Our text this morning is found in the chapter from which we read John, chapter 3, and very familiar verse, John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. It is perhaps the motto text of evangelicals referred to by William Temple, Archbishop Canterbury during most of the Second World War as the heart of the Gospel. This is the Gospel in miniature, the love of the Father who sent the Son to save whoever believes in the Son. And here we are on Trinity Sunday thinking of the gospel and the trinity. Because so often what people do is they think of the trinity in terms of some sort of theological abstraction out there. But in reality, the trinity is at the heart of the gospel, the love of God. The father who sends the son, the spirit who applies God's word. God's redeeming love. And we see here that to be a Christian is to be, in the order in which we see in the chapter, first of all, born by the Spirit, secondly, redeemed by the Son, and thirdly, loved by the Father. A Christian is someone who is born of the Holy Spirit, redeemed by the Son, Jesus Christ, and loved by God, the Father. First of all, to be a Christian is to be born of the Spirit. That great word that our Lord said to Nicodemus, you must be born again. And the you here is plural. It's not just you, Nicodemus, must be born again. It is that anybody to see and come to the Son must be born again. You must be born again. The great evangelist of the 18th century, George Whitefield, a lady once came to him and said, why do you keep saying you must be born again? To which Whitefield replied, of course, because you must be born again. That is an absolute necessity. If anyone is in Christ, the apostle says, there is a new creation. They are born of water and the spirit, verse five. of water and the Spirit. Water is not enough. The Spirit also must be involved. It is not enough simply to be baptised. but the one who is baptised must be born also of the Spirit. There are many people who have been baptised, whether as infants or as adults, who have done so without being born again by the Spirit. They have the sign of baptism, of washing of water and the Word, but they do not have the reality which is the Holy Spirit applying and cleansing the heart. The Holy Spirit is the one by whom we are born again. And to be born again is not a process, it is an event. The Christian is not somebody who is in the process of being born again, as some imagine. The Christian is someone who has been born again, birthed. Yes, there is a process involved, but birth is an event. We look back on our birthday, humanly speaking, and not everybody can recall when they were born again. Different people, again to use the analogy that our Lord uses here at birth, have different experiences in terms of being born. There are some where it's a very quick matter, and others when it's rather drawn out. But the Christian knows this, that whereas I was blind, now I see. The Christian knows God, the Christian has entered the kingdom of God, belongs to God and is under his rule and this is all the Holy Spirit's work. Now the word our Lord uses here that's translated again also has the meaning from above. And the probability is that John means us to think of both of these things. So first of all, it is a being born again. Now that's important in the context, of course, because Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews and a Pharisee. He had been born, in other words, into the covenant community, into the chosen people of God. Not only that, but he had been brought up We would gather among the Pharisees, those who saw themselves as set apart, sanctified especially. He would have been brought up in a strict, law-keeping, Torah-observant family. And yet Jesus says to him, you must be born again. You have been born the first time. And he's been born, and what a blessing it was. What a blessing it is to be born into a Christian family. I know that not everybody here, not every one of you was, but it's such a blessing, I speak as one who was born into a Christian family, to be born into a Christian family. That your parents took you to church, that you learned to sing the wonderful hymns and songs that belong to us. You grew up knowing the Bible in some way. Maybe not very well, but you grew up with the Bible. It's a blessing. And yet you must be born again. Even Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews, must be born again. Even the teacher of Israel must be born again. It's not enough to have been born into a believing family. to have been brought up on the Word of God, there must be an inward change. That inward change may be something that is somewhat imperceptible. It may be a moment at which there's the realisation, I'm not born again, I need to be born again. Lord, I trust you. And in a moment, one is born again. But you must be born again. And this work is that of the Holy Spirit. It's not something that we can do ourselves. Why is it that one man can hear, that two men hear the same gospel sermon and one of them is converted and the other is not? It's because of the Holy Spirit's work. The wind blows when it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. Greek, like Hebrew, certainly Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew, have only one word that's translated either wind or spirit depending on the context. They're both languages where you can tell which word is needed because of the context, because there is just this one word. And normally this word here is translated spirit, it's just translated wind here because It's obvious from the context that Jesus is speaking of the wind, born of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is like the wind, and the wind can be very mighty. I remember, I'm sure many of you do as well, the great hurricane, was it 87? a hurricane when Michael Phipps said, well, someone has phoned in and said there's a hurricane coming. There won't be one. Well, technically there wasn't because there's a technical definition. But I have to say that if you looked at the effects the morning after, I remember hearing, we lived at the time in a house in Norwich that had a garden that looked back onto the cemetery. And I remember being woken up in the night with the sound of trees coming, crashing down. One of our neighbors, there was an old tree, they had a great oak tree at the back of the garden years ago. They built a tree house there. Well, the oak tree and the tree house were no longer in the back of the garden. They'd just been demolished. The wind is immensely powerful. And you see there, we heard it, and we could see what it did. I remember the day after, because of course our school had been cancelled owing to the dangers involved, sitting in the bay window in the front of the terraced house, watching as the wind took all the slates off the roof of a house across the street. There's power in the wind. The Holy Spirit is powerful. We see what he does. He changes people. He transforms people. So everyone who is born of the Spirit, it becomes visible in their life. There is a new creation. Born again. A Christian has been born by the Holy Spirit's power. It's been said, and rightly so, that to make a Christian is a greater work of God than creating the world. Because God created the world out of nothing. There was nothing. He said, let it be. And everything was. But when it comes to making a Christian, God takes a sinner, someone who is lost and ruined in the fall, someone who is not just a nothing, but is a negative. And he makes a positive. He makes of the rebel a child of his own. He pardons. He forgives. And not just that, but he transforms. And there is, yes, that initial transformation, being born again. But there's also the transformation, the change that goes through, goes on through life, not always smoothly. There are the ups and the downs, there are the times when we feel like giving up and where God carries us, as it were. And by his spirit, though, he changes us, transforms us through our experiences, through our trials and our joys. and by the Spirit at last brings us home. The Spirit produces within us what Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit. When he describes the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, as he's writing to these Christians who are being shaken by false teaching, he tells us the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And he says, fruit there and is. In other words, it's not that these are multiple fruits, but there is one fruit that is multifaceted like a diamond. Or maybe better, because it's a fruit here, think of a pomegranate. I love the pomegranates that we get around Christmas time when I was a lad. unprepossessing looking things, but you open it up and it's like it's a great cluster of jewels, glowing red gems. So beautiful and succulent. Well that's what the Spirit is like, it's one fruit with all these different gems within it that form the Christian character. And all these things the Spirit produces within us. And we all of us, at least at times, we know that we're not what we ought to be, but we fall back as we must as Christians upon that great reality, I'm not what I used to be. But God is working. There is on every Christian a sign, as it were, saying, God at work, God at work within. So born of the Spirit, every Christian is born of the Spirit. Secondly, every Christian is redeemed by the Son. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Redeemed by the Son. Paul can speak of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. It's a personal redemption. It's not just a general redemption. It's what the old Baptist theologians spoke of when they said, we believe in a particular redemption. that the Christian can say Christ loved me and died for me. Particular. And the one who died for me is the son of man. Verse 13, the son of man. Now when our Lord speaks of himself as the son of man, he's speaking of himself in terms of the vision of Daniel. Daniel chapter 7 when he speaks of one like a son of man who was brought before the ancient of days and received power and a kingdom. He's a heavenly being. And he is the one who has come from heaven. He is heavenly. He is, as Paul puts it, the heavenly man. The man from heaven. He is Emmanuel, God with us. John opens his Gospel with those wonderful words. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the light was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness. and the darkness did not comprehend it. And then he tells us this wonderful thing, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Here is God the Son, the eternal Son of God in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. who became flesh for us and for our salvation. I've said it before because it needs to be said and I'll say it again. John says flesh. He doesn't just say man. He could have said man, he could have said the word became man, but he says instead the word became flesh. The physical, the solid, the thing that's offensive actually to so many people. It's why one of the early heresies in the church is Gnosticism, this idea that God is far off and distant from us. And how often does man think that? The whole of Islam is based on the idea that there's this God who is a very, very long way away from us, and he just sends messengers to us to tell us to do things. And when they think about paradise, they don't think of dwelling with God, because you can't do that. But the Bible tells us this. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The Bible tells us not that God so loved the world that he sent an angel. That would be a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing that God sends angels. But the Bible doesn't say that God so loved the world he sent an angel. The Bible tells us that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, his unique son. That Christ's nature, his being, his character, his utterly uniqueness, none like him. God didn't just send an employee, he sent the son. Now when we speak of the Trinity, we are speaking of things that make our heads hurt. I was speaking on Monday to the minister who conducted my father's funeral and he said that Trinity Sunday always made him feel like getting a visiting preacher to speak about it rather than speaking himself. I did not reply that I thought that was a rather cowardly thing to do and he ought to jolly well preach his own Trinity Sunday sermons. But it's one of those things, I can understand somebody being scared to talk about the Trinity, but the Bible speaks of this. The Bible speaks of our experience of God so that John can say again, John 1, 18, no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, was with God and he was God. And yet, God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit are not one person. One of the early heresies called modalism, and the idea was that, and there's still some modalists out there, that it's rather like the Roman theater. You may have gone to a theater production to a play with a relatively small theatre company, and there's more parts in the play than there are actors, and so one actor will play several parts. I remember when I was at university, I was a member of the drama club, and we had cases like that, where particularly for background characters, you'd have one actor would play more than one part. But in the ancient world, actors wore masks and they were all small companies. And so the same actor might wear three masks in the course of a play. And now he's playing three characters. And the modalist says, oh, well, this is what God does. He plays three characters. No. Jesus says, I am my father, we are one. There is this union that the one who comes to us is God himself. And he came to redeem us, and to redeem us how? To redeem us by dying. God gave his only begotten son, as J.C. Philpott puts it. This gave means to give him up to the cross. to suffer and to die. As Moses lifted up the serpent of the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." And John rejoices, that's the right word, he rejoices in the double meaning here of the term lifted up, just as he rejoices in the double meaning of born again as being both from above and again, here, lifted up. Because lifted up can mean exalted, In that opening text that I read from Isaiah, Isaiah says, I saw the Lord, he was high and lifted up. It's why if you see pictures of the throne room in Buckingham Palace, you can see what's the highest seat there, it's the throne where the king sits. It's the idea that status is indicated by how high up you are in the room. lifted up, exalted on high. Ah, but how was he lifted up? He was lifted up upon the cross. I, if I am lifted up, will draw all men to myself, he says, speaking of the death by which he died. The cross is Christ exalted, exalted as a prince and a saviour for you and for me. He is lifted up there. And the foolish, ignorant world looks and mocks and laughs and says, if you're the son of God, come down. It's because he's the son of God that he's up there, lifted up. And they think what they're seeing is a curse. They think they're seeing a man hated to rejected by heaven and earth, so he's hung up between the two. But what they see is the Son of God, lifted up, that everyone who looks to him may have life. It's a picture Jesus uses here. There in the wilderness, the Israelites were attacked by poisonous serpents. And Moses commanded to make a serpent out of bronze, put it on a stick and hold it up, and everyone who looks to the serpent will live. Christ is lifted up upon the cross. Look and live, he says. Look unto me, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. Look unto me and be saved. He's lifted up, exalted as saviour. And because he goes to the cross, he has the highest name that heaven affords is his by sovereign right. Redeemed by the Son, he's lifted up to die. Lifted up was he to die, it is finished was his cry. Now in heaven exalted high, hallelujah, what a saviour. Or as Mr. Wesley puts it, our ransom and peace. Our surety he is. Come see if there ever was sorrow like his. His death is the ransom, the purchase price to deliver us. It is finished. If you're a Christian, you've been redeemed by the Son. And finally, in the order given here, but first in the actual order, you have been loved, you are loved by the Father. for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God loved the world. That's a strange thing to say, perhaps. In his epistle, his first epistle, John says to his readers, do not love the world. But here he says God loved the world. because there's different kinds of love. But first we must think, who is God? He's the high and holy one who inhabits eternity. He's the one who has made all things. He's the one before whom, again that leading from Isaiah, these seraphim, these angels, they are hiding their faces and hiding their feet. Because he's so holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And he is of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity. That is, he can't rejoice in what is bad because he is altogether good. God is good. God is pure. God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. And we are not. We have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is darkness in us. We are like the prophet Isaiah when he hears of the thrice holy God, he cries, woe is me, I am undone. I'm finished. Because my eyes have seen the Lord and I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. To behold the holiness of God is to feel yourself lost and ruined and undone because you are not as you ought to be. The Apostle Paul cries out, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And this is not, as one man has put it, this is not the cry of a man who has abandoned himself to sin. This is a cry of a man who has tried to be holy and good and can't quite manage it. And Paul sees himself as the worst of sinners. And Christ died for sinners. And God's love is sent for sinners. For while we were without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. In this is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Not that long ago, just last Monday, I stood in the church at Redden Hall, beside my father's coffin, reading those very words. God loved us and sent his son for us. And it is a redemptive, selfless, self-giving love. Part of the essence of love is that love is self-giving. Love does not seek its own, and God is love. It is a selfless love, it's not about what he gets because he's already got everything, he is the source of everything. He needs nothing. And there we are, here we are, lost and ruined and he loved the world and sent his son to die for sinners. Not from people who had done what they ought to have done. but for people who had, even in their best efforts, fallen short. And this is love. God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their offences against them. Because here is the heart of why the Trinity matters. The Son is not separate from the Father. The Father and the Son and the Spirit are one God in three persons. And what that means is that we don't just have a God who stands over here and sends somebody else to do his dirty work. We have a God who comes through us in the Lord Jesus Christ and does what we may indeed call the dirty work because it is a dirty, painful, awful death that he dies. They didn't have antiseptics. The Romans didn't care about cleaning the whips that they used. The cross would have been a rough, hewn piece of timber, and they didn't care about the splinters. It was indeed a dirty work, not in the sense of what he did being anything other than pure and holy and wonderful, but in the sense that there was sweat and blood and filth and he bore the wormwood and the gall, as the hymn writer puts it. He suffered there upon the cross. And the Father is not simply far off, but in that mysterious unity, the one who suffers is one with the Father. But our God doesn't Just send someone. Our God came to us. Well might, indeed, our hearts marvel at this. God, amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me, says Mr. Wesley. And the bloodless theologians jump up and down and say, you can't say that. And the Apostle Paul speaks of the Church of God, which he redeemed with his most precious blood, God's blood, because the one who died there, the Father gave the Son, and in giving the Son, the Father gave up one who to him is everything. There's a self-giving, the self-giving of the Father. The Father gave the Son. not as a created being that he could make another one, but as one who is joined with him in the Trinity. We cannot comprehend it, but we know this, that God loved us with a love that is not bloodless, but a love that is shown in blood poured out in rich abundance. Here is love, says the hemriter. Here is love vast as the ocean, loving-kindness as the flood, where the Son of God, our ransom, poured for us his precious blood. And why did he do it? Because of the love of the Father. Now, indeed, the love is the love of God, but specifically here it says the Father loved. We cannot think as some crude theologians, some crude evangelists have suggested, of the angry father and the loving son, but we think of the loving father and his gracious son, and the gracious spirit, and the marvel of our redemption by God, our salvation, that we see the richness, all the depths of the love of God, and love of whom? Of sinners' base. He didn't look and see something good in you that he wanted. He looked and he saw me ruined in the fall and loved me notwithstanding all. So as I cannot look at myself and say, well, if God loved me, I must be supremely lovable in myself. But I can say God loves me. And it's all of him. It's all of grace from beginning to end. And so I don't look at other people and say, well, I'm better than them. Paul doesn't do that, he says. And there he was, he was brought up in a godly home. He went to Bible college, as it were. And he says, I'm the worst of sinners. And so it is that we look at the love of God and we can't understand it. Why should he love me? But we know it, we can know it. He has loved me with an everlasting love. God the Father loved us. If you're a Christian, God the Father loves you. And you know that because you're a Christian, because you believe. He sent God the Son, who died for you. And they sent God the Spirit, who made you a new creation. And therefore, whatever our situation, we can throw ourselves in the love of God. And we can trust Him. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit have shown and told their love to his people. Almighty God, to thee be endless honors done, the undivided three and the mysterious one, where reason fails with all her powers, their faith prevails, and love adores.