Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad
Brief messages on biblical truths concerning various subjects. Christ centered, God focused teaching covering a wide variety of important truths are presented in an engaging and edifying manner to help believers mature in the knowledge and practice of their faith.
Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad
the Inseparable Indwelling God
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
A Trinity Sunday exposition of John 14 from Good Shepherd Church. The sermon centers on the profound revelation of God as Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—unveiled through Jesus’ words in John 14, where He declares Himself the way, truth, and life, and affirms that to see Him is to see the Father. It emphasizes that God’s eternal nature, expressed in the divine name 'I am who I am,' is not solitary but a self-sufficient, mutual indwelling of three distinct persons in perfect unity, revealed not through abstract theology but through God’s historical self-revelation in Christ. The passage confronts human attempts to compartmentalize or reduce the Trinity to mere metaphors or mathematical equations, affirming instead that the Father, Son, and Spirit are inseparable in essence and action, with the Holy Spirit dwelling in believers as the guarantee of God’s presence and unity. Jesus’ promise to return and to make His home with those who love Him underscores the intimate, eternal fellowship within the Godhead, which is now accessible to believers through faith in Christ and the Spirit’s indwelling, fulfilling the ultimate purpose of redemption: that humanity may know the one true God and Jesus Christ, whom He sent.
Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad
Contact: 8441 Hunnicut Rd Dallas, Texas 75228
email: Att. Bible Insights Wayne Conrad
gsccdallas@gmail.com (Good Shepherd Church)
Donation https://gsccdallas.org
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJTZX6qasIrPmC1wQpben9g
https://www.facebook.com/waconrad or gscc
https://www.sermonaudio.com/gscc
Spirit, Truth and Grace Ministries
Phone # 214-324-9915 leave message with number for call back
Psalms 119:105 Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
The Sermon
Wayne Conrad
John 14 May 31, 2026
“The Inseparable Indwelling God” AI TRANSCRIPT
Today we're going to be looking at a scripture I think that we're, we are familiar with this scripture because it's some Jesus's words that he said with his disciples in the upper room before he went to the cross. And we've often heard the sentence that Jesus said. We take it out of context, but nevertheless, we're used to hearing it. when Jesus talked to the disciples about, let not your heart be troubled, and neither let it be afraid.
And he spoke to them about peace, and then he tells them, because I'm going away to prepare a room for you, to prepare a house for you. Sometimes we use those words at a funeral service, and I'm not saying they're not a fit there, but it's really not about after death. It's about His coming again, because He said, I'm going to prepare a place for you, and I will come again to receive you to Myself.
And so, we're familiar with John 14. And yet, John 14 has within it probably the most profound statements you can find in the scripture about the nature of God. And today our focus in worship and in teaching is on the very person, the very essence of the being of Almighty God. whose name is Yahweh, which is bound up in the name, I am who I am. I will be who I will be. It's the expression of the eternal nature of this divine being, of this being. And we stumble, over the words of how to talk about, how to describe God. You know why? It's because God is the most unique being in all the universe. There is no one and no anything like God. He is a world unto himself.
That's what we really are getting at when we speak about God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit. And then we have those words that we sang at the end of the Gloria Patria, Glory be to the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit, who was in the beginning, is now and evermore shall be world without end. That's a word meaning eternity, eternal. The self-sufficient, all-glorious, ever-living, immortal one from whom all life and all creation has come. One of the most important thing, that is the most important thing in anyone's thought is their thoughts about God. And the most important thing about any religion is their idea, their concept, their teaching about God. God is the most important being. in all of the universe, in all of time.
He lives in eternity. He inhabits eternity. And we really stumble again for words. How do you describe eternity? Because we are so earthbound and so time-bound that we really can't wrap our minds around it. We have struggles in wrapping our minds around God, much less God as triune. We add mystery to mystery and mystery to majesty, not because we want to, but because this is the dilemma that God's revelation has left us in.
Nobody set up and decided to get together in some room somewhere and think about the most complicated concepts of a deity they could ever come up with. Nobody ever did that. And nobody, a few hundred years after Christ, said, okay, well, we got to decide what to do with him, what category to do with him. And so, they create these doctrines. That is not the way it happened.
The way it happened was that God revealed himself in history. It's first recorded that he revealed himself to Abraham in history. That doesn't mean there wasn't a concept or knowledge of God before then. There was some because Adam knew God. He had walked with God in the garden. Now, how you walk with an invisible being, I do not know. But nevertheless, Adam walked with God in the garden. And so, Adam passed on what knowledge he had about God, but it went down through the years. And as you know, as we tell the story, if we're not careful, the story gets distorted. The story gets shaped out of whack. And what we end up with is idolatry rather than the true knowledge of God.
This is all to say a basic introduction to some of the most profound words that Jesus ever uttered. They're found in John 14, and I'm going to distribute, or have Harper distribute to you the scripture passage. And one side is the ESV, and on the other side is the Berean Standard Bible. Not that there's any particular, these just happen to be the, the translations that I used in studying. I have it for you because as I go through John 14, I want you to be able to follow up.
You can draw images on it, you can do arrows back and forth, and you won't have to look into the worship guide to see it. or try to look it up on your phone or whatever, you'll have it in front of you as I look at the passage of scripture with you today.
So let me tell you what the bottom line is about God as far as this message is concerned. There's no bottom line about God. You know, I'm searching for words. You may think it's easy to get up and talk about God, but you know, it is not easy to talk about the revelation of God that's given to us in the Bible because it blows your mind. So, I hope that by the end of this, whatever scattered pieces there may be of your brain, that you will be able to gather them all together again and just call on the name of God. Here's the thesis, the theme.
The oneness, the oneness, how many gods are there? One, there's one God, one God. The oneness and the essence, that is whatever constitutes God, God, the oneness and the essence of the triune God, God as Trinity is revealed to us in his historical revelation of himself to a people of faith that he calls into being. We know about God because God has broken into history and God has told us about himself. but he didn't drop it down as a massive theological tome from heaven.
He did it by speaking to certain people, by moving in history in certain ways, by using the events of Providence interpreted by his own prophets and spokesmen to tell us who he is by his actions and by his words. The oneness and essence of the God that we know as the I am focuses on his mutual indwelling.
Now that's an important word I'm giving you, mutual indwelling. Now what's a dwelling? It's a house. It's where you live. A dwelling is where you live. It might be a tent. It might be a structure of a house. It might be an apartment. But a dwelling is the place where you live.
And so, the revelation of God in his oneness, in his essence as a triune being focuses on the mutual indwelling of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, that means that God, God lives in God. I told you to blow your mind, okay? God lives in God. Now, Isaiah says that God lives in eternity.
Now, how do you describe eternity? Again, we struggle for words. We talk about eternity past and eternity future. And there's a total contradiction in meaning because you can't have a past or a future in eternity because eternity is beyond time. Eternity supersedes time. Time can exist in eternity, but eternity does not exist in time.
But God, the eternal one, can and did and does make himself known in time. Time, you see, is a creation of God. Just like the world and the universe is a creation of God, time, that is the passing of events, of recognition, of consciousness, comes from God in his creation of a material universe and of material physical beings.
But God dwells in God. the mutual indwelling of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, there are particular theological terms for all of these things, which I will not attempt to give to you today. If we want to take a course in systematic theology, then we'll struggle with it. We're going to just struggle with the scripture that's before us.
So, God is one, and God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now God has always been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There's never been a time when God was not Father, Son, known as Word, the Word, John chapter one, and Holy Spirit. God the holy has always existed in his mutual indwelling of his persons.
And you see, I'm having to use the word persons in more than one way. God is personal, but God's personality is not solitary. Now, let me contrast this. When we talk about the oneness of God, we talk about God as one. If you're speaking to those adherents of Islam, Muslim, they say God is one. But God, their God, Allah, is one, but he's one solitary being.
And in fact, when you speak about him, you can't know anything personal about him because he is not actually very personal. He is God, he's the creator, the judge, but he's solitary. But when we speak about Yahweh, when we speak about the Lord God Almighty, when we speak about our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he is not solitary. He is a community within himself. He is a world within himself.
In other words, God is totally self-sufficient. God has always been, God will always be, God does not need anything, but God chose to have other things made. He made them for his glory and for his habitation. I mean, God is absolutely fantastic. God is amazing.
We use this word amazing and we have so lured the meaning of it because we use it for everything. Look, if everything's amazing, that means nothing's amazing, right? So that's what we do with these words. We overuse them to the point they carry no meaning whatsoever. We've done that with the word love to where we can't distinguish between the love of a hamburger, the love of a dog, and the love of a person. We, you know, we just confuse things because we so lower the meaning of the word that we devoid them of real meaning with content. God forbid that we would do that for God. Now, here's a dilemma that we are confronted with I'm doing this background when we look at the text because of the questions these men asked Jesus. And we have to recognize where the answer is going to come from. The Lord Jesus Christ speaks to his disciples and answers their questions, and the questions that they ask him were prompted by what he was telling them. Now, what was Jesus telling him?
Now, to read the whole context of this sermon, you need to read in one setting, one setting. John chapter 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, okay? The very heart of the Gospel of John is one long address that Jesus gave in the context of the last Passover meal that he had with his disciples. So it begins at the beginning of the meal, and it goes to just before Christ enters into the Garden of Gethsemane in the prayer that he prays to the Father in John 17. So, to get the full context of the remarks that I'm making, you need to sit down and read, I don't care if you're sitting down, standing up, at whatever position you are and read the Bible. Read John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 without a break. Don't break them up. And then we have the context. The context is Jesus is speaking to his disciples about the fact that I am going to be leaving. I'm going to leave you.
Now, if you've been living with Jesus for probably four years, you've been going everywhere he would go, you might have little breaks where you went home or took a fishing trip or whatever, but for the most part, your whole life has been centered around Jesus of Nazareth for the last three and a half, four years. You've been with him almost all of this time. You've seen him do Thousands of miracles. You've heard words that no one else has ever spoken that have boggled your mind, nurtured your heart and provoke curiosity in your life. And now he who has been the focus of your life and has become the love of your life now says to you, I'm going away. I'm going to leave you.
That is a very difficult and hard thing to deal with. Separation and loss, it's something that we dread, it's something that we all will experience, and it's something that most of us have experienced at some point. I want you to understand the emotional state of these disciples. They didn't sit down to a supper meal with Jesus and just to have a theological discussion. They sat down with Him as the one closest to their hearts, their Lord and Master, the one their whole life has come to circle around.
And He's telling them, I am going to leave you. And He fills the depth of their inner pain and their question; how can this be? You're the Messiah. You're the King of Israel. You're supposed to establish the kingdom and sit on the throne and rule over the nations. How can you take a leave of absence? And Jesus says, I am going to leave you. but let not your heart be troubled, neither be afraid.
I can't help it. I can't help it. I am afraid. My heart is troubled and I don't understand. Help me. And so, we began the passage before us. Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you're going. How can we know the way? Jesus says he's going somewhere in order to be engaged in a house building project.
Not houses like we're thinking of it, but a dwelling, a home, a place where his beloved humans, of which he shares our humanity because he is human, will come to live. I'm going away. in order to prepare a dwelling place for you, so that I'm going away, but I'm going to come again. When the house is ready, I'm going to come again and move you into it. That's sort of reducing it to the simplest kind of terms, but it's far more than that, because it's not a physical house, per se. Now, there is going to be a physical house on the new heaven and the new earth, but it's the place where we will dwell with God. We will dwell with Christ.
So, Thomas' question is, he expresses the confusion of the disciples, that's what I'm struggling for. The disciples are confused by Jesus' words, that I'm going away. And they're looking for clarification maybe even cancellation, it was going away. But is, how can you be going away? That's the question. And you say you're going away to do something for us, but we don't know where you're going. So how can we know the way?
Now, where was Jesus going? Well, he told them, I'm going to the Father. I'm going to the Father. That's what the ascension is all about. The man Christ Jesus, who in the mystery of his own being as God and human, God and man, is going to return to the Father. You see, he came from the Father and he's going to return to the Father. And so, Jesus says, I'm going away. I'm going back to the Father who sent me. And it's like, Jesus says to them, you know the road, you know the path.
And Thomas says, Lord, we don't know where you're going. We do not know the road. How can we know the way? How can we know this? And then Jesus gave him the answer. I am the way. He's not giving him a road from Bethlehem to Jerusalem or back up to Galilee and to Nazareth. He is giving himself. So, he says, I'm going to the Father. You know the way. Thomas says, no, we don't know the way. We don't know where you're going. How can we know the way? Jesus repeats, I am the way. That's the major one; I am the way. Then the truth, that's reality, and the life. Now you put those together, way, truth, and life, you have everything you need. And then he goes on, no one comes to the Father except through me." So, where's Jesus going? I'm going to the Father. I don't know where you're going. Jesus says, I'm going to the Father. How can we know the way? Jesus says, I am the way.
No one comes to the Father except through me. The bottom line is that if one is to know the God of the Bible, if one is to know the true God, The Creator God, He's been revealed to us, His Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is only one way to know that God, and that is through and in Jesus Christ, our Lord. There is no other true knowledge of God outside of the Christian revelation given to us in the historical person of Jesus Christ, who is the God-man.
So, Jesus goes on, if you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you know him and you have seen him. Now, let those words hit you. Jesus says, I'm going to the Father, and I am the way to the father. And if you truly know me, if you have known me, you've known my father also. And from now on, you know him and have seen him. Now, didn't that scramble you? So, what does Jesus say? He said, when you look at me, you see the father.
Now he's not saying he's the father, because he's going to the father. But he's saying, if you want to see God, if you want to look upon God, then you see me, because the Father is seen in me. The Father and the Son are distinct. They can be distinguished, and yet the Father and the Son never exist apart from one another.
This is what we mean when we say the mutual indwelling of God. But that's Thomas, Thomas' question. You know, we have a human tendency to compartmentalize God. And because of that tendency that we want to put everything in their distinct categories, we use faulty illustrations to try to describe the Trinity to people. Perhaps you've heard some of these. And all they do is they're succeeding telling us that God is, that they've emphasized the threeness of God, and then they're trying to turn God into some kind of mathematical equation.
Now, God is not a mathematical equation, but if you want to talk about the number one, you can add with the number one and you get addition of one, two, three, four, go on. Or you can multiply by number one. One times one times one is what? One. But God's not a mathematical equation. I can illustrate that and say that God plus times God times God is God.
But what have I really done? I haven't done a whole lot. I'm just trying to explain that there's such a thing as threeness and oneness together. Well, good, but it doesn't tell me about the person of God so much. So, we use illustrations of pieces of a pie. Well, now if you take the pieces of a pie, I cut it in three pieces, I got three pieces of pie. But what has pie got to do with the person of God?
Nothing. But we have this tendency to compartmentalize God. I understand it. I've employed it myself. Nevertheless, it's deficient. We're saying something because we don't know what else to say. We're trying to explain one little thing, but sometimes that one thing can interfere with the other thing.
We do not worship three isolated deities. We do not worship three separate gods who have formed a divine committee to make plans for the world and universe. The Mormons do, but we don't, okay? Others may, but we do not worship three gods. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three deities who have formed a divine corporation called God. No, we do not worship three isolated deities, nor do we worship one lonely God who could not continue to exist unless he created man.
God is never lonely. You can't be lonely when you have the fullness of fellowship within yourself. And we're not worshiping one God who changes mask. One day he appears as this, another time period as this, or another as this. I'm not making fun of these things. I'm saying these are our men, our struggles to try to convey the teaching of Scripture. We think the Father was the Old Testament, Jesus is the New Testament Gospels, and now we have the Holy Spirit. So, God has changed man. No, God is always and forever been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Well, that's Thomas.
We're at the table. Thomas says, I don't know where you're going. How can I know the way? Jesus said, I'm going to the father. I am the way to the father. To know the father is to know me. If you know me, you know the father. Philip says to him, And Philip is the compartmentalizer, okay? He's the one who does what I just talked about.
Philip, he said, Lord, show us the Father, and that'll be enough for us. Do you see it? He's following Jesus, and Jesus just said these things to Thomas, and now Philip pipes up. He says, okay, Lord, show us the Father, that'll be enough for us. Just show us the Father, let us see Him. Now, Jesus said to him, some very sober words, have I been such a long time with you? And you do not know me, Philip?
He who has seen me has seen the Father. Now, again, we have to be careful because we can make these words say something they're not saying. Jesus is not saying that He and the Father are not distinguishable. They are distinguishable, but they are one God. And the Father, how did we say this? The Father, how can you have a core when God is Father and it's in relationship to Father that you have Son and you have Spirit? the distinguishing within God.
God has this tremendous, unearthly, totally beyond us concept of being able to talk within himself in distinguishing personal centers of communication and love. You know, we struggle to know the depths of humanity, just human, being yourself. Just think about yourself. You're far more than a physical body. And your mind, your mind is whoa, something else. And let me tell you, your mind, within your mind, you can have conversation. Within your mind, you can take flights of fantasy. In fact, that can be so real that you can't distinguish between what you just saw in your mind and what's in front of you. If that's true in a faint way with us as humans, think about the divine being How rich a fellowship, how rich a communication within God who is everything that's ever needed.
God has no need of nothing. He is totally self-sufficient, always living, always love, always, always everything. God is God. God is God. But he's Father. His Son, His Spirit. He is a God who sends forth the God from whom proceeds. These are actions within God. Now they take expression in a physical world in the revelation of God, because God, the Word, became human through the Virgin Mary and became the man, Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, without ever leaving his Godness. He took to himself humanity. He never divested himself of Godness, though he divested himself of demonstrating it in every fashion. Philip, Philip, show us the Father and it will be enough for us.
And what does Jesus say? Jesus says, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. So, there's the question, verse eight. There's the answer in the latter part of verse, in the middle part of verse nine, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. So, Jesus has a reply question. So how can you say, show us the Father? Jesus says, I'm here, you can see the Father in me.
So, he continues, do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? Frankly, I think maybe Philip would have thought, you know, I never thought of it that way. The words that I speak to you; I do not speak on my own authority. but the father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the father and the father is in me. That is mutual indwelling. The father lives in the son and the son lives in the father That means to see the Father, you see Him in and through His Son.
If that's too much for you, Jesus says, or else believe on account of the works themselves. If you just see my works, you can see the work of God because everything I do, I'm doing at the will of the Father through the enablement of the Father, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son."
And then he sums this all up. So, if you ask anything in my name, I will do it. He's saying your access to the Father is in and through me. He goes on, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. These are very important words Sometimes people go in wide circles to evade what Jesus is saying. He says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. It's not because I'm trying to earn, it's because it's the nature of love that I want to please the one I love. If I know the love of Jesus and I love Him, then I will try and I will keep His commandments. The commandment He's primarily giving us in the Upper Room Discourse is the commandment to love, right? To serve, to be humble, these things.
But He goes on, and I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper to be with you forever. Now, circle that verse. There's the Trinity. There's God, triune. I will ask the Father, Jesus is making a distinction between himself and the Father, and he, that is the Father, will give you another helper. That means another one in the same way as I am. Another helper to be with you forever. Why? Because the son, he says, I'm leaving here. I'm going back to the father, but I'm not leaving you alone because the father will give another helper to be with you forever.
He is the spirit of truth, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither knows him, neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him for he dwells with you and he will be in you. Look, these words of Jesus in John 14, we're having to look at them carefully right now, okay? They are words that are sweet to hear, but often we don't understand the great depth that they require for us to mentally understand them. I have God here, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus. Now the spirit of truth, the world cannot receive.
It either sees him or knows him. For you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. Now notice how Jesus is using this word sees. You can't see the Holy Spirit because the Spirit is invisible. But you can see or feel or experience the presence, the movement of the Spirit. But notice what he says, he dwells with you and he will be in you. He's talking to them at the table. So, how's he dwelling with them? Well, for one thing, he's dwelling with them because Jesus is with him.
And with Jesus is there, the Father is there, and the Spirit is there, because where one of God's persons is, there the other persons are. God is never anything less than Father, Son, and Spirit. And God is never separated in his beings from his distinguishing persons. This distinguishing persons enables God to have full communication and love within himself. When we say God is love, love demands an object. You cannot have love without something to love. The father has loved the son from all eternity. and the Spirit has bound the Father and the Son together in the bonds of love. Father, Son, and Spirit, God is love.
And because that's true, God wanted to share that love with you and me, and to make that possible as rebel sinners without spiritual life and love, God came forth in His Son, Jesus Christ. And God the Son did the action of redeeming us in His humanity, united with His deity. shedding royal, precious, holy blood for the salvation of people. Jesus goes on, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.
Now, you know, being an orphan is a very lonely experience. Now, I was never a full-off orphan, but I was a partial orphan in the fact that though my parents lived physically, I did not live with either of them in the greater part of my growing up. So, my mother was living in one place, but I was in another. My father lived in another place, but I was in another. I never saw my father until I was a grown man. though I knew about him and heard from him and he communicated with me. But I'm just saying that growing up away from the parents, away from my other relatives, such as my grandmother, whom I dearly loved and was more like a mother to me than even my mother, was very hard emotionally. the isolation of being bereft. I don't know, that's what it was. Even though your physical needs are being taken care of, you're not lacking for what is necessary for life, but you are lacking that internal instinctive love that a child has and needs for a parent. And without it, we are either orphans or semi-orphans. Call me a semi. At any rate, I'm just trying to get you into the feeling of what these disciples were.
Jesus says, I will not leave you as orphans. Now, this means that what goes on, He says, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. He's saying, I'm going away to the Father. And now he says, I'm not gonna leave you as orphans, I will come to you.
Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you will also live. Now, the first reference to that is to the resurrection. They will see him after his death when he was resurrected from the dead. but even then, he will leave them in his body, his physical body, and will return to the Father in heaven.
In that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. What day? Well, the first phase of it, again, is the resurrection period, but the full phase of it, I believe, to be the day on which the Holy Spirit came, the day of Pentecost. In that day, you will know that I am in my Father, you in me, and I in you."
Because Jesus left to go back to the Father in heaven, but he sent the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father through the Son, and the Spirit came and filled him with the fullness of God, overflowing with spiritual gifts and enrichments, forming them into the church, to the body of Christ, in which God dwells. by His Holy Spirit.
God is here. God is in this room. You do not see Him, but He is here. And He's not just in the air. God is here in the community that's gathered around Him. He promised to be here. That's a special place where God dwells in the midst of His people. And also, God is here. He's within the life, the body of every believer. How can God be in heaven and also here? By His Holy Spirit.
You cannot physically see the Holy Spirit any more than you can see the wind. If I put something in the wind and it blows, I know the winds there. I can feel it and I can see what it's doing, though I cannot look upon it. But I can say that I see the wind by how the wind behaves.
Jesus says, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Now there's so much in this chapter that we could go into, but my focus today is only on the person of God, his Trinity. So, we have the third disciple with a question. I don't know if you've ever written John 14 and really looked at it through the eyes of the three apostles who ask him questions, but here they are.
We had Thomas, who said, we don't know where you're going, we don't know the way. Philip, he said, show us the Father, that'll satisfy us. And now we have Judas. Ah, you thought, wait, Judas? Ah, don't get confused. This is not Iscariot. Judas Iscariot is already there. So, what do you understand? Jesus had 12 men, apostles. Two of them had the same name, Judas. How do I know Judas I from Judas II? Well, I know Judas I from where he came from. I know another Judas from what family line?
In other words, they're distinguishing. There's not another Wayne in the room. But when I was in college and was engaged in evangelistic work with a team, we had two Waynes on the team. How did you distinguish them? You know, we had nicknames was one. The other Wayne, we called him by a nickname, and I got the name Wayne.
Thank God. Okay. All right. So, Judah's not as scarce as him. How, now tell me how. Notice these how questions. How, how, how do we know? How do we see? How can we know? Judas. How is it, Lord, that you'll manifest yourself to us and not to the world? In other words, how can we as your people know you and the world not know you? How? And Jesus answered him.
If anyone loves me, you notice that Jesus really believes in loving him and loving the Father. But love is not simply an emotion. Love are the deeds expressing the emotion, the deeds of a life of affection and of surrender and humbleness before God. and with the other body of believers. Love always has an active component. That's the heart of it.
Judas and I said, Lord, how is it that you'll manifest yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus said, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. And you should underline that. That's the doctrine of the Trinity. Are you seeing God is Trinity in this passage of scripture? Jesus uses the plural pronoun.
We, that is the father and the son will come to make to Him and make our home with Him. Now, how does the Father and the Son come to live in us, come to us and live in us? He does it by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit brings with His own person the presence of the Father and the Son.
We call this the incoherence, the sticking together. You can't have one person of God apart from the other also being present. There is one in the focus, but the other are always, always there. Because God is one, but he is one who is a we, in the fullness of life, we will come to him and make our home with him.
He goes on to explain, whoever does not love me does not keep my words. If you want to judge whether you love God or not, well, are you doing what he tells you to do? It's a bottom line. That's the bottom line. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. Whoever loves me keeps my words. It's simple.
And the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. So whatever words Jesus gives are the Father's words. These things I've spoken to you while I'm still with you, but the helper, this is the third now, the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you. Now, Jesus is saying these words specifically to the apostles. This is the guarantee that what they will remember and what they will write in the holy writings that we call the New Testament are exactly what Jesus said and exactly what he did.
Peace, I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives you, I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. That's the second time he said that. The first he said it because I'm going away and I'm making a home for you and then I'm gonna come and we're gonna all live together in the new home that I've made for you. The rooms, you'll have a room. You'll have rooms.
Now, don't let your heart be troubled or be afraid because the Spirit is coming to you. You've heard me say to you, I'm going away and I will come to you. And if you love me, you would have rejoiced because I'm going to the Father for the Father is greater than I. We can't go into that today. And now I've told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, that's the devil.
He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. You see, how do I know that Jesus loved the Father? I know that He loved the Father because He went to the cross, because it was the Father's will that the Son would come and be the propitiation for sinners so that God could have an established fellowship with Him again. Jesus did whatever the Father told Him to do.
And even though it claimed great, great sorrow and a wrenching of his own heart, So then he begged at first in the garden, Father, let this cup pass from me. He knew that because the father wanted him to give himself and he wanted to give himself. We can't understand. Jesus was fully human. So, he has all of these human emotions and struggles, but he was fully God at the same time. And in his humanity, he said, yes, I will do what you want me to do.
I've told you before, it takes place so that when it does take place, you may believe. I'll no longer talk much with you. He goes on probably for another hour or two. For the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. He's basically saying, come. They don't hear these words; they hear His action. Come, let us go, for I must go to the cross and I want you to accompany me to the garden. Rise and let us go from here.
There's Father, there is Son, and there is Holy Spirit. We will come and make ourselves at home with you. The one God who is and forever will be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus on the way to the garden continues to talk with him and these are two things he said, John 15, 26. But when the helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. There's three.
John 16, 27, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me. and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father, I have come into the world, and now I'm leaving the world, I'm going to the Father. And when Jesus is on the edge of the garden, He turns His face toward heaven and prays, Father, the hour has come.
Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you've given Him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you've given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work you gave me to do, and now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed. And we read in the passage from Galatians how this shifts down into our hearts in worship and in prayer.
We know God is the triune God in our experience as believers. because we come to the Father through the Son. And we cry out to God, Father, because the Son is mediating for us and the Spirit is prompting us with the knowledge of our own acceptance through faith. by this living, eternal, all-glorious, triumphant Yahweh. Amen.