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Revelation of the Trinity
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The word “Trinity” is not found in Scripture, yet it is a foundational and non-negotiable part of our faith. Join Pastor Wei Yi as he leads us to look upon the triune God today.
The word Trinity is not found in Scripture, yet it is a foundational and non-negotiable part of our faith. Join Pastor Wei as he leads us to look upon the triune God today.
SPEAKER_01Good morning, church. Today's scripture reading is taken from the Gospel of John, chapter 16, verse 12 to 15. Verse 12. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak. And he will declare to you the things that are to come. Verse 14. 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 say that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. This is the word of God. Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00Church, today is Trinity Sunday. Just like how last week was Pentecost Sunday, and we remember and we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit onto the church. Today is Trinity Sunday, a day where we celebrate and we proclaim the mystery of the Trinity. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Godhead, three in one. It is the Sunday where many preachers, such as myself, are kind of worrying, worrying a little bit as we come up to the pulpit, hoping to say something meaningful about something that we all don't quite fully understand. Last year I had to teach baptism class to an 11-year-old, and we came to the topic of Trinity. And I thought I would try to simplify it for this 11-year-old, right? And I ended up going round and round and round, saying the same things over and over and over again. Feeling like I have said enough to explain the Trinity and at the same time having confused the kid. It is a very difficult thing to understand. And much more difficult thing to try to articulate. And yet, through the centuries, Christians have held that it is an essential belief of the church. One well-known theologian puts it this way: the doctrine of Trinity is what basically distinguishes the Christian doctrine as of God as Christian. The doctrine of Trinity is what makes us Christian. It is what distinguishes us as a Christian religion from all other religions, right? So that we can say truly with the Psalmist that there is no God like our God. And he calls this the Catholic or the universal faith. He calls this the faith of all Christians across space and time. That we worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in unity. The creed ends off with this one cannot be saved without believing it firmly and faithfully. And so as a church, we we affirm the doctrine of Trinity. Through our Anglican liturgy, if we can kind of spot some of our prayers, the collect, for example, or through the Holy Communion Liturgy, right? The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always mentioned in those prayers and in those instances. As a church, we affirm the Trinity in the Apostles' Creed that we'll recite later on, and also the Nicene Creed that we recite on Holy Communion Sundays. And we also affirm it in our baptism, right? If you can remember your baptism day, you are made to stand before the church to declare your faith. To declare that you believe and trust in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And when the uh the priest baptizes you, he baptizes you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So the importance of the Trinity cannot be overstated for the church. It is essential because it is God's revelation of himself to us, right? This is who he is. And to say that we are Christian, to say that we believe in God is to necessarily say that we believe in the Trinity. People often have noted that the word Trinity is found nowhere in the Bible. And that is true, right? You you can't find this word uh in scripture, but that itself doesn't disprove anything, right? Um Theologians in the early church sought to try to describe this God whom who has revealed himself as such, right? And they use the word Trinity to describe this God who has you know uh disclosed himself as God the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Right? Um and so when we look at scripture, and I'm gonna kind of bring you all through quite a few passages this morning, so bear with me on that. But when you look at scripture, scripture obviously affirms the oneness of God. Right? And the the most important text for that, of course, is Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4, where we get the Shema. Um Deuteronomy 6, 4 says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Right? Throughout the Old Testament, especially, God is um emphatic when he says that I am the only Lord your God. Right? The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And yet, on the other hand, we see glimpses of plurality uh within this God. Uh in the Old Testament, right? So in Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, God says, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Right? We see that even in the Old Testament, there are glimpses of God uh while being one, but also being uh a plurality, right? And so we see then explicit references when it comes to the New Testament when Jesus comes on earth, and uh we see a lot of references to the Trinity, and I will very just very quickly go through them. Um, in the baptism of Jesus, um, if I can the next slide, in the baptism of Jesus, we we do see the three persons of the triune God there, right, where he got baptized, he saw the spirit of God descend on Jesus, right? And and uh a voice from heaven, which obviously is the father speaking to the second person of the Trinity, right? This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Right? At the baptism of Jesus, we see that all three persons, right? Father, son, and holy spirit were present. Um, a very a very explicit um reference also is is from uh Matthew chapter 28, where verse 19, where Jesus is, go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Assuming that that all three persons are equal, and we baptize a person equally in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And then we come to our scripture reading for this morning, John chapter 6, verses 12 to 15. And again, um we see the three persons that the tr the Trinity there, right? Um let me just quickly point it out to us. In verse 12, Jesus is of course the one saying, Jesus in the Gospel of John has been claiming that he is the Son of God, he is God Himself, right? Jesus here says, I still have many things to say to you, right? And then he says, the spirit of truth will come later on. And towards the end, he says in verse 15 that all that the Father has is mine. Right? And so you hope by now you can see that there's there are all these different places in scripture where we we see time and time again the Trinity popping up. Right? The second person or Trinity here saying, I have more things to say to you, I will send the third person, the spirit, down to come and guide you into all truth. And all that I will pass on to the spirit is has been given to me by the Father. Right? Um and so God has made known to us what his existence is like. One God, one essence, but three distinct persons. Um and through the centuries, you know, people really struggle with this, right? How exactly is God triune? Right? It doesn't make sense, right? So, I mean, on some level it seems illogical if you think like a mathematician, one plus one plus one cannot be one, right? Um people have kind of say, you know, a good way to look at it might be one times one times one equals to one, right? Um I just want to kind of uh on a side note say that most explanations and analogies that we can come up with will fail at some point, and they generally tend to be bad or worse analogies. There are very few, yeah, there are no good analogy to try to totally encapsulate um the the Trinity, right? And so it has always been a huge pain in people's minds, right? How is this logical? How is this possible? Right? And what we do say is that it is something our finite minds simply cannot understand or explain in its entirety. And to us finite creatures, we call it a mystery. Right? The Holy Trinity is a mystery. We don't know how exactly God exists in such a way, but we do know that He does exist in such a way. Um I'm not a physician, but you know, from whatever little things I've read online, we kind of know that there's such a thing called dark matter, but no one knows what exactly it is. Right? Uh some some people may come up to me later on to correct me. But no one knows, we can only infer that there is this thing called dark matter. We can't even observe it uh at all. Right? And yet, scientists are very very sure there's this substance, this something called the dark matter out there in the universe, right? That that would uh account for some of the things that we observe in in space. Um and then the Trinity is sort of like that. We don't know exactly what it is, we don't know exactly how God is triune, but we know that God exists in Trinity, right? And God being God, and I think this is my main point for this segment, right? God being God, who is literally outside space and time and beyond any category found in the creator order, is going to be inexplicable or indescribable at some point. Right? God, we say that God is a truly otherworldly, right? We say God is the supreme being that is far beyond even the heavens, right? For someone who is outside space and time, it is a bit funny that we want to try to explain him in our own categories and in our own terms.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00And so one of the books uh that I found helpful to frame this whole issue for me, Alice, is this small mathematical fiction book called Flatland. Um yes, it's it's it's been up there for a while, yeah? Uh is written by Edwin A. Abbott in in 1884. Right, this guy was an aggregant priest, he was a theologian, and he was a schoolmaster. He was trained in mathematics. Uh he wrote this as a satire against the Victorian uh aristocracy. Um but but he he did it in a very fun way. I think I really enjoyed this book. Um it explores the concepts of dimensions. Right? I think it was at a time where uh people were discussing is there such a thing as a fourth dimension? And that's silly. Why got such things as fourth dimension? Right? We've got length, breadth, and height, right? We exist in 3D. There is only three dimensions, right? Um and so he wrote this book to kind of push people to explore the concept of dimensions a little bit more. Um if you indulge me uh a little bit, uh this this story follows uh a creature in a 2D world.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00So imagine on a piece of paper a 2D world. This this story follows the the story of a square, right, in a two-dimensional world where all you see are just lines. And so so um you know, they have their own system to identify who's a triangle. Uh if you see a point darker and then it goes like lighter and lighter and later gradually, you can kind of tell that it's a it's a triangle, um, and all that. So they're triangles, they're squares, they are polygons, and then if you are a perfect being, you become a circle. Right? Um talks about how how um you know this is the the way they understood the world as lines. Right? Everyone looked like lines until one day a sphere, a 3D object, a sphere visits this square. And the the square is is completely sun because this whatever this creature is appeared as if it could become bigger and smaller, right? Um, when actually the sphere was just simply going up and down his plane. So I mean, so you can see in the diagram the sphere going up, up, up, up, right? It will appear smaller and smaller and smaller to the square. And it was insane, it was mind-boggling. How can this be? It's impossible, illogical, right? So this, I mean the story goes on with how the sphere brings him out of his world to see the the world in in the different dimensions. And uh it I think it landed on a point somewhere where the the square challenges the sphere and says, what if there is a fourth dimension where where we can only experience or sense this fourth-dimensional creature in a specific specific way? And the sphere was like, no, no, there's no such thing as a fourth dimension. Right? Uh it's a very interesting story. Um and I think the crux of it, uh, me raising this up, is to say that humans, as humans, we are finite, right? And our perception of things are finite. And and we make we can only see reality in a very specific way, right? And when there is someone outside of our uh outside of our perceived reality, we can get very confused, we can get very embodied, right? But that does not mean that there's no such thing as, let's say, a fourth dimension, or maybe in a fifth dimension, right? Or or that God cannot exist in such a way. Right? We may be only we may only be able to perceive uh people as just one, right? And we cannot in our mind imagine one God by three distinct persons, right? But that does not mean that God cannot exist that way, especially for a God who is uh not bound by space and time, who can freely move in and out of the world, um, and who can choose to accommodate to our senses, and he does accommodate to our senses, right? Um, but he but who can also be freely himself, right? We in in this story then we are kind of like the the square, right? Uh we see things in just one line, but like I think God exists in a way that like is completely out of our uh imagination or perception. And so all that is to say is that just because we don't understand how God can exist as one God in three persons, does not mean that therefore it cannot be true. Right? And so the Trinity is not necessarily irrational. Um again, it is a bit strange that we are so insistent that God, who is eternal, timeless, spaceless, uh we insist that this part this being must follow our rules and abide by our creaturely categories. Um there's so much more to say about the Trinity, but I'm gonna kind of put that whole uh a bit more uh I guess like uh intellectual things aside. Um I'm sure there are a lot more questions than answers from from that sharing. But um what we can say is that there is this revelation of the Trinity in Scripture, right? It is a mystery that God Himself has disclosed to us so that we may understand something about His being. Um and this then becomes the most central and most distinct uh doctrine of our faith, right? That we worship one God in Trinity. Um as as as I've said in the beginning, right, all of us as Christians must hold to this belief if we are to make sense of what God has done. All of us kind of have to believe in the Trinity for our faith. And when we believe in the Trinity, we begin to see how we can see a little bit differently how God actually acts in our human history, right? Um and so put it another way, the doctrine of Trinity has huge implications on everything pertaining to the Christian faith. And uh, hopefully now we can just kind of bring it down to something that's a bit more practical for us, right? The Trinity is hugely involved in everything that has to do with the church or with with our faith, right? From the from creation to our salvation to worship to mission, uh, to our understanding of the church, what we what we are as the church, really, right um, to uh something about from from today's text to revelation, right? The trunal God is involved and has huge implications of how we understand the revelation of the Trinity. And so we come to the other sense of the revelation of the Trinity, and we want to look at how God has communicated and is communicating with us today and how we are supposed to receive uh His revelation. Um there are just three things I want to kind of bring out for for us in the in the next uh part of this sermon. Um but this is about how the Trinity acts in our human history, right? Uh we say that if the three persons each have three, uh each have their distinct roles and their functions and they they they each have uh the distinct relationship as they act in the world. Um and as we will see, this is a broadly uh Trinitarian understanding that anything a person does, all three persons are involved. Right? In the act of creation, God the Father created, but the word of God was involved, the breath of the Spirit of God was involved. Yeah, and so in Revelation it's the same. Anytime a person does something, all three persons are involved, right? So um so we are looking at how God speaks to us today and how the Trinity is involved and what it really means for us. Yeah, um, you kind of want to look at this through this Trinitarian framework here. Um that God uh reveals Himself to people, and He's He seeks to communicate three things the Father's will, the Son's way, and the Spirit's work. Right? The Father's will, the Son's way, and the Spirit's work. Um allow me to just kind of bring you through some scriptural passages, passages again. Um, in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, we are told that long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. Right? The God the Father spoke by the prophets in the Old Testament, but in the last days he spoke by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. In the Old Testament, God spoke to his people frequently, and he was primarily communicating the Father's will to his people as he calls them to him. Israel was a fledgling nation amongst great, big, powerful nations, right? But God picked Abraham and chose Israel to be his chosen people and to be his treasured possession. And every time he communicates something to them, right, it is about the Father's will for them. Um so if you know, throughout the Old Testament, God made covenants with uh Israel, right? And every point he will say this I will be your God and you will be my people. Israel was going to be God's, and God would be Israel's. Uh and he promised to be with them, he promised to show them against enemies, to bless them greatly in their lives, and as long as Israel obeyed the will of the Father and lived for him, God will be with them, and God will bless them. Right? Um, and so through Israel, through the offspring of Abraham, all nations will be blessed. So this is in Genesis 12, verse 3. Right? And so we see God kind of speaking in these many different ways and essentially trying to communicate his will to his people, right? But in the last days, uh referring then now to the New Testament time, right? In the last days, God spoke through his son. And this is where we'll now kind of explore a little bit more of the gospel of John, right? This son who is the Logos or the Word, as we see in John 1, right? John chapter 1, verses 1 to 3 tells us in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00This referring to Jesus Christ, the word of God, who is God Himself. And verse 14 we read that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Right? Um Jesus, whom God spoke by in the last days, is the word and God Himself. Right? And he became flesh, he dwelt among his people, and is really what we call the fullest revelation of the Father. Right? As the word made flesh, he is the fullest revelation of the Father. And it is to point, it is to the point that Jesus, to know Jesus is to know the Father. Sorry, let me repeat that again. It is to the point that if you know Jesus, you will know the Father. Right? God being the fullest revelation, uh Jesus being the fullest revelation meant that to know God the Father, you need to know God the Son. And if you know God the Son, you know God the Father. And this is what he says in John 14, right? Verse 6 and 7. Jesus said to them, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Verse 7, if you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. Right? So God the Father was trying to communicate his will to his people, and it culminates into sending his son, who will reveal him fully, who reveal his will for us fully. Right? And so Jesus becomes like God amongst us, showing us the way. He was here concretely when the disciples were with him. They could eat with him, touch him, you know, journey with him and all. And Jesus showed the way for the disciples. Right? And so when it comes to the New Testament, we see that Jesus was kind of going around and becoming an example of what it means to obey the will of the Father. Fundamentally, that was the one thing that he was trying to do, uh to obey the will of the Father. So in John 4, very quickly, John 4, verse 34, Jesus was saying, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Right? In the next chapter, John 5, the Jews were seeking to kill Jesus because Jesus was calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. Right? And and in the episode, Jesus responds to the Jews by saying, Truly, truly, I say to you, this is verse 19, the son can do nothing of his own accord. Jesus is doing nothing of his own will, but only what he sees the father doing. For whatever the father does, that the son does likewise. For the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And towards the end of his life, uh we know this from uh the Gospel of Luke, uh, and and I think, yeah, Gospel of Luke and the other uh in Mark, uh, he will come to the Father in anguish and pray, right? Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. Right? To the end of Jesus' Jesus' life, he sought to do one thing and one thing alone, to do the father's will. And he has showed us the way, right? Showed us the way to live a life of obedience to the Father's will, and he called all of us to take up our crosses daily and to follow him, to walk in his way, to know and obey the Father. Which brings us to this morning's passage. Yeah, I sorry I took like 30 minutes to get to uh to this uh passage, but um, where we read about the third person's role, the Holy Spirit's work in our lives. And in John chapter 16, um, Jesus is teaching his disciples for the last time before he was going to be crucified, right? This is the whole farewell discourse. He tells his disciples that after he is gone, another paraclete or another helper will be sent to guide them. So in verse 12 of John 16, we read, I still have many things to say to you. This is Jesus saying to the disciples, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Uh if you ever sat through a lesson or a conversation, or maybe this this particular sermon, if you ever sat through something that has so much information, right, uh you may feel like I do sometimes, even though you are so interested in it, uh you find that you you find that you hit a limit and then there's and then you are just not able to take any more of it. Right? Um I mean I graduated from seminary in 2012, and more than 10 years later, uh I took on a module at uh a master's level. Uh I started off with a really difficult course, and um yeah, I mean I I until today I feel like a lot of things have flew past me. Um and it was on the interpretation of scripture, it drew on all sorts of disciplines, uh particularly from philosophical hermeneutics. It was a lot of things that I was not used to, right? And like to be honest, I enjoyed learning, right? But I hit a saturation point very early in each lesson, uh, which I mean it was worse because uh we were doing it over Zoom, right? And so there always came a point where like I cannot bear it anymore. You know, there's just too much information, too much content, and I cannot bear it anymore. And here, something similar was happening to the disciples, right? Um and Jesus says he wants to tell them more, but the disciples were not able to bear it. They were reaching a point where they could not process the implications of what Jesus was saying. So Jesus stops. Right? This gentle Jesus, knowing that they have reached uh their limits, he stops. But that didn't mean that Jesus was just gonna leave the the rest of the important stuff out, right? He didn't just kind of leave them, okay. I mean, you cannot take it, fine. That's that's that's it, right? But he promised in verse 13 that when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare to you. Right? The Holy Spirit is he does not speak radically new things per se, right? The Spirit does not say anything new per se. He speaks only as Jesus speaks. Right? The work of the Spirit then is to lead people in accordance with the teaching already given uh by the Father and the Son. And in some sense, then he will unpack all that Jesus has said uh and lead them into all the truth that Jesus had wanted to say but couldn't, such that they will understand the full implications of following Jesus. Um as uh as one scholar uh puts it, the Holy Spirit will show you the whole Christian way. Right? Jesus' way, right? The Holy Spirit will show you the whole Christian way, he'll fill out all that has been revealed in Jesus' ministry so that we may know Jesus' way and conform to the pattern of life and obedience under God's kingdom. And so in verse 15 it ends off with the first person, right? All that the Father has is mine. Therefore, I say that the Holy Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you. Right? The Father has given everything to the Son, and the Son now gives all these things to the Holy Spirit who will lead us into all of it. Right? And with that we see how all three persons of the Trinity are involved. Right? The spa the the father speaks of his will and all that he has given, he has, he gives to his son, who does as the father says. And and and the father speaks his will, the son shows us the way, right? And he promised that the spirit will come and work in our lives so that we can understand all these things that God has revealed to us. Um, and and so when we when we take a step back, right, and we look at what the Trinity is doing in this all this revelation to us, right? When we look at what the Trinity is doing, we can start to appreciate one very important implication, which is that God wants to speak to you and me. And I just want to let that sing in for a moment. God wants to speak to you and me. It is not that he has spoken already, and he's like, you know, just go and read loud. Right? Even today, he is seeking to speak to you and me. He has spoken many ways in the past, as we see in the Old Testament. He has spoken supremely by his son, Jesus Christ. And today he has not left us to our own devices, right? But he continues to speak through the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who is guiding us into all the truth already revealed in Scripture. He has not just given us a book and asked us to go and study it on our own, he has given us his word and given us his spirit so that he can continue to speak to us through his word. Right? And I truly believe in this. Even though you may feel like, you know, I don't hear the voice of God, I don't know what's going on. There's no one here that God hasn't spoken to, or else you wouldn't be here this morning. Right? And there's no one here that he does not want to speak to anymore. God wants to speak with you and me. He wants to communicate his will for all of us. And he has made every provision possible, right? In in the the record of scripture, the word of God, in his son, the word of God, right? And and and in his spirit, who is now working in us, so that we can keep listening and keep unpacking God's revelation of himself and his will for our lives. I think what Jesus said to the disciples can be said of us as well. Jesus still has many things to say to us. Jesus has many things more to say to us. Uh, he has more of God's word that he wants to expound for us, more things to explain and to expand, more things to unpack, right? So that we may know God more. But he understands we simply cannot learn everything all at once and immediately conform to God's will and his way. Right? And so he sends the Holy Spirit that now lives with us, right? And this spirit spotlights Jesus' words at appropriate times, so that he will guide us into God's truth, and so that we may grow from faith to faith. Right? The triumph of God works in these different ways so that there will be continuous illumination on the revelation of God found in his word, and so that we will always have the resources to hear from him and to walk obediently in his will and his way until we see him face to face fully. Right? There's a sense that we are given all that we need to grow, right? And God doesn't want us to be stagnant, God doesn't want us to be lazy, God doesn't want us to uh actually even to just you know come to Sunday, sit on a pill, and then listen to scripture uh sermon, and that's about it, right? God wants to speak to us every day and help us to grow each day from faith to faith. And so my my questions uh I'm gonna end soon and and I was I was I just want to ask, do you see that God wants to speak to you? Um just how I say Jesus called the spirit the helper, right? The Greek word is paraclete. Um it just means someone who literally comes alongside you, right? This is what the spirit is supposed to do. Do we know and sense that the spirit is truly by our side, guiding us into all truth, helping us to mature and grow when previously we could not bear the teachings of Christ. When we were still young and immature, we could not bear his teachings, but now we have grown and we can understand it more, we can follow a bit more. Right? The Holy Spirit is a person whom we can, of course, choose to ignore. We can choose to ignore the spirit, right? But the spirit is here and we can choose to talk to him and to allow him to work in us so that we may see and care about the spiritual things of God. And how do we know if we are being guided by the Spirit into God's truth, right? Um again, the spirit will never say anything of his own, but speaks only of what Jesus speaks, and he glorifies Jesus. The spirit of God will never contradict the word of God, right? The spirit of God will never tell you if you love this other woman, you know, just go and have an affair, it's okay, right? Spirit of God will never do something like that. Right? And so another way to put it then is the spirit is Christocentric, right? He draws our focus to Jesus so that we better understand who Jesus is and what it means to follow him. And so a good way to ask if you are being spirit-led is to ask this is your life becoming more Christocentric? Right? Is Jesus becoming more and more the center of your life? Because if we are guided by the Spirit, then Jesus will become the center and he will transform us. The spirit will transform us to become more and more Christ-like in such a way that we can walk in the footsteps of the Son, who follows the will of the Father. Which leads us to finally ask: Do we know the will of the Father in our lives? The God who created us has his will and has his purpose for us. And being spirit-filled leads us to the Son, who points us to the way of the Father's will, the Father's heart for all of us. And that's what being Christian is about. That's what receiving God's revelation is about. That we are enabled by the Spirit to become like Christ, who set aside his own will, and he turned, he will turn away from the world so that he may obey the will of the Father. The revelation of the Trinity ultimately leads us to order our whole lives in the way our Creator has designed us for. And so I implore all of us this morning to speak to God and to hear from Him who is speaking to us. Right, none of us have arrived at perfection, and there are still things God, there are still things that God wants to tell us. Um there are many things about the Christian life that we may not be able to bear now, but we are not meant to be stuck at this particular level until we die. Right? Jesus did not abandon us to be where we are now. He sends his spirit to help us grow. It's not like exercising or it's like learning a skill. You don't just immediately become really good at it, right? Uh you may be only able to do this much now, uh, but you are not condemned to this level. Right? You improve, you grow, and we we will find ourselves taking on more and more, running further and further, uh, doing better and better in the things that we are we are we are learning. And in our case, with the help of the Spirit, we can find ourselves truly becoming more and more Christ-like in every way. And so I'll end with this. To know that God is a Trinitarian God, to know the intellectual side of things, right? Uh, that God is a triune God is essential to our belief. But that is really just the first step, right? Now that we know about this God whom we believe, do we know Him personally?
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00Will we spend the time reading the Bible, praying to God, realign our priorities? Right, as we sang just now, I will give my life to you, right? Lord, I give you my heart, I give you my soul, I live for you alone. Right? Um, will we realign our priorities so that our hearts may be soft and may be affected by the Spirit's work as He leads us in the way of Christ? Will we take our faith in the Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, seriously enough to allow ourselves to be swept up by all that the Trinity is doing in our lives? Right? God has invited God has revealed to us this mystery and He has invited us to be a part of this mystery as He guides us in every way. Will you hear the voice of God today speaking to you?
SPEAKER_02We pray that you've been ministered to by the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about Ish Christian Church, please visit our website at yccanglican.com. Have a blessed day.