Mike Bickle emphasizes the magnificence of Jesus within the context of the Trinity, explaining that the doctrine of the Trinity is essential for understanding our faith and salvation. He highlights the importance of recognizing Jesus as fully God and fully man, and warns against the heresies that seek to undermine this truth. Bickle also discusses the historical significance of figures like Athanasius and Augustine in defending the Trinity, and encourages believers to engage deeply with this mystery to enhance their worship and relationship with God. Ultimately, he calls for a response of awe and love towards Jesus, who desires a personal relationship with each of us.

Thank you, Joy. Well, this morning we're going to look at the subject of the magnificence of Jesus in context to the Trinity. Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus, and we ask you for living understanding. Father, I ask you that you would inspire our hearts for importation, that we would love your Son well. We would be awestruck by His splendor. We thank you in Jesus' name, amen. As I continue on the subject of Jesus, our magnificent obsession, that our desire is to be obsessed by the Holy Spirit with the revelation of the magnificence of Jesus. Today we're going to look at the doctrine of the Trinity and apply it to our response to Jesus. Paragraph A, the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most important doctrines in the Bible. There's over 70 passages in the New Testament that present the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together. It's a truth that is essential for our salvation, meaning for saving faith, that we understand this. Now, today this doctrine is under attack. And one of the reasons it's under attack is that there's a tremendous effort to blend all the world religions together into one big, tolerant religion that says everything is right. Well, the problem is the doctrine of the Trinity doesn't blend well into other religions. It's impossible to merge in the ideas that are intrinsic to the Trinity into the big pot of other faiths. The monotheistic religions like Islam, Judaism, they're very opposed to the Trinity. And so there's Christians saying, well, we can just go easy on this one and maybe put it at the side as we seek for the larger good. That is to deny our faith. That's heresy. So it's important that we're equipped in our understanding on this crucial doctrine so that we're not swept away personally by clever doctrines or clever arguments that cause us to deny essential elements of our faith, but also we want to be equipped so that we can lead others to the Lord who have trouble with this issue of the Trinity. Paragraph B, the doctrine of the Trinity, very simply put, teaches that God exists in three distinct persons. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. But He's one God in three persons. And these three persons dwell together in deep relationship forever, but as one God, as one God, three persons. Paragraph D, I want to highlight two outstanding men of history, just to name them because they stick out from all the others, related to the doctrine of the Trinity. There's Athanasius, and he was the first champion for the Trinity. He was the defender of this doctrine when there were many heresies raising up saying Jesus was not God, that Jesus was created like all the other great servants of the Lord. And Athanasius, in the presence of great persecution and resistance, I mean for decades, and even persecuted, being caused to even be exiled at times, he held the line. This great bishop from Alexandria, which is the nation of Egypt, you know we owe a great debt to Egypt because Christianity was preserved in Egypt in the desert fathers in that devout spirit of prayer. Many were devoted to prayer and the truths of Orthodox Christianity were preserved in there. And so thank you God for Egypt, and Lord bring Egypt back around to the fullness of what you promised. Well the other man, some years after Athanasius, was Augustine. Most of you are familiar with that name Augustine. His teachings have been by far the most influential through church history. Paragraph E, the Athanasian creed, is the clearest statement on the Trinity in terms of a creed. It teaches that each of the three persons of the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of them are uncreated. There was never a time where Jesus did not exist. He is uncreated like the Father is uncreated. That they're limitless, eternal and almighty. All three persons are co-eternal and co-equal. Jesus is as much God as the Father is. And so is the Holy Spirit. One phrase that I want to highlight in the Athanasian creed is that we worship God in Trinity. And here's the phrase, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the essence. That was a key statement. What does that mean? That we worship God in three persons without confounding or without obscuring or confusing the three persons. We don't blend the Father and the Son together. We don't confound them. We don't blend them in but we keep them separate. So we don't confound the persons but neither do we divide the essence of one God. We don't make Him two gods. It's one God, three persons. Not three gods, one God, three persons. Not one God, one person. One God, three persons. That's the mystery and the heart of the Trinity. Paragraph F, Arian, again that's a name that some of you won't be familiar with but it's the name associated most in history. He was a leader in the church who was devoted to teaching on the greatness of Jesus but as a created being. He taught that Jesus was the greatest of all. But He was created. He was not God. And He thought that He gave great honor to Jesus. There was none like Him in terms of men. That's true but that doesn't go far enough because He said He was created by the Father instead of eternal like the Father and uncreated. Now today that Arian heresy is emerging again. And even in this push to blend all the faiths together, these other faiths will gladly give Jesus great honor among men. The greatest. Some will say none like Him like Arius said. The greatest prophet. The most anointed. The highest exalted. And they think they honor Him but that's only a pretense. Because in order to honor Jesus from a biblical point of view we must proclaim His deity not just His greatness as superior to other men. So they will say, you know I've heard people say, you know this one group, they honor Jesus. You know Islam honors Jesus. Some even of a Jewish descent would say well He was a great prophet. You can't ascribe to Him honor and greatness. In the appropriate way without ascribing to Him deity. It's very subtle but it's very essential that we understand this. So when they say, oh no they honor Him, I say no they don't. It's only a pretense. It's what, it's the Arian heresy from the days of old. Paragraph G. A.W. Tozer in his book The Knowledge of the Holy, he has a chapter on the Trinity and I just took a couple excerpts from it. And he addresses the man who can't grasp all the fullness of the mystery of the Trinity which nobody can is what he says. He goes, we're never going to grasp the full mystery of the Trinity. But he rejects the Trinity because he says it doesn't make sense. I don't get it. And I like what Tozer says here in the, I'm reading from here. They are subjecting the most high God to their cold scrutiny. They conclude it's impossible that God could be both one and three. But they forget that their whole life is shrouded in mystery. They don't even understand how their own life works. They fail to consider that any real explanation of even the simplest phenomenon in nature. I mean the simplest thing, an apple growing on a tree. A butterfly flying. The sunlight. The ocean. The fullness of what goes into those simple things are hidden in obscurity. And they cannot be explained even by the greatest scientist. So what he says is, every man lives by faith. Both the believer and the unbeliever. One lives by faith in natural laws and the other by faith in God. Every man throughout his whole life constantly accepts without understanding many things about life. And he accepts them because science says they're true and they can observe the outward form of the butterfly. But they cannot understand the great mystery of how it works. So he said that in essence it's a mock argument. I don't understand it, therefore I deny it. He goes, you don't understand almost anything in fullness around you including your own life. Anselm, he quotes Anselm, the great archbishop from Canterbury, which is just in the area of London. He was one of the premier leaders of the church in the 11th and 12th centuries. At the same time as Bernard of Clairvaux in France, he's in London area. He made this statement related to the Trinity. I love this statement. He says, let me seek thee in longing. Like I long for you and let me seek you. This painful longing is making me seek you. I need answers. But let me find you in love. And here it is. And let me love you in the process of finding you. Let me seek thee in longing. Let me find thee in love. Let me love thee as I find you progressively little by little. Top of page two. Now Augustine, just going to make two kind of references to stories about him. You know, after 1,500 years sometimes you don't know exactly how the story goes. But it was Augustine that others, at least others have said about him, that he said, if you try to, the man who wrote the most on the Trinity, he says, if you try to define the Trinity, you'll lose your mind. But if you deny the Trinity, you'll lose your soul. He said something like that. Heard different accounts of that. And the famous story goes like this, that he was contemplating writing the definitive book on the Trinity. And again, he's written more on it than anybody. But he wanted to write the final complete statement, and he was walking by the sea. As he was praying over this, and the Lord spoke to his heart and said, pick up that shell. He picked up a shell. And he said, now go out into the sea and empty the sea with that shell. And Augustine allegedly said, Lord, that's impossible. And then the Lord said, and neither is it possible with the small shell of your mind to empty the ocean of my being. So he drew back and changed his approach. And he wrote more on the Trinity than any other, but with an added dimension of humility after that experience, a greater dimension. Let's look at the top of page 2. There's indications of the Trinity in the Old Testament. The very first time that in the Scripture that God is recorded as speaking, the very first thing God says in the Bible, He introduces plurality in the Godhead. The very first statement in the Hebrew Bible, because it's the Jewish tradition that doesn't like the Trinity, but the very first statement in the Hebrew Bible of God speaking, He introduces plurality in the Godhead. The very God who said there's one God is the one that said, let us, plural, make man in our image according to our likeness. There are several other times where God made the same statement. I have it here in the notes. Then paragraph B, continuing in the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament, there are several places where God speaks to God. In other words, implying at least two persons, implying plurality, God talking to God. It's not just having a conversation within one person, but it's one person talking to another person in the Hebrew Scripture. I give a couple examples of that. Paragraph C, Jesus highlights one of the premier examples of that in Hebrews, I mean in Psalm 110, where God talks to God. And it's recorded in the Old Testament in the Hebrew Bible. Jesus, right before He was to die, He's in Jerusalem the final week. He's having one of His final conversations with the Jewish leaders that would condemn Him. And He introduces to them this passage about plurality in the Godhead. And He says, why are you so offended? It's in our own Bible. And of course, He's drawing them out. He asks them four questions. Now you know, whenever God asks a question, it's not because God needs an answer. It's because we need an answer. In the garden, when the Lord said, Adam, where art thou? He wasn't, He didn't lose Adam. Like, where is that little guy? He got lost in the garden. Adam, where, no. Adam wasn't lost. From God's point of view, Adam did not know where Adam was. The question was to bring discovery to Adam's heart about himself. So when He asks four questions, how strategic is this? He is making a very intense point here. But He goes back to the Hebrew Bible, and He's going to introduce or emphasize the issue of plurality and humanity in the Godhead. A very taboo subject to the Jews, to the Jewish leaders. That the Godhead had plurality, number one. The one God was plural, and the one God had humanity associated with deity. Of course, Jesus is talking about Himself. He's quoting the psalm that David prophesied about Him. But here He is in person asking them about it. Why are you so offended that I proclaim a plurality in God and humanity associated with God? It's in your own Bibles what He's saying. Verse 42 of Matthew 22. The first question, He asks four questions. What do you think about the Christ? Now you know the word Christ is Greek. And for the Hebrew, it's the exact word Messiah. So what do you think about the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One? What is your picture of the Messiah? How do you perceive Him? Because they didn't think of Him as being fully God and fully man. But Jesus was going to give them one last opportunity before they condemned Him, to see from their own Bible that the Messiah is in fact fully God and fully man. And in relationship to another person in the Godhead, the Father. He says, what do you think about the Messiah? What's your idea? How do you picture Him? Then Jesus brings it up a notch. Whose son is He? And by that question, He's establishing the Messiah is human. He was born of a woman. Whose son is He? He's human. And the Jewish leaders, they were comfortable with the Messiah being human. The problem that made, the trouble was they didn't like the Messiah being God. And particularly God and human was a taboo to them. So they said, well it's clear. He's the son of David. And then in verse 43, then Jesus, good. I'm glad you brought that up. Because I want to talk about Psalm 110. The premier passage where plurality and humanity are combined together with deity. He said, oh, so David. It was a leading question. They walked right through the door. He says in verse 43, well then how does David, in the Spirit, or by the anointing of the Spirit, by the revelation of the Spirit, how does David call his own great, great, great grandson, how does he call him Lord? Which we'll see in a moment in verse 44. He's going to qualify it. By calling him Lord in this context, meaning how can David call his great, great, great, great grandson God? And they go, what do you mean? He goes, well in verse 44, David prophesied of a dialogue within the Godhead where the Father said to David's great, great, great grandson, which is Jesus. I mean great, great, how many greats there are, I don't know. The Father said to David's great, great grandson, sit at my right hand, beloved. Only God can sit at God's right hand. A man can't sit in heaven on the throne of God. Verse 45, he says, if David calls his great, great grandson God, how can he call him his son? The answer is that God is human. He's fully God and fully man. That's the answer. And Jesus was saying, here I am, David's grandson, fully God, fully man, in plurality with my Father in deity. Well, they didn't like this conversation. They were stumped. I don't know what the Jewish leaders would say, scholars would say about that even now. There is no good answer except for the answer that Jesus was pointing to. Roman numeral three, the revelation of the Trinity in the New Testament. Well, like I mentioned, there are 70 passages that reference it. Paragraph B, I'll skip some of the notes. You can read on your own if you want. The doctrine of the Trinity is established not only on these two truths, but in a significant way. These two truths are very significant. It's established on the deity of Jesus and the unity or the plurality of the Godhead. The Trinity is established on the fact that this carpenter's son, this man from Nazareth, is fully God. And it's established on the fact there's plurality or unity within the persons of the Godhead. Now today, these are stumbling blocks. They're sources of great conflict in the church and outside the church, but they are essential to the faith. I have two passages here. John 10, verse 30. John 5, verse 18. In both of these passages, Jesus, when He claimed to be God, that's when they wanted to kill Him. They said, your miracles trouble us because it creates so much momentum and we can't control the crowds. They're just frenzied by your miracles. But the part that really troubles us is you say you're God. The spirit of the Antichrist was operating in those leaders in Israel. And that spirit of Antichrist is operating in the nations and even in the church today. And the thing is, these truths are going to come to such a pinnacle that they will seek to kill the people who won't back off of this fact that Jesus is God. Just like they wanted to kill Jesus for this truth. I mean, Jesus was being persecuted because of the doctrine of the Trinity, in essence, right here. And it will be a source of conflict. Paragraph C. There is no one like Jesus. No one is like Him. He has two natures. From the incarnation or the time that He was born and became human, that's the incarnation. From that moment of His conception, He's fully God and fully man in one person. There's none like Him. The Father is not fully man, neither is the Spirit. They're fully God, but they're not human. And the greatest of humans are not God and never will be God. That's another doctrine that's floating around that we're sort of gods and we're going to be gods one day. That's all, those are all lies. That's deception. We will never be gods. There's only one who's fully God and fully man. This is the most remarkable. Because the one in a class of His own, there's none like Him and neither will there ever be one like Him. But here's my question. Why is the one who is so great, why does He want you so much? He wants you. This one that has everything wants you. And He won't be silent about it. Jesus, you have everything. Why are you so in pursuit of relating to me? I mean my love is weak and broken. I have really nothing to offer you, but He wants you. Beloved, who is this man? Who is this man anyway that we worship? Let's look at top of page three. We're going to quickly go through seven different truths related to the Trinity. Now these are only introductory truths. This is not a full statement. Because how could somebody with a mind like a little shell empty the vast ocean of God's being? My point is nobody can do much with this doctrine besides the introductory principles. It's bigger than us. It's mysterious. But it's clear that all three persons are God and it's clear all three persons are one. The Bible has such a witness about that. But we hold that intention and we say, but how can three be one? The Lord says, before this burning bush, it is better to worship and be consumed instead of analyzing the bush too long. Now when Moses saw the burning bush in Exodus 3, he did analyze it for a moment. It is good to analyze it a little bit, but beloved, there's a moment where the analyzing is put into second place and we worship and we're consumed by that bush. Our hearts are. That's what this truth is about. That's what this man is about. There's so much mystery about this man that we won't grasp in this age. A million years from now, we will still be discovering the wealth and the treasure of this man who's fully God and fully man. Well, I want to give these seven truths and I'm just going to give a minute on each one. Like a roadmap, just kind of to direct some of your thoughts. Because we need to think often and to think deeply on this subject. Now somebody might say, why? Why do I need to think often and think deeply on this subject? I'll give you three reasons. I don't have them on the notes. They're very simple. The first reason we want to think often and think deeply on this because when we peer into the mysteries of the beauty of the majesty of how the Father and the Son and the Spirit love each other in such grandeur and majesty, it awakens in our heart worship for Him. For God. It strengthens our worship because worship is a response to revelation. And when we gaze into this diamond, this many-faceted diamond, and the sparkling beauty of who God is together, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it's breathtaking. It fills us with wonder. It reduces us to worship. We just lay everything aside. We are yours. You are worthy. Your worth is supreme in our thoughts. So it stirs up and awakens worship in us. That's a good enough reason in and of itself. But it's not the only reason. The second reason, this is too good to be true from the natural point of view. God calls us to participate in the fellowship of the Trinity. That is so glorious it's almost you can't, I don't even know how to say it in a way that represents that truth well. We'll look at this in a moment, but John 17 is the premier passage, verse 21 to 26, we'll look at it in a few moments, where Jesus beckons us to a salvation experience where we actually participate in the grandeur, in the glory of the beauty of how the Father, Son, and Spirit love each other. We participate in that love. We receive it. And when we understand the way God loves God is the way that God loves us, it gives us confidence and boldness in our walk with God. It gives us understanding. This is how far this thing is going to go. That's the second reason we study and we want to grasp the Trinity. And thirdly is that it inspires us and instructs us on how we are to express love to God and to others. When we see the love within the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we want to return that love back to God in that same kind of definition and in that same quality of love. We want to love Him that way and we want to love one another that way. So we want to be awakened in worship. Number two, we want to participate in the fellowship of the burning heart. The fellowship of love that the Father, Son, and Spirit so enjoy forever, we're beckoned into it. Oh, that's just mind-boggling to me. And then we're to express or to be inspired and instructed to express that kind of love back to God and to people. So I say, Lord, these seven truths show us from Your Word riches of this truth. And I want to go as far as the Word will take us. There's so much in the Word on this, on the Trinity, and how the three relate together. I want to go as far as God has permitted by revelation of the Word. But, beloved, we're at the beginning of the beginning of what's in the Word. I don't want to go beyond the Word, but there's so much more He's revealed that the body of Christ has not pressed into or not sought after. Let's look at these seven truths, very brief each one. Number one, there's one God. Number two, that God dwells forever in three distinct persons. Number three, each person enjoys, that's the key word, a relationship, a mutual relationship with one another. The Father enjoys His fellowship with the Son and the Spirit. It's mutual, it's voluntary, and it's an eternal relationship. And it's rooted in love and humility. And He beckons us into that participation. Wow! Number four truth, each person fully possesses all of the attributes of God. Jesus has all the attributes the Father has. There's nothing the Father has related to His deity that Jesus does not have. Number five, that though they are equal in essence and their essential nature, that's what the word essence means, that there's one essence, their essence as God, their essential nature in being God, though they're equal in that, there's a different function and authority in their relationship and in their work. I'm not expecting if you're new at this for you to even be following all this. I expect you to be going, what? Sounds cool, but I don't even know any of this. But just if you feel that way, and I've felt that way before, that's why I'm pausing for a second to address that. I've heard messages about God. I thought it must be true. It feels true. It sounds true. But I don't understand anything the guy's saying. I want to encourage you that's not such an uncommon response, but just say in your soul, Lord, I'm going to get this. It may take me a while. I'm going to chew on this. I'm going to stay with it. I'm going to search these things out. So get the title deed in your heart today. I'm going to search these truths out. I don't get them now, but I'm not going to say that some time from now. I'm going to look back some months or years and say, I really do understand these, at least in an introductory way. Number six, each person's work, the Father, Son, and Spirit, is unified with one another. It's inseparable, and it's interdependent. The work the Father does is inseparable with the work the Son does. And we'll look at that for a few moments in a moment. Number seven, each of the persons, this is very mysterious, but it's biblical, and it's a thought that many believers never think about, but it's essential and it's a profound part of the relationship of the Godhead. They mutually dwell in one another. Mysterious, but powerful feature and facet of their eternal relationship. Okay, let's look at number one, paragraph C. There's only one God. Middle of page three. There's only one God. The apostles in the New Testament taught this, not just the Old Testament. The New Testament taught there's only one God. The New Testament taught the Father's God, the Son's God, and the Spirit's God, but the New Testament said there's only one God. This is, again, the tension and the mystery. There is no contradiction. It's a paradox, it's a mystery, but there's no contradiction in that. And we can understand it in the introductory sense. We're not going to understand it in the fullness, but we can understand the introductory principles, and they will excite and inspire us to worship, to enter into love. It has a very practical fruit on our life. It says here in James 2, you believe that there's one God. This is the New Testament apostle, James. He says you do well, you've been taught well, if you believe there's one God. New Testament Christianity, Doctrine 101, there's one God. Paragraph D, or the second point, God dwells forever in three distinct persons. That's a very important New Testament doctrine. The Father's God, the Son's God, the Spirit's God. And they're co-equal as God. One is not above the other in the essence of their deity. They're equally God. But they have distinct personality. Each one of them possesses a personality, a mind, emotion, and a will. They each have divine intelligence beyond anything we can imagine. They're omniscient. They know everything. They each have emotions, and they each have their own free will to make choices, but they're in profound unity to such a degree they are called one in essence. Let's look at paragraph E. We'll skip a few points here. Bottom of page three, paragraph E. Number three truth. This is the one I really enjoy, this one. Each of the three persons deeply enjoys the fellowship of the other. They enjoy a relationship that's eternal, never ends. It never began and never ends. The way that Jesus loves the Father, He loved the Father in eternity like this and will forever. It will never change. He will never lose interest ever. It's voluntary. It's mutual. And it flows out in abundance of love and humility. The first point I want to make here in paragraph E, they each have a very deeply satisfying relationship with one another. They are totally fulfilled in the fellowship of the Godhead, the fellowship of the Trinity. Why is that important? It's that God doesn't lack anything. He has no need. He is not lonely. Some people have the idea, well, God was lonely so He created humans. No. He didn't create humans because He lacked, because He was discontent, or He had an emotional need. He dwelt in the fullness of perfect love within the Godhead. He created humans because He is love. Love does not speak of need. Love speaks of desire. Because He has desire to share the joy of His love with others, love desires to share the joy of love. So it was not out of lack or loneliness or need, but out of the overwhelming, overflowing fountain of desire called love, this burning volcanic fountain of love in His being. He goes, I want others to feel and to know what we experience. We want to bring them into it, not bring them into deity. Believers will never be deity. God's people will always be His sons and daughters. But He wants to bring them into the joy, the indescribable joy of love together with Him. But God didn't create the human race so He could have another billion people who stand at a distance and just tell Him how great He is. Yes, we will tell Him how great He is forever, because His greatness provokes a response in us. He is so beautiful. When you encounter beauty, whether it's the most breathtaking scene of the Rocky Mountains or the most beautiful picture or anything that has beauty, when you encounter beauty, you automatically stop and you take a second look. And you normally go, oh! Beauty demands a response. And yes, we will worship Him throughout all of eternity, because His worth, His beauty demands response or the rocks will cry out. But God wasn't feeling a bit lonely and saying, well, a few billion angels wasn't really quite enough. I needed a little lift. You know, I needed a few more to say I was beautiful. So I'll create humans. No, He created a different class, different than the angels, that they could be made in His image to participate with Him because He is love and love demands an expression. Beloved, who are you? Who is He? Why does He value us so much? Why did He make us? How great is our destiny in Him? Beloved, it's worth being wholly devoted to this man who is fully God and fully man. Imagine the enjoyable fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When I think on this truth of meditation, I think about how much they enjoy one another. Psalm 16, verse 11, I don't have that verse on the notes. It says that in His immediate presence, I mean right at the epicenter of the kingdom, the throne of God, right at the throne is fullness of joy and pleasure forevermore. At the very nearest to God is the most joy and the most pleasure, the Father, Son, and Spirit dwelling together. And that pleasure, that joy, He wants to share it. So when I study and meditate upon the joy and the satisfaction that God has with God, it makes me say, oh, I love the way you love. I'm awestruck with how awesome you are. But it doesn't stop there. Then He says, I beckon you, come participate in it with Me. It's like, Lord, this is too big. And He says, yes, but my death warrants, it warrants your ability and the demand that you would enter in with boldness. I died, I paid such a price. You must respond extravagantly and boldly, enter into this love with Me. Oh, how we will enjoy it. Think of even in this age. We can enjoy it now in part, but a little bit of this really goes a long way. But think about a million years, a billion years, a trillion years. We will have so much joy in love participating in this fellowship of the burning hearts. When I think about my future, oh, it's good. Beloved, we have it made. We really have it made. Like I say often, yes, I know we need a little bit more money. We need a few more friends, a little bit more anointing, a little bit more energy. But, beloved, we have it made. We really do have it made. He's worth continuing wholehearted. We don't feel good. We don't have enough money. Nobody likes us. He likes us. And we're beckoned into this forever. And it starts now, not just in the age to come. Well, He enjoys His fellowship with the Father and the Son. And, I mean, Jesus enjoys His fellowship with the Father and the Spirit. He's never disinterested. He's never bored. It's never, ever mechanical. There's never hindrances in their love. Jesus is not hindered by bitterness or a feeling of rejection so He can't really love well. And the Father misunderstood it. None of that. There's no miscommunication. Can you imagine no hindrance at all in perfect love expressing relationship with perfect love? Ooh, and then we are called into this. Again, it's not just in the age to come. It begins at our new birth. A lot of people, they don't have any thoughts of this because their holy imagination is not stirred up by the quality of love that exists within the fellowship of the God who calls us His children and beckons us to share His heart, our heart with Him. Top of page four. Well, this love, satisfying fellowship, it's enthusiastic. It's eternally enthusiastic. Do you know that the remarkable thing isn't just the way God loves God, that God loves us the way God loves God, John 15, 9. God loves us the way God loves God. This is remarkable. Jesus said, I love you in the same quality that the Father loves me, John 15, 9. I mean, could you imagine Jesus making us the object of His love? He has infinite enthusiasm and love towards His Father, and He has this eternal enthusiasm towards you. Beloved, because God is infinite in the measure of His love and it's eternal in its duration, that love can never grow or diminish because He only loves you in the way that He loves, and that's perfectly. A million years from now, He will not love you more than He loves you today in your weakness and brokenness. In my struggling, in my doubts, in my weak response to Him, He loves me the only way He knows experientially how to love. It's the only way He's ever loved. It's the only way He knows. He loves fully, perfectly, with no reserve. Now, we don't receive it well, but it's offered fully to us even now. He will never love us more than He does right now. I want to enter in more to this because He loves in the way that He knows how to love experientially, the way He's experienced love, and that's fully. Number two, this relationship isn't only grounded in love. It's grounded in humility. Jesus has this deep delight to use His authority to honor the Father and the Spirit, and the Father has the same humility, and He uses His authority to honor the Spirit and the Son. But, beloved, God uses His authority to honor us. He says, You come to me, I will love you the way I love the other persons of the Godhead. Jesus will love us like that in the humility. And it's not just that, I love that. I want to be loved with that kind of humility. I want Him to relate to me in that kind of humility. But I'm awestruck at how the God of all power uses all of His power to serve and to honor others. One of the sessions in this class I'm going to teach by the grace of God is on the humility of God. It's a subject I don't know much about on a number of levels. But I want to understand more about the humility of God. It's fascinating, and it stirs my heart to worship Him, and then to respond in humility, but to be bold before Him, knowing how humble He is in offering Himself to me. Number three, the love is intimate, it's deep. And what I mean by that, it's powerful. It's fully engaged. When Jesus loves you, well let's talk about the Father first. When Jesus loves the Father, His heart's moved. It's not a cold, calculated, sterile relationship. He is deeply moved when He loves the Father. And when the Father returns love or responds in love, it deeply moves Jesus. He's moved in loving, and He's moved in being loved. And the miracle of miracles is my weak and frail love moves Him, because that's the only way He knows to love. And I could say, Lord, how could somebody as great as You love me so much? Why is somebody as great as You, why do You want me so much? And why are You moved by my love? And it's a statement of His greatness, of His splendor, not a statement of the quality of my love. My love is weak, but His enjoyment of it is so big that it just works perfect. It wouldn't work any other way. But the fact that He is moved is a statement about how deeply He loves. Number four, the love is voluntary. It's by free choice. And it's by nature. In other words, it overflows out of Him effortlessly. It's not a mechanical, sterile, learned behavior where He kind of learns what love is supposed to be. And He memorizes it, and then He does it to us. No, it's His nature. But God loves God voluntarily. The Father loves the Son because it's His nature to love, and the Son loves the Father because it's His nature, but it's also His free choice as well. And it's mutual. Every one of these deserve a lot of time, but I'm just giving you a quick roadmap again. That each person in the Godhead, they are equally yoked in love. They are fully involved, fully focused, and fully committed in the relationship. They're not distracted. They're not bored. They don't lose interest at all. They're fully engaged at an equally yoked level. That's how they love each other. And that's how He loves us. And His desire is to awaken that in us back to Him. Now, most people know at some level of life the pain of relationship where you're invested, and you're engaged, but the other is not in the same way. Not just romance. It could be friendship. It could be father, son, daughter, parents, brother, sister, where you're invested in love. You're fully engaged, but they're not. A little bit engaged, but not like you. Tremendous pain. There's none of that in the relationship in the Godhead. And that's the relational context that we're being invited to participate in. Number four, each person fully possesses all the attributes of God. God never suspends one attribute to exercise another. When God shows mercy, He's 100% infinite mercy. He's also infinite justice. He doesn't suspend justice to show mercy or suspend mercy to show justice. He expresses both of them 100% all the time. And that's how God relates to God in fellowship. Number five, each person, though they are equal in deity, in their essence as God, they are different in their function and in their authority in terms of their work. And they have a different function even in the relationship. The father will always function as the father towards the son, relate to the father. I mean the father will always relate to Jesus in the Spirit as the father. The father will have that distinction of relating to the created order as father. God the father never relates in the Godhead as the son. He always relates only forever as the father. My point is there's distinction in the function and in their relationship. That's a big subject. And again, you think, OK, I don't fully get that. But let that beckon you. Let that pull you because there's much to say about this that will make you worship and it will give you boldness to enter into a greater confidence of love in the fellowship of your heart with God. Number six, each person's work, the father, son, and spirit, is unified and separable and interdependent. Every work that the father does, it is inseparable with the work the son does. And what I mean by that is all three persons of the Godhead are involved in every action because they are of one mind and they share and manifest the same power. In creation, the Bible says father, son, and the father created. The Bible says the son created. And the father says the spirit created. Are there three different gods? If there are, there would be three different worlds. But there's only one world because there's only one God. They all participated in creation with different functions. Everything Jesus did, being raised from the dead, the Bible says the father raised Him from the dead. The Bible says the spirit raised Him from the dead. And Jesus said, I have authority to raise myself from the dead. They all are deeply engaged in every work that they do. A big subject, a glorious subject. But that's for another day. This is just the road map. This is just the menu to figure out, to waken up some, to stir up some appetite, to go eat more later. Number seven, the bottom of page four, this is mystery of mysteries. Again, this is, again, we're at the burning bush. You can analyze for a minute at the burning bush like Moses. He stares at what meaneth thou this? But mostly he was consumed in his heart and he fell down to worship. And when I look at this, I go, Lord, it's bigger than my understanding. Much, much bigger. But the three persons of the Godhead are deeply united through their mutual indwelling. Jesus said this very, I mean, to the natural mind, to our natural mind, a very, like, wow, mind-bending truth. He says in John 14, verse 10, I am in the Father. The Father is in me. We stop and we go, okay, I don't know what that means. The Father who dwells in me does the work. When Jesus fed the 5,000, it was the Father dwelling in Him working, but Jesus, anointed by the Spirit, was doing it. Well, which was it? All three of them were feeding the 5,000 together, and all three of them, Jesus walked on the water, but the Father and the Spirit were involved. Same with His incarnation. Same with His atonement. When He offered Himself up, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all involved in the atonement. Well, anyway, this mutual indwelling explains how three persons can be one heart, one thought and one action, so that God acts as the one and the three. For instance, John chapter 1, verse 18, Jesus did not leave the Father's bosom while He lived on the earth. While He walked on the earth for 33 years, it was true of Him that He was always in the Father's bosom while His body was on the earth. That's a strange verse to consider. But then Jesus says it. Jesus Himself with His own mouth declares this. In John 3, verse 13, in the context as He's talking to Nicodemus, the great teacher of Israel, one of the greatest teachers in the land. He says in verse 12, which I don't have here, He says, Nicodemus, how can I tell you great and mysterious things when you don't understand the introductory things of the kingdom? You're a great teacher, but you don't understand what's really happening. He says, for instance, talking about Himself as the one who came down from heaven, He goes, there's one who ascended and He descended. He's the one who came down from heaven. He's talking about Himself, the Son of Man who right now is in heaven. He goes, He is in heaven. And Nicodemus is going, I thought you were here. I am here. I thought you just said you were in heaven. I am. Because you see, Jesus was the first man to live in the reality of the Ephesians 1.10, the joining of the physical and the spiritual realms together. He lived in that reality ahead of time. That reality is going to happen at the second coming. I mean, where the heavenly and the earthly come together, but He lived in that reality as a man on the earth. He's talking about the indwelling. This is about the Father and the Son dwelling in each other. I mean, I think of the Garden of Eden as a prototype of this. Here's the Adam walking, and there's an open heaven, and the Father and the fellowship of the Trinity. I mean, I don't know all the dimensions, but it's all happening with no hindrance whatsoever. And then after sin comes, then there's a closed heaven. And then the realms separate between the physical and the spirit realm. They don't have the same access, but Jesus is bringing them all together. But Jesus lived in that realm as a man on the earth, the only man that lived fully in that realm while on the earth. Again, after the second coming, that's going to happen more. And I know the last three minutes I lost a bunch of you, but a bunch of you tracked with me. Then it comes down. Jesus, let's give the final prayer, just the final statement. This is the grand statement in the Bible. John 17, 21, and it goes all the way to 26. Jesus prays for the reality. I mean, this is His final prayer. Before He goes to the cross, He prays in essence. His prayer is, let them enter into the fellowship of the Trinity, the thing I came for. Let them enter into it. That's His final prayer before He goes to the cross. Now it's so mysterious because we don't understand. He's talking about joining in with this dynamic of God dwelling in God, things we can't grasp in our mind. I just put it out there, and it excites me to know. There's more for me to experience now, but it excites me to know how great things are going to be in the age to come, I mean, where this is open and full. I'm not waiting until then, but it will be full and open, the things He prayed here. Look at verse 21, that they all be one, as you, Father, are in me, as I am in them. They may be one in us. He's talking about this mutual indwelling of how God relates to God, the believers entering into dimensions of it. Again, no believer will ever be God. That's a heresy. But it's the generosity of God to share love at this level in a way angels have no access to. Verse 22, for the glory that you gave me, I gave to them. The idea is they would enter into a fellowship of oneness like we do because they enter into our fellowship with us. That's why they will have fellowship with one another at this level. Verse 23, he says it again, I in them, you in me, Father, that they may be perfect in one. And then he gives the heart cry, Father, I desire. He's going to the cross. He goes, I came to die that they would be with me. I came to offer myself that they could enjoy the fellowship we have. I want to bring them into it. Father, I am with you, but I want them with me when I relate to you, when I rule the nations, when I connect with your heart in the ways that we have from eternity past. I want them with me. I want them participating in it with me. That's why I came. And that the Father would be glorified ultimately in that reality. Beloved, who is this man? Let's have the worship team come up. Do you know who you are to God? You were created for this forever. And I know times get tough. Again, our body doesn't feel right. We don't have enough money. We need more anointing. We need more friends. We need more love. We need more things. But, beloved, we're a part of something so big and so awesome, it's worth it no matter what the struggle is in our circumstances. It's worth it. I want to drink deep in this stuff. I don't want to just wait until the resurrection. I mean, we're not going to go that far in this age, but we're going to go a lot farther than we've gone yet. There's a lot further to go in the age to come. The resurrected bodies. But I want to enter into that glory. I want to be with you, Jesus, as you connect with the Father. I want to be a part of that with you. Let's stand. Ephesians 2.6. We're seated in heavenly places now. We're touching that reality now. Father, seated in heavenly places, we just stand before you. Let's just respond to the Lord as individuals, saying, Lord, I want to be awestruck with this mystery. I want to participate in it. I want to express love like this to others. Who are you? Who are you, Jesus?