Trinity Sunday: "Who is the Holy Spirit?" John 16:4b-15, Andrew Evans

Thank you, James and Jim for reading for us in I presume

that's Mandarin and Mandarin and Australian and and good old

fashioned American It is. It is great to be with you.

My name is Andrew Evans, I'm one of the pastors here at Church of

the Resurrection. Let me encourage you to turn in

your Bibles to John chapter 16. We'll actually look at all of

John 16 · chapter mention

the passages that we heard read today, but we'll spend the most

time in John chapter 16. It's on page 848 in the Pew

John 16 · chapter mention

Bibles in front of you. Today is the last day of our

sort of abbreviated time of celebrating the season of

Pentecost. We are, we've taken 3 weeks to

to celebrate the coming of the Spirit.

It's worthy of celebrating the Spirit coming to God's people.

Today is also Trinity Sunday. The day after Pentecost is

always in the church calendar. Trinity Sunday, when we consider

the Trinity, God's nature, as three in one.

So before we get started, let me pray.

You are worthy of our praise and our worship.

Oh God, you are three and one, one and three, a mystery that

you invite us to marvel at even while not comprehending it.

So I pray, would you pour out your Spirit on us afresh here

this morning so that we would know you and love you more?

I pray this in the name of Jesus, your Son, Amen.

So I want us to think for a minute about a phenomenon that

we often see in this city and other cities as well.

Maybe you've participated in this phenomenon.

You certainly have seen people or know people who've done it.

And this is the phenomenon of working late.

Have you ever done that? Have I ever done that?

You know, it's, it's, it's common in this city as well

known in the city and burn the midnight oil working on on this

or that project, this or this or that paper report.

We might not have all experienced it.

Maybe we have actually, we'll think about that in a second.

But we definitely have known people who've done that before,

right? Why do people do this?

The simplest answer, right, is that there's work to do.

Something's got to be done. That's certainly part of it, I

think, but I think it's actually the least interesting part.

Why would people sacrifice their sleep, their health, certainly

their time with family and friends in order to work on some

report? I think the more interesting

reason is that in many cases this work, doing this work,

demonstrates that you were needed.

Other people are relying on you. Other people are relying on me

to get this work done. If you've ever got an e-mail

from me too late at night, you know that I'm as guilty of this

as anybody else. CS Lewis writes about this

phenomenon in his essay called The Inner Ring.

The Inner Ring, he writes, men tell not only their wives but

themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or

the school on some bit of important extra work which

they've been let in on because they and so and so and the other

two are the only people left in the place who really know how

things are run. It is tiring and unhealthy to

lose your Saturday afternoons, but to have them free because

you don't matter, that is much worse.

How many of you recognize yourself in this statement?

How much do I recognize myself in this statement?

Probably more than I would like to say.

There's a sense in which all of us should recognize ourselves

here because we all want to be in the inner ring.

Maybe for you it is work. Maybe you you want to get that

office, you want to get that promotion, or you want to get

that dream job in that office. Or maybe for you, it actually

isn't work. Maybe your work is is actually

just a chore, but there are other places in your life where

you want to be in on the inside, maybe with that group of

friends. Maybe it's that social circle CS

Lewis describes at another point in this essay, A group of

artists gathered around a stove in an attic, hidden away, and

they, and only they understand what they are actually making

together. It's so enticing, isn't it?

It doesn't have to be work. We all feel this desire to be on

the inside. It pops up everywhere.

No matter what we do, where we are, there's always an inside

and an outside. And we all want to be on the

inside. And we all are afraid of being

left out in the cold on the outside.

There's something that's just so delicious about making it being

LED in, right? We all want this.

Now think about this in in relationship to God.

There's a real sense in which we all want to be on the inside

with God, don't we? Right.

We certainly want God on our side.

That's certainly true. We long for God to guide us in

our lives. We all want to be with God when

we die. These are good desires.

In fact, God has given us these desires.

He made us in order to be with Him.

Our first parents experienced intimate fellowship with God in

the Garden of Eden. And in fact, this reality that

God made us for him to be with Him sets up one of the bitterest

ironies of the fall in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

What did Satan offer Adam and Eve?

He offered them fruit. He offered them through that

fruit and knowledge of good and evil.

But what is that knowledge? It's a kind of secret insider

knowledge, isn't it? It's a sort of entrance into the

inner ring. You will know, just like God

knows, exclusive access. But what began as a temptation

to join this inner ring resulted not in entering that inner ring.

Yes, they had knowledge of some sort now, but but the result was

that they are cast out from God's presence.

You could even say, in fact, that all sin in a sense is an

attempt to be on the inside with God wrongfully, to to be like

God, to claim for ourselves what only God can do.

We want to be on the inside, even with God.

Our passages that we read today are the appointed lessons in the

Lectionary for Trinity Sunday, and it's striking how all of

them are about, in one way or another, being on the inside

with God. And while we might say in the

abstract in theory that we want to be on the inside without, we

want to be with God, right? These passages show us that to

be on the inside with God should, to put it mildly,

overwhelm us, overwhelm us. To be with God, to behold God in

his glory, in his nature, is an awesome and even a terrifying

thing. Let me read to you again from

Psalm 29. The voice of the Lord is over

the waters. The God of glory thunders the

Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is

powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of

majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the

Cedars. The Lord breaks the Cedars of

Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a

calf in Syrian, like a young wild ox.

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness.

The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the

forests bare. And in his temple all cry glory.

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.

The Lord sits enthroned as a king forever.

God speaks in the earth. Quakes, mountains move, skip.

God merely gives a word and it's like a hurricane comes ripping

through the earth. Trees break or a stripped bare

animals are thrown into labor. Such is the awesome power of

God. And all anyone can do when

confronted with this reality is to cry out glory, glory, glory

to you. This is our God.

He's enthroned, He is king, He is glorious.

And what happens when we encounter this God as he really

is, when we enter the inner sanctum and behold God in his

glory? We actually read about exactly

this in Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah is is brought up into the

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

inner sanctum where he beholds God in His glory.

And what does he say? Woe is me, for I am lost.

I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people

of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of

hosts. Woe is me, for I am lost.

To encounter God is to be overwhelmed not only with God's

greatness, but with our unworthiness.

This is the God who not only made the world, who sustains it

by the power of His Word, but who is righteousness and

holiness and purity itself. To encounter God means to be

confronted with every wrong thing that we've ever done,

because they're right there, present and exposed to Him.

And He is so holy that everything that is evil and

impure is liable to be burned up instantly in His presence.

Woe is me, for I have seen the Lord of glory.

So let me ask you, do you want to be on the inside with God?

Really and truly, you were made for it, but neither you nor I

can abide being in God's presence.

This should actually be our attitude when we come into

contact with the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Trinity isn't just some mysterious Christian puzzle that

we confess once a week, and the Nicene Creed we then struggle to

defend with our Muslim and Jewish friends and colleagues.

Right. The Trinity is actually God's

inner nature. It's his inner being.

It is who he is in himself. God is 3 and one, one in three.

When we consider the Trinity, we are entering the Holy of Holies,

the God who is a consuming fire, who makes the mountains to skip

just by his word. This God in his inner being is 3

and one, one and three. When we encounter the Trinity,

we should all cry glory, glory. But even in being able to

confess the Trinity, we're seeing more than just God's

mysterious inner nature. We're actually encountering

God's graciousness. Think about it this way.

Who you are in yourself is a sort of deeply held piece of

information, right? It's something who you are and

yourself, your your, your dreams, your desires, your

fears, your anxieties, the things that have shaped you most

deeply, those are things that you do not share with just

anybody. There's a reason that when you

come to to talk to a pastor or talk to a counselor, you expect

confidentiality. It's required because you're

sharing aspects of yourself that that you don't want other people

to know. You share this kind of thing

only with your closest friends, only with the closest of

confidants. To share this information about

who you are in yourself, your deepest self, is to be

vulnerable. It's to invite people into

knowing the real you. And there's actually something

analogous going on here with God's revelation of the Trinity.

God wants us to know him. He wants us to be on the inside

with Him, to join His inner ring.

And so He's actually revealed to us in Scripture His inner

nature. We get a peek into this

revelation in our gospel lesson, John chapter 16.

John 16 · chapter mention

Look there with me, verses 5 and seven.

He says in verse 5 that he's going back to the one who sent

him. So Jesus was sent by the Father.

Then in verse 7, he says that when he returns to the Father,

he will send the Spirit, the Paraclete, the helper.

Now this spirit isn't a force or some emanation.

This this spirit is a person. He says in verse 8 that he will

convict. The Spirit will convict.

Then in verse 13 he says that the spirit will guide.

Forces don't convict and guide. These are words of agency.

People do these things, so the Spirit is a person.

So here we have the building blocks in this tight passage of

the Trinity. Three persons, a sender, the

sent one and then another one who was sent by the sender and

the sent one. These are all mutually

interrelated. They all have one purpose which

points us to their ultimate unity.

They are three and they are one. This is who God is in Himself.

This is his inner nature, friends.

What intimate details about God that he has revealed to us about

Himself? God wants us to know him who he

is at his deepest level. But we can go further here.

We only know God as Trinity because it has revealed his

nature to us in salvation. One theologian puts it this way.

Faith in the Trinity rests on God's revelation of himself in

the economy of salvation. Put it in another way, we know

God as Trinity because God saves us as a Trinity.

Now, to be sure, we have, we have hints of of the Trinity in

the Old Testament, but we got God has definitively revealed

his, his nature in this way to us in the sending of Christ and

then in the sending of the Spirit to save us.

That's what's going on in this passage as well.

When Jesus talks about coming and then going back to the

Father, he's talking about being sent to earth to live and then

to die and then to return to the Father after rising from the

dead. Right after this passage, right

after this monologue, Jesus is betrayed and killed.

Jesus came to save. So we know the Son because he

came to save us, but we actually know the Spirit for the same

reason. The Spirit points us to the

Son's saving work. When Jesus says in verse 8 that

the Spirit will convict the world over three things.

Each of these three things has something to do implicitly or

explicitly with Jesus. And when the Spirit speaks in

verses 13 and 14, what he says he will have heard from the

Father and the Son in order to glorify the Son.

The Spirit is constantly pointing back to the Son.

We know God as three because God saves us as a Trinity.

God the Father sends the Son to die for us, who then with the

Father sends the Spirit to draw us back to the Father through

the Son. The Spirit is actually an

intimate and crucial part of God's salvation plan.

He points not to himself as some sort of independent power center

apart from the Father and the Son.

He points us to Christ, the one sent by the Father.

The Spirit draws us deeper into God's triune nature by saving

us. Friends, It is a fearful thing

to enter into the presence of our God, But God wants us inside

with Him, and He wants us there so much that by saving us, He

revealed Himself to us as triune.

And friends, if you're looking to God through faith in Christ,

you have the ultimate insider status.

You have come into the greatest, the most central inner ring.

You are beholding God as he really is.

You have a knowledge of God that he has of himself.

Not to the same degree, but you have knowledge that God has of

himself. And here we can actually see how

God is undoing the curse of the fall.

Adam and Eve wanted to be inside.

They wanted to have insider knowledge.

But they lost far, far more than they gained.

They became outsiders, left out in the cold, kicked out of the

garden. But see what God has worked for

us as He has revealed His triune nature.

Not only do we now have insider knowledge of God's true nature

is triune something that Adam and Eve likely never had.

Not only do we have greater knowledge of good and evil in

the revelation of Christ, far beyond what they could have

imagined, we are actually brought back into God's

presence. We can behold God's nature, come

into this holy of holies, and cry out glory without being

undone. We've been purified by the blood

of the Son, sent by the Father in the power of the Spirit, so

that we can then join the throng of those who are standing before

His throne. Friends in Christ, we are

ultimate insiders and the result is that our motivation for

seeking to be insiders in this life should change.

Why do we want to be insiders? Why do we want to get into that

inner ring? Why do we want to work late to

try to get into that office or or do that report well, be in

that meeting, have coffee with that person.

See see if our art is noticed by that person.

Look for that. Like on Instagram, is it not in

part? In part this is the only reason,

but in part. Because we want the validation.

There's certainly other reasons, but is this not a part we want

to have? The glory that comes from being

on this inner ring, in this inner ring?

Fundamentally, it is about me. What happens when we enter this

ultimate inner ring with God? Think about this passage from

Revelation. The elders, 24 of them, are

sitting on Thrones around God's throne.

And what do they do when the time comes?

They rise up. They take off their crowns,

their real, true crowns that they have, and they cast them

before God. Their attention turns from

themselves, from their own status, their own glory, and

turns to God to give glory to the one who truly and most fully

deserves it. In a word, the result is

worship. And if we are looking to Christ

in faith, worship should be our primary posture.

Are you letting this reality about you, that you are an

insider, that you were in this inner ring?

Are you letting this reality turn you away from a constant

consideration of yourself and your status and your needs and

your wants? Are you letting this, this

reality that Christ has worked in your life, turn you away from

yourself and turn you toward God in worship?

Are you fixing your mind, even for a short period, on God's

glory and majesty? Here's an exercise to do this

week, every day, the next week. Take a minute.

You can do it for longer, but take one minute and praise God.

Don't thank Him. Don't say thank you.

That's that's viewing Him in relation to yourself.

Try to take yourself out of the picture and praise Him for who

he is. Praise Him for his attributes.

Praise Him for his glory, His power, His goodness, His

graciousness, His righteousness. Praise Him and see what happens.

In a life formed by worship, ideally a couple things will

happen. 1 is that you will have more peace, particularly in

precisely those places where you have been so anxious to enter

the inner ring. You can still strive for that

promotion. You can still network for the

dream job. Sometimes you can even work

late. But you can do so with a piece

and a confidence about you, because any affirmation that

comes from the world, from the inner rings of this world, will

pale in comparison to the inner ring that you have been brought

into by the blood of our Savior Jesus.

God has drawn you to himself. Worship Him and be at peace.

And one of the thing that should happen as we worship God is that

we should actually become more like the Holy Spirit.

See, the Spirit has a mission. God sends the Spirit not to draw

attention to himself as the Spirit, so that, but so that we

would then look to Jesus, we would look at Jesus.

The Spirit is always pointing away from himself toward the

Son, to draw people to the Father through the Son.

This is the mission of the Spirit.

And we too, as we worship and as we have the peace that comes

through this worship, will be drawn into this mission as well.

We'll no longer need the praise of others as much, but we will

long for these people, the people around us, to be drawn to

the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit.

Worshiping God and the power of the Spirit draws us into this

mission, the mission of the Spirit, pointing away from

ourselves and toward the one who has saved us.

We'll become more like the Spirit.

Friends, this is our Triune God. To approach Him on our own is an

awesome and a terrible thing, but is precisely in revealing

Himself to us as Trinity, as Triune, that he has brought us

safely to Himself. What love he has shown us.

So let's worship Him today and every day, in the name of the

Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.