the Spirit is everybody watch with me.

This is amazing.

You have to understand the love that Father and Son have for each other.

One of the greatest theologians ever to live in America perhaps the best the English world has ever produced was a man named Jonathan Edwards, who was at the height or the center of the first great awakening in the 1700s.

He made the statement that the Father and Son loving and delighting each other creates a society.

He said wherever you have individuals loving each other, a society exists.

In other words, love produces a society.

And then he said in all societies there's an atmosphere, a spirit that exists, a pulsality that vibrates.

How many of you guys felt it yesterday as you were with your fellow men rooting on the voles.

There was a spirit in that room And I was sick in bed, but I was with you in spirit, saying crash Florida.

Believe me, that was my prayer.

I am very depressed, but you know, when men or women get together and they have, they have, you know, they're bound together in affection, for some pause or reason, there's a spirit, there's an atmosphere.

A society produces a spirit and the stronger the ties that bind that society, the stronger is the spirit characterizing that society.

Now, when we realize listen to this statement when we realize the relationship between the ultimate society, father and son, and that each has an unlimited ability to appreciate fully the perfection of the other and the other's glory and render adoration to the other, we can see why the scriptures speak of that society having a spirit.

But the spirit of that society is so strong that it produces a third person, the blessed Holy Spirit, which, by the way, is why, in Christian theology, the spirit is not an impersonal energy force.

I still get that feeling when I hear people talk about the Holy Spirit.

He's sort of like the force in Star Wars Woo, you know, and he's admitted from your hand, you know, put your hand.

But the reality is he, like the father and son, is a person.

Here's my favorite quote in all the world about the Godhead Best thing ever written about the Godhead.

If you can figure this out, you've got it Again.

It's CS Lewis and he said this quote.

The most, perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions is that in Christianity, god is not a static thing, or even a person, but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama If you won't think me a reverent a kind of dance.

The union between the father and son is such a living, concrete thing that this union itself is a person.

I know that's inconceivable, but look at it this way.

You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family or a club or a trade union, people talk about the spirit of that family and club and union.

They talk about its spirit because the individual members, when they're together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they wouldn't if they were a part.

It's as if sort of a communal personality came into existence.

Of course it isn't real.

It isn't a real person, it's only like a person.

But that's the difference between God and us.

What grows out of the joint relationship of the father and son is a real person, in fact the third of the three persons who are God.

Wow, did you get that?

No, i don't think anybody could in one reading.

That's why the father and son loving each other from eternity past before creation creates a third person.

If we can call create, we can't use the word create.

It's really not true, because a third person didn't appear later, but somehow the spirit is a person who expresses the love between father and son.

Now here's where you come in, and I'm not leaving you out, because this isn't a theology lesson.

The entire Godhead was involved in your salvation.

The entire Godhead was involved in your salvation.

That's what 2 Corinthians 13-14 says.

Putting it succinctly, you're saved this way The father proposes, the son disposes and the spirit applies.

Or, if you like, the father ordains, the son accomplishes and the spirit makes real.

And 2 Corinthians 13 said this three things about each member of the Godhead's contribution to your salvation in mind.

I want to invert it, the order, a little bit.

The love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit are all involved in your salvation in mind.

Love was the motive, grace was the means, fellowship was the goal.

Now here's how salvation starts.

It starts with God setting His love on you.

But let me ask you this question.

Don't answer.

It's rhetorical.

When did He first set His love on you?

Most Christians I know would say well, the moment I decided to start loving Him, he responded and loved on me.

But that's not biblical, because John said we love because He first loved us.

In fact, the answer to the question when did Father first set His love on you is not when you were conscious of it, but in eternity past.

Listen to Paul in his opening remarks in the letter to the Ephesians Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.

If you don't understand that, one version says it this way, a newer version In love He picked us out as sons to His Father before time began.

Or, if you would, a chapter later when Paul's talking about our salvation.

After talking about how we were dead in trespasses under the Prince of the power of the air, he says now in Ephesians 2, it's the great transition, but, god, if you want to know how you got out of your jam as being a son or daughter of Adam.

It didn't start with you, it started with God, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved.

This verse, and others, in fact a whole new testament, makes it clear that it is Father's love that is the progenitor, the basis of our salvation, and that love which He had for us began before time began.

Here's one of my favorite verses 2 Timothy 1.9.

He saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of His own purpose and grace, which He gave us in Christ before time began.

Now, if you take that wow, god's love was set on me in eternity past and you join it to what I said about what existed in eternity past, before creation the Father and the Son in this loving society It should blow your minds, because the love that God has for you in eternity past is an extension of the love He has had from eternity for His Son, because here's what happened in eternity past.

Follow this The Father purposed to give His Son a gift, an incredible gift, which later is known as the bride.

See, the father's Jewish and Jewish dads are really sticklers about the bride their sons end up with.

So the father, in his eternal plan, gave the son a wedding gift from eternity past.

Redeemed humanity would be the unique gift that father would give to son, and this humanity would be redeemed by every member of the Godhead, so that all the glory and praise for their redemption went not to them but to the God, the triune God, who redeemed them.

Not only would the son receive this unique gift, he himself would come to earth to accomplish the work that was necessary.

For the gift to be given, the son had to consent to come from the trinity, incarnate in human flesh, and sleep the sleep of death.

Jesus came from the Godhead and slept the sleep of death to redeem us.

Sound familiar, adam, and we heard this in our tech class this morning.

It's not good for you to be alone, how many know.

Later in Scripture, jesus is called the second Adam, or the last man, and God looks at Adam and the garden says not good for you to be alone.

Oh, really Well, maybe you're going to scoop some dirt up and create another being for me.

No, no, this time you have to sleep and while you sleep I will reach into you and take out of you your bride.

And the Bible reveals that when the second Adam, or the last man, christ, came, he did the same thing the first Adam did He fell asleep.

How many know what sleep represents, in Scripture, death?

Jesus slept and while he slept, father reached in and took out a bride, later to be brought to him in marriage.

How many know?

right now we're in the preparation for the wedding and we're getting our garments on our white garments, because one day we're going to be reunited to the lover.

We're in the bride, but she came out of him through death.

This is why salvation cannot be attributed to you or I, but to the love of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, his willingness to come and leave eternity and die in obedience to the Father so that through him we would be saved.

Grace is never owed.

You're not saved this morning because God owed you it.

You're saved by sheer grace of what God did in Christ, and that's to the praise of His glory.

Grace is the Bible word describing God's attitude towards sinners because of the work of His Son.

The work of Jesus makes it possible for God to be gracious to us.

I heard someone say it not long ago.

I think God owes everybody.

Once you say oh, when you smuggle the idea of oh into something, guess what you're out of the grace realm.

Grace means you get what you don't deserve, not what you do deserve.

That's why Paul sandwiched in that statement but God being rich in mercy, because it was great love with which he loved us even when we were dead and our trespasses and sin made us alive, together with Christ.

Ps.

By grace you have been saved.

And finally, paul says the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be yours.

What role does the Holy Spirit play in our salvation?

The Father proposes, the Son disposes and the Spirit applies, makes real.

But the text says the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Everybody listen to me really carefully in this remaining hour and a half.

Okay, i got your attention.

The Spirit comes to the heirs of salvation and applies redemption to those heirs of salvation.

Allowing us this blows my mind, but listen.

The Spirit comes and indwells the believer so that by the Spirit, we are able to fellowship or participate in the life of the Godhead.

If you don't believe that, listen to John's letter.

That which we've seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us.

And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is God active on earth, applying the love of God and the work of Jesus to our lives.

His first work is called regeneration.

You were dead.

You were dead.

You weren't sick, you were dead.

And the Holy Spirit comes and He makes you alive.

How many remember that moment you were regenerated.

I used to tell people I went in a room having never thought about God in Christ at all, and I've left that room and I haven't thought of anything else for 40 years, not because I'm smart, but because I was regenerated.

The life of God made me alive, the Spirit made me alive, and then the Spirit indwells us, and when He indwells us, he does so permanently, so we can enter a life of fellowship with the Godhead, the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

It is fellowship with the Father and the Son through the Spirit.

Think about this, beloved, as we close.

You have been invited by the Spirit into the fellowship of the Godhead, because God set His love on you in eternity past and His grace, through Jesus, is available and He redeemed you and quickened you and indwells you by the Spirit so you might have actual fellowship with God and His Son.

Is that what's happening in your life right now?

It should be.

Are you experiencing the fellowship of the Father and the Son?

I mean, there are people in this room right now who've never heard the word fellowship used, apart from what we're about to do at the coffee bar, which is legitimate.

But our fellowship, john says, is not only with us, but with the Father and the Son.

How's your fellowship with the Father and Son?

You know, if you're in Christ, it's your inheritance.

It's more than relationship.

You know, being a dad, i've discovered something that I have a relationship with my sons.

I'm their dad.

They didn't get to vote on that.

I'm dad And that relationship will never change.

I will always be dad.

It cannot change.

But I've discovered that relationship is one thing but fellowship is another.

How many dads have learned you can have a relationship father to son with your dads.

It doesn't mean you're having fellowship.

Something occurs, something offends, something makes you pull back and you discover and there are people in this room, maybe that have had that problem with others besides your kids and you discover you have a relationship where brothers and sisters, but there's no fellowship.

And what, john, i'm sorry?

what the text in Corinthians is telling us is that our fellowship is with the father and the son, and every believer who's regenerated and indwelt by the spirit has fellowship with the father or son.

You may not be living in it, in its reality, you may not be cultivating it.

You may be, you know, more interested in TV than you are God and the son, but the thing that will change your Christian life is when, in the spirit, you begin to be stirred up to recognize wait a minute, i'm called to intimate fellowship with father and son, and I'm letting the pursuits of this world seduce me rather than father and son.

May you come alive this morning to the incredible potential of fellowship with God and his son available to you.

It's more than emotion, although emotions are part of it.

I'm glad for emotions, but it's the reality and it's activated by faith.

If you're a Christian, you don't enter this by cultivating an emotion.

First You enter it by faith and say wait a minute.

Fellowship is my heritage.

It's the result of being saved and the Holy Spirit starts stirring you to begin to pursue fellowship with God.

It becomes the most important thing in your life.

So you're sitting here this morning because of the love of God and because of the grace of the Lord, jesus Christ, and if you're born again, you've had fellowship with the father and son, even if it's that initial experience of regeneration.

But oh, oh, oh.

There's so much more.

I was reading an account yesterday of a man powerfully used in evangelism.

This man had an anointing of the spirit on his life in the 18th century, but he was describing the fellowship he enjoyed with the father and the son And God was using him to save thousands in the 1700s.

But the thing that he talked about whenever he wrote letters in his journal was the incredible fellowship he was experiencing with the father and the son in this new anointing that God gave him.

The Holy Spirit is more than your makeup man.

He's not the one that just makes you up so you look good in church.

He is the one who connects you to God so that you're living at the throne, so that the person of God and the son are becoming more real to you than any human being on earth.

Join with me If you hear this morning maybe all these words are far into you and you've never heard anything like this But this the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is what being a Christian is about.

And if your heart's stirring you this morning and you feel an awakening as I've shared this and maybe there's something in you that says I would like to know God like that I didn't know that was, i thought religion was about going to church and being religious, but I want a relationship with God.

If you feel a drawing towards that, i'm going to have you come in a minute and talk to one of these prayer partners as we close the service.

There are people here and we are training them and they are trained already and they can talk to you about what's involved in knowing God in this capacity.

We all in this room who are Christians had a moment where we became conscious that we were being drawn to the Christian gospel.

This is a moment you will never have.

Can I ask the prayer team to come up quickly?

please Just come.

Those of you on the team that are here.

We're going to close this meeting.

I'm going to release you to God.

But listen, two things are happening in this room.

Number one I just spoke to when the service ends, and if you're here with friends and you want prayer or you feel that's stirring, don't worry about it.

Tell your friends I need to talk to somebody and you can talk to people.

That maybe brought you.

But this is an opportunity.

These people will pray with you, they will counsel you, as well as other prayer needs that you might have this morning Prayers for healing, for things.

We're going to see the Lord move here and we're going to open the altar in a minute.

But the other thing is, if you're a Christian here this morning, i really want to ask you is fellowship with God the priority of your life?

Is that really where you're living?

If not, repent this morning, maybe you need to come up and get prayer for and just say I need to make some decisions about my Christian life because I'm not living out what I need to.

I don't spend time in God's Word.

It's not precious to me.

I don't pray, i don't have a desire to read Christian books.

Maybe you've become worldly and you're seduced by the filth of this world which has robbed you of your inheritance.

Come up as well.

We're going to pray and end the service and I'd like to say that I'll meet all the guests at our coffee bar.

If you're going to come back, we want to meet with you and give you a free gift.

Let's pray.

Father, in the name of Jesus, i thank you for the privilege to speak these holy things, and I pray for two things this morning Draw people to Emmanuel this morning, spirit of God.

Draw men and women to Emmanuel's side, to the Father's love, to the grace of the Lord Jesus and to the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

I pray for those in the room this morning that have not been converted, who've never been transformed by the regenerating power of the Spirit.

I pray this morning that they will talk to us and, if not us, the people who brought them and say I want this relationship with God.

I just pray that the miracle of regeneration happen all through this building, by a work of your Spirit.

And I pray for Christians this morning, lord, who've sold out, whose fellowship has been soiled by the filth of this world.

I pray that this morning they would repent and turn to you and change in this moment by the power of the Spirit, and everyone said Amen.