SPEAKER_00: Having me back.
SPEAKER_00: Last time I came, I filled in when you had food poisoning, eh?
SPEAKER_00: And uh I did a sermon with too much blood in it, so I just promised no references to blood today, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So um, hey, I I had a a father ring me during the week, it was about Wednesday.
SPEAKER_00: He said, My kids asking a lot of questions about God.
SPEAKER_00: And um he's six, and I can't answer them.
SPEAKER_00: And this guy isn't a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: He's uh I discovered today he's a cop.
SPEAKER_00: And he so this he brought his he came along to church this morning and he uh brought his his little boy who's about there on me and he's looking at me and he's holding his kids' Bible, children's Bible, and his first question is why do they call Jesus the Son of God?
SPEAKER_00: And his follow-up questions were really good too, and I was like, oh my goodness, this kid is reading this book, and he is wired into it, and his dad's just going, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I guess we'll be here next week because he wants to learn about God, and um, I thought that was a really complicated question.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if an adult asked me, why is Jesus the Son of God?
SPEAKER_00: You know, so um I what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about God today because whether you like it or not, it's kind of the the business we're in.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, whether we like it or not, we're in a world of conflicting stories, and when you say God, people don't know what the heck you're talking about, because what we believe about God is completely different to everybody else, and so I'm gonna talk about God and hopefully it'll be useful.
SPEAKER_00: And I I really didn't um so I'll actually I'll do a diagram first just to kick off, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, if uh anyone's got any questions and you want to wave, this this is a this is a little bit theological today, but I hope you'll find it fun, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So when you think about, I'll call this the pyramid of glory, and at the top is the most glorious being you've all got.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you with me so far?
SPEAKER_00: Now the next step below that is kind of I'll call it the seraphim, cherubim, and other complicated beings that we don't know anything about.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: They are more glorious than the next level down, which is the angels.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone had an encounter with an angel?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I thought there would be.
SPEAKER_00: Then there's a little lower than the angels is us.
SPEAKER_00: Below that we've got conscious life like animals, and the next thing below that we've got the cockroaches.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So, if you look at that, us getting a handle on God, we've got to move through various levels of spiritual realities.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're much closer to the cockroaches.
SPEAKER_00: And I would say that a cockroach has got a good chance of understanding your psychological profile as we have of getting God.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
unknown: C.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says this really interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: He says the higher being is always a mystery to the lower being.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: You're the lower being.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just amazed at how arrogantly people talk about God like they know him personally, and they've really nailed what he thinks about salvation, the universe, and everything.
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't know much at all.
SPEAKER_00: So when we talk about God, it shouldn't be with arrogance, I know what's wrong with your life, and this is the way to fix it.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm very certain about this.
SPEAKER_00: We should have a humility because we're closer to the cockroaches than God.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Everyone with me so far?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the higher being is mysterious.
SPEAKER_00: So when we were in Palmy before we moved, we had a cat called Sebastian.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't give a damn about me.
SPEAKER_00: He really didn't give a damn about me.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I I went through a depression, he didn't notice.
SPEAKER_00: He just slept, he slept through it all.
SPEAKER_00: He slept in eight, he he did eat, do he was good at eating.
SPEAKER_00: Like, he came in and out of our house, no empathy, no understanding.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you are in the house of God.
SPEAKER_00: But worse.
SPEAKER_00: Because the reality of God is far further from us than Sebastian is from me.
SPEAKER_00: Sebastian's here.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So if you're not getting God and you know everyone else seems like they know everything, and you think, I'm not really sure about this, you're you're getting close.
SPEAKER_00: It's really great to carry humility about something we know zippo about.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I did study the theology of God for the first time, it was a bit of a shock to me.
SPEAKER_00: I was I was in my late 30s.
SPEAKER_00: I thought I knew everything because I was a I was a proper Pentecostal who who just knew these things.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we knew better than all those other guys because they hadn't really met God like we'd met God.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember that we were uh and I'm gonna talk about the Trinity today.
SPEAKER_00: It came to the doctrine of the Trinity, and they said some people believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and they kind of believe in three gods, and that's called tritheism, and that's heresy.
SPEAKER_00: And I think, oh my goodness, I'm a heretic, I'm a heretic.
SPEAKER_00: I had no idea that what I believed was I'd experienced Jesus, and then I experienced the Holy Spirit, got filled with the Holy Spirit, which was a life-changing moment for me, and then I started to wrestle with God the Father, but I never thought about them that they were one.
SPEAKER_00: That I'd experienced them one at a time, and so they were just three dudes.
SPEAKER_00: And I was a tritheist because I'd never thought about God being one.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone else like that?
SPEAKER_00: You're thinking, actually, oh, I'm guilty of that.
SPEAKER_00: And because we do theology out of experience, we experience Jesus and we think I believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the Holy Spirit, but then we talk about God, so who are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in fact, the we're in the New Testament the God language is very specific, it only ever refers to who.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_00: It's always the Father, and that's why it always says the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God is the Father, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the in the Old Testament, these two titles for God are used all the time: God and Lord.
SPEAKER_00: God is Elohim, and Lord is Yahweh, or I am.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And in the New Testament, they become to mean some very specific things, and we don't notice because we don't think about it because we're just used to these words.
SPEAKER_00: So we we've got the we've got God, the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and then we've got the Holy Spirit, and this is the Trinity.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to just talk you through take through a little bit of Bible on this, because what we do, we tend to do theology out of experience, but then once we've had an experience, we have to delve into the word and get our heads around it.
SPEAKER_00: Because the the Bible is the filterer, the filter for us to end up in God in a healthy way rather than in a weird way, and uh end up a heretic like I was.
SPEAKER_00: I like to think I'm not anymore.
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, time will tell whether you think that at the end of the sermon or not.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want to read from um Genesis chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, and then uh chapter verses 26 to 27.
SPEAKER_00: And I love it when people have Bibles in front of them, but you can use your phone to.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 26, then God said, Let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, over cattle, wild animals, every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So God created humankind in his image.
SPEAKER_00: In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.
SPEAKER_00: What did you notice that it said about God in those verses?
SPEAKER_00: God created?
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
SPEAKER_00: What else?
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice that God sounded just a little bit complicated there?
SPEAKER_00: What made him complicated?
SPEAKER_00: Power?
SPEAKER_00: In our image.
SPEAKER_00: Well spotted, let us let us make humankind in our image.
SPEAKER_00: We got a plurality going on here.
SPEAKER_00: So it says, in the beginning, God, it sounds singular, but then it's let us create in our image.
SPEAKER_00: There's a community doing this.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And it says God created, and then it says the spirit moved over the face of the deep.
SPEAKER_00: Automatically, we're sensing that God is a little bit more complicated than just a dude.
SPEAKER_00: He's not a singularity.
SPEAKER_00: There's something of a we here, even in the very start of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And then the big statement that Israel makes about God is in Deuteronomy chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses is laying down the law quite literally, and then in verse 4 it says, Hero Israel, the Lord our God is one God.
SPEAKER_00: Those two words again, Lord and God, are being used in one phrase.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord our God is one God.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: Those words are complicated.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is I am.
SPEAKER_00: It's singular.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of blankness in the room, but humor me.
SPEAKER_00: So Lord I am.
SPEAKER_00: Who are you, God?
SPEAKER_00: Moses says, I am who I am, Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And then it says the Lord our God.
SPEAKER_00: Now that word is Elohim, and it's actually plural.
SPEAKER_00: So it's actually saying the Lord singular, our God's, is one.
SPEAKER_00: One God.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Confused?
SPEAKER_00: You should be.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you might remember that in the garden, we'll go back to Genesis 1.
SPEAKER_00: God created, said, Let us create humankind in our image, male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_00: And then in Genesis 2, he brings the woman to the man and he says, Whoa, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Very clear thinking for a man looking at a naked woman.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, Let them be one.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: That's the image of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Oneness is marriage.
SPEAKER_00: God created male and female in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: So God created a duality, male and female, to image the divine community.
SPEAKER_00: So men in church leadership, dodgy.
SPEAKER_00: Because male and female together image God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's why you know family is so important and why family is so under threat, because actually, male and female image God together.
SPEAKER_00: And the complexity and breaking down of identity is a threat to what God wants to model.
SPEAKER_00: Oneness.
SPEAKER_00: God is after oneness.
SPEAKER_00: Male and female image the community of God together.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to be judgmental or anything.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm trying to say is what the Bible is saying here.
SPEAKER_00: That male and female have value, equal value together, because without the two of them together, we don't image God.
SPEAKER_00: And the separation of gender is just a disaster in our community.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Even at a Christian barbecue, the men go one place, women go the other.
SPEAKER_00: It's just weirdness, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but we can do this together, people.
SPEAKER_00: We can do male and female imaging God together.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why any team, any whatever, we got to do this together.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, going back to it.
SPEAKER_00: So God, the Lord our God is one God.
SPEAKER_00: So this we, this us who create, is a oneness.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the thing I want you to remember: at the center of the universe is a relationship.
SPEAKER_00: At the center of the universe is a relationship, it's a loving relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the Spirit in the Old and New Testament is always a feminine word.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not saying Father, Son, or Spirit have gender.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is there is a balance, which is really interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And in the the center of the universe is a relationship, and there's this overflow of love, and out of this overflow of love of father, son, and spirit together, they decide to create.
SPEAKER_00: Let us make male and female, and let's give them the run of the earth and let them have everything.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's a relationship of love, though, and they want us to live in the life of freedom, joy that they have.
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, you know how it ends, it all goes bad, you know, the fall, all the crap that goes down is humanity turns its back on God and decides it doesn't want to be in that community of love.
SPEAKER_00: And um so God goes back to the drawing board, but it was always in the plan that one day the Trinity would enter human life in the form of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that mind-blowing that the God who is so up here enters, it says he emptied himself.
SPEAKER_00: We call it the incarnation, where Jesus, the Son of God, took on human flesh and lived among us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean that that should blow our brains out that we believe God did that insane thing.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so God enters human life, the Trinity, the divine community enters human experience.
SPEAKER_00: So the gap between God, when we look at the, you know, God, what us down here, go out way up there.
SPEAKER_00: Well, God's just messed it up.
SPEAKER_00: He's come in, he's come into our world in our way with our vulnerability, with our weakness, and our ability to die.
SPEAKER_00: He's taken on all of that.
SPEAKER_00: The Trinity enters life on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that mind-blowing?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, God is profoundly interesting.
SPEAKER_00: And if you go to board and well, we need something new to here because it's really dull in here.
SPEAKER_00: You know, think on that for a while.
SPEAKER_00: That the the the the life that created the universe, the life that created the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Here's an image, okay?
SPEAKER_00: If you can imagine a giant big enough to hold the Milky Way in the palm of his hand.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine a giant that big and he starts walking to the next galaxy, holding the Milky Way in his hand, because it's just like a frisbee.
SPEAKER_00: It'll take three months for him to get there.
SPEAKER_00: Walking his giant steps.
SPEAKER_00: That's how far the next galaxy is away.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're talking about galaxies of 200 billion sons.
SPEAKER_00: The God who made that enters this.
SPEAKER_00: And you know how the story ends, it goes all the way to the cross where the Son of God dies.
SPEAKER_00: Enters, not only incarnates himself to the living, then he goes and incarnates himself to the dead.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: He is hanging out with the dead.
SPEAKER_00: It says he went and evangelized the dead in 1 Peter 4.
SPEAKER_00: There's something to get your head around that Jesus not only came to be the Lord of the living, but also the Lord of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: God's up for it all.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how that works, but it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And then he rises from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: But if you can imagine this community of love where the Trinity life has entered human existence in the person of God, and we kill him, and for the first time, God the Father experiences separation from the Son.
SPEAKER_00: If you think about what happens on the cross, the sky darkens, there's an earthquake, and the curtain is torn from top to bottom.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens when someone is in grief over someone who's died.
SPEAKER_00: They tore their garment from top to bottom.
SPEAKER_00: This is an expression of the grief of God that his son has died.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said in John 17, the Father and I are one.
SPEAKER_00: And now they're not.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how this works.
SPEAKER_00: Theological bedrock is that God never changes.
SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus becomes human, and when Jesus dies, something happens.
SPEAKER_00: God is not unaffected, he is in grief over his son.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And then he raises him.
SPEAKER_00: God knew how it was going to end.
SPEAKER_00: We all know how it's going to end.
SPEAKER_00: We all know we're going to end up together, but we still grieve over death, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: And that, and if you have a relationship of unlimited, utter love, I think grief God would grieve deeper than you or me because we only have a very finite love, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: I I think God went through unimaginable pain for us to be included in the Trinitarian life of God.
SPEAKER_00: So I I quite like this about God.
SPEAKER_00: That God becomes this God who reaches, the Trinity reaches into human life, taking on human form, taking on the cost of our separation from God, and then sends his Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Not only does he put his son into human life, now he puts the Holy Spirit, and on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit becomes our life.
SPEAKER_00: We have entered into the river of God, the life of God, the Trinitarian life of God.
SPEAKER_00: We are invited in.
SPEAKER_00: You're invited in.
SPEAKER_00: I used to think of God as kind of this very austere management kind of committee type.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are thinking, what the hell are we going to do about Nigel?
SPEAKER_00: He is really a problem.
SPEAKER_00: You know, disappointing, he's disappointing.
SPEAKER_00: You know, three serious religious types having committee meetings because that's the way we imagine life that God is.
SPEAKER_00: I I I th I think it's wild up there, and I think there.
SPEAKER_00: This, like when when Jesus comes, he says he came that we might have life.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, John 1's really interesting.
SPEAKER_00: John 1 is just the most amazing chapter, but there's this phrase that I missed for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Talking about Jesus, you know, the beginning was the word, and it says, What has come into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all people.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Jesus brought life back into the world.
SPEAKER_00: The life of the Father, Son, and the Spirit, this community and overflowing love and light, he brought that, rose again after his death, and he sent the Spirit so that you could be in the life of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're a boring prat, it's because you're not in Trinitarian life.
SPEAKER_00: Like God longs for you to be.
SPEAKER_00: It says God in three persons.
SPEAKER_00: That's bedrock theology.
SPEAKER_00: God in three persons.
SPEAKER_00: One God, three persons.
SPEAKER_00: Personhood is an amazing thing.
SPEAKER_00: It takes quite a while to become a person, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: When you're a kid, you just have your nappies changed.
SPEAKER_00: That's as high as your life can be.
SPEAKER_00: But slowly your kids start to show a personality, and then they start to reveal values and beliefs as they are formed.
SPEAKER_00: And at some point they're not just a human being, they are a person revealing personality.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And we become persons in community.
SPEAKER_00: If we didn't have a community, we'd just be human beings.
SPEAKER_00: We'd just be animals without a community.
SPEAKER_00: Because personhood is formed in community.
SPEAKER_00: God in three persons.
SPEAKER_00: God is person because they're a we rather than a me.
SPEAKER_00: Your personhood is carved out in community because that's the way God's personhood works as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so I really encourage you to get in deep with people.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get isolated because your personhood is formed in relationship, in family, in in the in, and you can't be a person without all these other annoying people in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
SPEAKER_00: So the the Trinity values personhood.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm pretty much done.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation is for you to enter the life of God.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the Father wants you to be his family.
SPEAKER_00: The Son welcomes you to be part of his body, and the Spirit invites you to be his temple.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way God is.
SPEAKER_00: Learn to live in God in the best way you can.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is meant to be fun, it's meant to be joyous.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant to be like listening to Van Morrison all day.
SPEAKER_00: That's how good it's meant to be.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's hard to believe, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Gotta listen to his latest album, Remembering Now.
SPEAKER_00: Great album, but you heard the advertisement here first.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, get in the river, the river of God, the community of God.
SPEAKER_00: And this this church thing isn't just a nice thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's an annoying thing to do some of the time, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I sense it because all of you were late.
SPEAKER_00: Just milking it.
SPEAKER_00: So even though it's an annoying thing, it's the only thing that God offers us because to be the church is to enter the life of God, and it's a we, not a me.
SPEAKER_00: It's us together.
SPEAKER_00: Get in the river, have fun, follow God, listen to the whispers of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You might just like your life.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we we acknowledge that we've um we're actually good at thinking of you in religious terms because you're so far up the pyramid.
SPEAKER_00: We often think you as uh of you and just feel guilt.
SPEAKER_00: We feel unworthy, we feel so many things that are not the feelings that you want us to feel.
SPEAKER_00: But thank you that you love us with an everlasting love and you invite us into your community.
SPEAKER_00: You want to adopt us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what salvation is.
SPEAKER_00: It's adoption into the family of God.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you've brought the Trinitarian life to earth and you welcome us into your heavenly life.
SPEAKER_00: Don't know why you're so nice to us.
SPEAKER_00: We know we don't deserve it, but thank you that we are loved and we become persons together because you're the God in three persons.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.