We miss out on the beauty of God. And so even though this is a tough topic, we’re talking about the Trinity, this is an essential topic. This is a topic that we need to keep coming back to. We need to learn to love the Trinity. Proverbs 1-7 says this, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”

If you want to even enter the realm of knowledge, you want to get into what is this world really all about? Where is meaning found? What does love look like? You need to begin with God. If you begin with yourself, your focus is going to be all out of whack.

It’ll be skewed because we’re not meant to look at the world that way. We’re meant to get our eyes up on Him. And when we do that, then things start to fall into place. The world becomes more exciting and meaningful and beautiful because we first look to Him. And so join me in John chapter 17.

If you would and you’re able to, please stand for the reading of God’s holy word. We’re going to consider this question. How can God be three in one? Just a small topic. The big idea this morning is Scripture reveals the one God as eternally triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit so that we might know and love Him as He truly is.

John chapter 17, beginning in verse one, this is what John writes. He says, “When Jesus had spoken these words, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come. 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.” Thank you, maybe seated. This is an awesome subject. When I first saw this question, I thought, this is a huge question.

I love it. I love that somebody is thinking about this and wanting to know, how does this all work? And of course, the question that comes to mind is, where do I even begin to talk about the Trinity? Of course, you begin with Scripture, but I chose John 17 because it’s a prayer right at the end of Jesus’ ministry, three-year ministry on earth. He’s about to go to the cross.

He has just been explaining to his disciples really what the Trinity is about, what the roles of the Trinity are. And then he starts to pray to the Father. And it’s this awesome moment in history. And John is basically pulling back the curtain. He’s pulling back that eternal veil and saying, let me show you something of this intra-trinitarian relationship that you understand before.

He talks about a time before there was time. And again, I said I would run out of vocabulary because I don’t know how to articulate what that means, a time before there was time. I love this passage because here Jesus gets at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. It all begins with God. He says, this is eternal life.

It’s not going to some nebulous heaven that’s a pleasure factory with nobody in charge. It’s not working your way to heaven, doing enough good deeds, enough religion to earn God, sort of like when you pay your taxes, get God off your back by paying him what he wants. No, he says this is eternal life. It’s to know God and to know his son, Jesus Christ. So when we think about God as Trinity, we’re saying that the one God has eternally existed ever and always as three distinct persons that are united, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And one of the first things to notice is that Jesus calls God Father. Jesus always calls God Father. And that’s important because he has always been Father. Before God was Creator, before he was Judge, before he was Redeemer, God was Father for all eternity. And that is because Jesus, the Son, was always His Son.

This is what we’ll see. So the first question is, why is the Trinity important? Many people think of the Trinity as this kind of strange, esoteric, bizarre, confusing concept. Some people even say, well, this is from the Greeks, ancient Greeks, just crazy ideas. They don’t understand this is something that has always been.

This has always been true. But it wasn’t always revealed to human beings. It progressively came into focus that God is triune. But people wonder if it’s so confusing, why do we bother with it? Well, again, the Trinity is essential.

And it’s so important that if we’re going to know God better, we need to see him as he truly is, as he’s revealed himself. Not based on, this is what I think God would be like, or this is what I would like God to be like, but God, who are you? Tell me who you are. I’m ready to listen and respond to what you’ve said about yourself. If you asked Americans, what is God like is, they would say God is love, which is very true.

And it doesn’t surprise us that that’s found in the Bible. First John 4 says this, “Beloved,” John writing again here, he says, “Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.” So there it is.

The Bible teaches that God is love and his love is so powerful and overwhelming that whoever experiences this divine love from God will begin to love others. They’ll be transformed by that love because all love is sourced ultimately in God. So in your notes, the Trinity explains why God is love and why we were made to love. But the question is why? Why can’t a single person God, a unipersonal God be a God of love?

Well, because first John says, “Not just that God is loving, but that God is love.” In other words, this is a statement about his very nature. This is who God has always been. He has always been love. He’s eternally been so.

There’s a story about a time when someone was asking the church father, Augustine, “Hey, what was God doing before he created the world?” And Augustine, kind of with tongue and cheek, replied, “He was creating hell for people who asked such questions.” But it’s interesting because in John 17, Jesus actually tells us what was going on, what God was doing before he created the world. He says, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” So apparently before God created the world, God the Father and God the Son shared this glory.

Now what does that look like? Well, because God is love, it looks like going out in other centered, self-giving love toward one another. That’s exactly what Jesus says in verse 24. If you drop down there in John 17, 24, Jesus says, “Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me,” that’s us, “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.” This is such a profound thought.

Jesus here is saying before there was anything, before there was a universe, before those stars were out there, before any of that, God was there. And God was there, not as someone who was lonely. Some people wonder, did God create everything? Did He create us because He was lonely? No, God has never been lonely.

He’s never been needy. He’s never been lacking anything. He is fully sufficient in Himself. But the reason for that is is so important. It’s because God has eternally existed in this loving relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And that divine love was infinitely satisfying. There was never a day when the Son was lacking in love from the Father. There was never a time when the Spirit felt left out of this circle of love. They were always pouring out eternally their self-giving love to one another. And love, as I understand it according to the Bible, is self-giving commitment to the good of another.

It’s self-giving commitment to the good of another. So just think about this, compare and contrast. Think of Islam. In Islam, you have a God that, the Quran specifically denies the Trinity. It says that Allah is a single person deity.

But what’s interesting is that they have these 99 names and these names are said to be eternally true of God. And one of them is the loving. Now the question is how could a single person deity eternally loving with no one there to love but Himself? Right? And so again, when Christians talk about love, they’re talking about a self-giving commitment to the good of another.

It’s not the self-absorption. That’s what we call selfishness. It’s giving yourself away loving another person. 1 John 3, 16 says this. By this, we know what love is.

Better pay attention. He’s gonna tell us what love is that Jesus laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. It’s giving of yourself. That’s what love is.

See, the Trinity matters because it says that when you press into ultimate reality and you ask that question, where did everything come from? What you find is this eternal relationship of love between Father, Son, and Spirit. And that means we were made not because God is lonely or needy, but because God out of the superabundance and outflowing of His love, He wanted to make more creatures to love simply because that’s who He is. So we were made by love and for love. This leads us to the next question.

Where does the Bible teach the Trinity? See, it’s one thing to say, what a beautiful doctrine. That’s amazing. That sounds awesome to say God is love and all of these things you’re talking about. But where’s that in the Bible?

This is what people sometimes will say. I don’t see the word Trinity in the Bible. And you’re right, you’re not gonna find the word Trinity in the Bible. You know what else you won’t find? You won’t find the word incarnation.

You won’t find the word discipleship in the Bible. But are those concepts found in the Bible? You bet they are. See, this is what we have to do. When we come to the Bible and we do something called interpretation, we have to put words to what we find there.

So that word Trinity is describing the concept that is there. And here’s what I would say. Again, God has always been a Trinity. He didn’t develop into this, but it has been progressively revealed to us. So that means in the Old Testament, it wasn’t so clear.

There were hints. There were definitely clues that God is a Trinity, but it wasn’t explicitly stated as such. For example, when God creates human beings, He says in Genesis one, let us make man in our image. That sounds like there’s a multiplicity of persons there at the beginning. Isaiah 6 uses a very similar language.

God says, and who will go for us? The Psalms and the Proverbs, it’s the same thing. They talk about the Son of God. They don’t give full explanation to what they’re talking about, but they give hints that there is a Son of God. And then when you come to the New Testament, you see all of this comes into focus.

It becomes so clear that God is Trinity. So in your notes, while the word Trinity is not in scripture, the concept of God’s three in oneness is so where do we see the Trinity? Well, here’s the basic idea. The Bible is crystal clear on this from the very beginning to the very end. There is only one God.

One supreme God overall, one creator, one one eternal being. It’s only one. And in fact, the Bible makes this so clear because sometimes there’s other gods talked about in scripture and the Bible contrasts the God with those gods and explains those are either idols, they’re counterfeit gods, they’re demons, they’re demons, but they’re not the supreme God. There’s only one supreme God. For example, Isaiah 45, says, I am the Lord, I am Yahweh and there is no other.

Besides me, there is no God. Over and over, you go through Isaiah 44, 45, 46, you see this repeated theme. God says, there’s no other God before me, there’s no God after me. I am the only God. Make that so clear.

He says, don’t get this wrong. God, a polytheistic reality, there’s only one God and he’s eternal. But what you also find, there’s one God, but you find that in the New Testament, the Father is identified as God, the Son is identified as God, and the Holy Spirit is identified as God. So what do you make of that? If there’s only one God and three different persons are said to be that God, what can you conclude other than the one eternal God has always existed?

As three distinct persons, interrelated, connected persons. Now one clear theme of the New Testament is that Jesus claims the attributes of God. In other words, what the Old Testament says is only true of God. Jesus comes along and he starts doing all these things that previously was only true of God, like he forgives sins. He receives worship.

Jesus is said to be the creator of all things in the judge of the world. He gives life, he raises the dead. Again, all these things were said to be only true of God. Angels can’t do those things. No superhuman out there can do those things.

Only God can do them and Jesus does them. And once again, look at this passage. If Jesus isn’t God, then why is he asking the Father to glorify him? Just think about that if you were talking about a human here. When it comes to the Holy Spirit, we see the same thing.

The Holy Spirit is actually mentioned in Genesis 1. He’s there the creation. And over and over, we see the Holy Spirit is the giver of life. And then there’s explicit statements that say the Holy Spirit and Jesus are going God. So the concept of the Trinity is clearly in the Bible.

But the question many people have is how does this work exactly? How can I make sense of this thing you’re talking about called the Trinity? And that’s the next question. How can God be three in one? Well, for starters, let’s remember that the only reason we believe that God is Trinity is because he has told us that.

I believe there’s no way any of us could concoct this idea of God being three in one on our own. I think it’s outside our human categories. It’s not something we could invent. It had to be something divinely revealed to us by God himself. And look, I’ve talked to people who say it like this.

Explain to me how one plus one plus one equals one. That doesn’t make any sense, right? And I’ve said, well, okay, if you want to turn into a math formula, how about one times one times one equals one? You can’t reduce the Trinity to a math formula. There are other well-meaning Christians who want to talk about the Trinity and explain it through an analogy.

They’ll say, you know, the Trinity, it’s a little bit like an egg. You know, you got the shell, you got the yoke, the white, but there’s only one egg. Now the problem is now you’re saying, think of an egg when you think about God. I don’t think that helps. I think that confuses people.

Or someone might say, well, it’s like this. I’m one man, but I am a father. I’m a son and I’m a husband. That works, right? Three roles, one being.

Actually, what you’ve just described is a heresy that’s called modalism because you’re saying that God, the single person God wears different hats. And sometimes he’s a father as he relates to people. Sometimes he’s a son. Sometimes he’s the Holy Spirit. That’s not the God of the Bible.

The God of the Bible eternally and always exists as father, son, and Holy Spirit. You see this in Scripture. For instance, at the baptism of Jesus, you see Jesus is in the water getting baptized. The Holy Spirit is descending on him like a dove and the Father is speaking from the heavens. At the end of the day, we simply need to receive God as he has revealed himself.

Now many people would say something like, but hang on, the Trinity, it just, it seems like it’s a rational impossibility. You’re saying three and one, how does that even work? And I know this might offend some people, but have you ever thought that maybe God is bigger than what you can fit inside your brain? Do we really wanna worship a God that we can put under a microscope and say, you must be subject to my standard of rationality. And if you don’t meet my standard, then I’m not gonna worship you.

That doesn’t make any sense. That’s what a created God looks like. The true God is going to blow our minds when he reveals himself. He’s gonna be so big and so majestic and so awesome that we’re gonna be left thinking, how can that be? We don’t need to fully comprehend the nature of God, but we do need to receive him as he’s revealed himself.

And let me just say, as far as making sense, the gospel only makes sense, this is important, if God is a Trinity. You can’t have a gospel that saves sinners if you don’t have a Trinity. Let me explain why. In your notes, God’s every action is in perfect harmony from the Father through the Son and by the Spirit. So think about this, how can God adopt us as his children unless he is Father?

And unless God is eternally Father, I mean, how can God be eternally a Father unless he has an eternal Son? And how can the Son become flesh unless he’s conceived by the Holy Spirit? See, this is what’s amazing about our God. From all eternity, God knew he was gonna make you. He knew that you would rebel and he knew that you would need a Savior.

And he planned it all out. From eternity, there were no surprises together. He worked it all out in advance and every member of the Trinity, each member has this specific role to ensure that you are rescued from your sin. The Bible says that from before the foundation of the world, the Father lovingly planned to rescue you and make you his own by sending his own eternally begotten Son to come and die in your place. That’s important.

He’s eternally begotten, not begotten in time. He has always been and he’s always been the Son. He sent him to die in your place and rise again. And Jesus had to be fully God if he’s gonna reconcile you fully back to God. If you wanna see the Trinity, spend some time in Ephesians 1.

There it says that before the foundation of the world, the Father chose us to bless us in his Son. That means we were always intended to be in the Father’s love through faith in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. See, the Trinity explains how God saved you by his love. The Father chose you and predestined you for adoption. The Son redeemed you with his blood from your sins.

The Spirit then indwelled you and sealed you as his own. Each member of the Trinity completes the salvation project. It cannot happen unless God is triune. So rather than pulling out a calculator, what we need to be doing is saying, this is amazing. This is amazing that God is like this.

That God was willing to come and die for me. That he was willing to, as the Father was willing to send his own Son to die in my place. That the Son was willing to be the one who bore my sin. That the Holy Spirit indwells me and I’m forgiven forever. This is awesome.

That should be our response when we think about the Trinity. Not how does this all fit together in my brain. The next step to the Trinity is to be in awe of your maker. When we know just how much the Father loved us, it makes sense that we’re called to love him and love others. We’re made to love because that’s what makes sense when you have a God who is eternally loving.

Okay, so knowing God as Father is awesome and we love that aspect, but another question came up. What about those aspects of the Bible where it seems like God isn’t so warm and fuzzy? The next question is, why does God seem over the top with his anger in the Old Testament? It’s an interesting question. If you’ve spent time in the Old Testament, you’ve probably come across passages that maybe troubled you at first.

Maybe you just wondered like why? Like the flood of Noah, for instance, the entire world flooded only Noah and his family survives. Why? Or maybe you look at Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did God have to respond with such severe fire and brimstone?

And then there’s other times where God seems angry even with his own people. He’s severe with his own people like Aaron’s sons. They bring this unauthorized offering to the altar and then they’re turned into human fireworks. Or Moses. What about Moses?

He’s done so well for 40 years leading these grumbling people. And one time, one time he loses his temper, takes out that stick and hits a rock and God says, that’s it. You’re not going into the promised land. And we read that and we think that seems so severe. Why?

In other words, why does God sometimes show anger or wrath? I thought God is love. And the answer is that God shows his wrath at times because God is love. See, if someone tried to kidnap one of my kids, and if my response was to kind of shrug and sit down, you’d say, that’s a bad dad, rightly. If someone’s trying to harm one of my kids, my response is to do everything in my power to put a stop to whoever’s trying to harm them.

Amen? I want to make sure we get the balance right though. If you were to just take one of these passages in isolation, like say the flood of Noah, and you only looked at certain portion of that story, then I would agree it looks like God is just this wrathful, unloving God. But you have to see each of these in the context of the full story of scripture. Just like it wouldn’t make sense to jump into a movie at the and then just watch that one quick clip and say, okay, now I know everything about the character.

No, that doesn’t make sense. You have to see it from beginning to end. You have to see where it’s all going. And what may seem over the top is simply God acting out of his perfect holiness and love. Scripture says God does not change.

He doesn’t fly into a rage or lose his temper. He doesn’t lose control. When we get angry, God is always in the wrong. But when God gets angry, it’s because he is just. Because he’s perfectly just.

And only he ultimately can set things right. In your notes, God’s anger is the consistent expression of his perfect holiness, justice, and love in the face of prolonged rebellion. Overall, the Bible, including the Old Testament, emphasizes God’s holiness and love, not his anger. In fact, Exodus 34, six and seven says God is slow to anger. But abounding, super abundant, that’s that word, bounding in mercy and steadfast love.

In each of those examples I mentioned, God gave plenty of warning of his judgment. The sons of Aaron knew better. They were just given instructions on how to do this, but they disregarded it. They didn’t treat God as holy. For the flood of Noah, God gave them 20 years.

And I don’t think any of us are gonna live that long, 120 years to repent, because Noah was preaching to them. And I would say this, in almost every case where God’s actions seem out of character with being a God of love, the reason is that we haven’t taken God’s holiness seriously enough. See, if you have a small view of God, you will think lightly of sin. But that’s not a problem with God’s character. That’s an us problem.

Remember we need to turn it around and say, what am I missing? What part of me needs to be reorganized or changed by what I’m seeing here? And these times aren’t isolated in the Old Testament. If you look at the New Testament, Jesus gets angry with people. You go to the temple and he’s driving out those greedy money changers with a whip.

And he goes to the Pharisees and he says that they’re all whitewashed tombs, that they are blind guys leading people into hell. That doesn’t sound warm and fuzzy to me. But this all comes back to God being a God of love. Why? Because true love hates what destroys the beloved.

And God indifferent to evil would himself be evil. If God did not take justice more seriously than we take justice, he would not be a good God. So yes, God shows wrath, but wrath is not an essential attribute of God. Here’s what I mean. God at times shows wrath, but he’s not wrath by definition.

He is love. He shows wrath when he is so passionately putting a stop to that which he loves. When he’s rescuing what he loves, when he’s stopping what would harm what he loves. And most importantly, we see that God has given us the opportunity to escape his just wrath and receive his love through the cross of Jesus Christ. There we see perfect justice meted out, but Jesus was the substitute sacrifice.

He took the wrath of God in our place so that we would not have to experience it. It’s through faith in Christ that we experience the love of God. This leads to the final question. Why did God make a world with sinners who need a savior instead of making everyone like himself? It’s a great question.

When you look around the world, I think we could all admit, if you’re only looking at the world, there’s evidence that would point away from there being a triune, God of love. That’s why we need the revelation of Scripture. Because when we see the suffering, the disease, the death, the war, all of that, we need to see it through the lens of the Bible. That’s when things come into focus and we can see things as they really are. The question is interesting.

Why didn’t he make everyone like himself? Because the Bible says that actually he did. In Genesis 1, 26 and 27, God says, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness.” In other words, God wanted a world populated with little image bearers who reflected his love and goodness back to him and back to one another. But in the garden, when the devil tempted her, Eve turned away from God.

It says that she saw the fruit was a delight to the eyes and desirable to make her wise. Of sin is taking our eyes off of God and putting it on ourselves. That’s what Eve did. That’s why she ate the fruit. And then Adam ate.

And notice they not only turned on God, they turned on each other very quickly. All relationships took a hit because we were made to reflect God. Finally, in your notes, in the beginning, God made everything very good. But sin is a possibility if God wants a relationship with actual persons. Ecclesiastes 7, 29 puts it this way.

God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. In other words, God didn’t make a mistake. A word God has never used is oops. Humanity rebelled and Scripture says that death and suffering were introduced through that first sin in the garden. Now, the question is, why did God create us if he knew we were going to rebel?

He knew there’d be all the suffering and evil that would come with it. So why did he allow it? And here’s where we get into some pretty deep theological waters. God allowed evil to exist because of the greater good of redemption that was in his plan. It’s amazing when you stop and think about some of the things that could not be possible if God never allowed sin and evil into the world.

For instance, without evil, there couldn’t be anything such as compassion or mercy or courage. If there was no such thing as sin, if that never happened, we would never know God as a God of grace. In fact, we’d never have known just how much God loves us if it were not for the sacrifice of the cross. It’s only when we look to Jesus and we see him hanging there, the eternal Son of God become man, bleeding and dying for us, paying the price for our sins that we finally start to see just how much we are loved by God. Our triune God of love knew that love is only possible with actual persons.

Not with robots, but with image-bearing men and women who have the freedom to make choices, and that would include the choice to reject him. According to scripture, however terrible sin and suffering are, it will all be worth it in the end. When God returns in the full reign of Jesus, he’s gonna make all things new, all tears wiped away, all suffering is going to be reversed for those redeemed by God. And we’re gonna have all eternity, think about this, all eternity to experience more and more of the love of our Trinitarian God. There’s never gonna be an end to it because he is infinite and eternal.

I’ll close with one last passage from John 1722. Remember, Jesus prayed this for you and me. He said, “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.” Now stop just for a moment here, take this in for a second.

He said, “The Father loves us “even as he loves the Son.” That should astound us. But the one he has loved from all eternity, that’s the God who loves us. I’ll leave you with this question. How does knowing God is triune change the way you think about your created purpose to love and be loved?

Let’s pray together. – Father, I’m again in awe of your majesty. Lord, we are at the point where we’re just in awe of who you are because of your love. And God, it’s so easy for us to read these words in scripture and not pause and take it in, to drink deeply of your glory. And to understand that what you’ve said here is that you have invited us into this eternal relationship of love and your Father’s Son and Holy Spirit.

You’ve invited us in and you’ve said, “You are welcome. “You are loved even as my Son is loved.” God, I pray that we would not move too quickly past this description of your love, that we would wanna breathe in more and more of it, that we would wanna enjoy more of who you are because of this. And that out of drinking deeply from your love for us, we would wanna extend our love to others. God, I sense that there may be someone here this morning who does not personally have a relationship with you and that would mean they don’t yet have that experience of the triune love of God.

So Lord, I just wanna ask that if there’s anyone here who wants to know forgiveness of sins, who wants to spend eternity with you, the triune God, wants to have fresh and eternal life with you. But they just raise their hands now, even as we’re bowing before you, raise their hands ready to surrender their life to you, Lord. To say I am a sinner, I come to you ready to receive Jesus, ready to receive your new life, your forgiveness, ready to be welcomed into the Father’s love. Lord, I pray that you would work in hearts, Lord, and thank you for each person here. I’m gonna pray for those who wanna give their lives to the Lord, even this morning.

And you can repeat this in your own heart. Father God, I admit I’m a sinner. I wanna come to you this morning. I wanna embrace your love for me. That love that was planned out from eternity, I want that.

I wanna be forgiven of sin. I wanna know what it means to be washed clean on the inside. I want Jesus in my life. I wanna follow him all the days of my life. This is a God I can follow, a Lord who suffered for me.

Lord, I wanna follow him. He rose to give me new life. I wanna live for him. Lord, would you rescue any soul this morning that is praying that prayer, whether here, online, wherever, Lord, that they would recognize this great gift of love found in Jesus Christ. We praise you and thank you and ask all this in Jesus’ mighty name.

Amen. And at this time I’m gonna ask the,

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