God, Make Me New

Oh God, make me new. You ever prayed that? It's risky. John Donne, the poet, politician, one-time dean of St Paul's Cathedral—he wrote his Holy Sonnets out of a period of religious and personal turmoil. Sonnet number 16 goes like this: "Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; that I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new." God, get at me; I need You to change me. It's a risky poem. It's an even riskier prayer. You ever prayed a prayer like that? God is not shy. He's never been shy. Anyone who's read the Bible knows this to be true. He's present everywhere. But then He shows up at the most inconvenient of times. He gets into people's hearts and penetrates people's minds. He gets into families and into homes and He disturbs nations and bothers cultures. He's not bound by English manners. He's wild and untameable. He challenges men and women to love Him and He takes it personally when they don't.

He shows up to tell you just how much He loves you at precisely the moment you don't really want to hear it. But He also turns up at the most inconvenient of times to tell you how much He hates injustice and sin at even precisely the moment you don't want to hear that either. "Batter my heart, three-person God." It's kind of confronting, isn't it? Can God do anything for me? Can God change me? That's the question. Self-help can be a good thing. I was reminded of the comedian Carl Baron. He says, "The problem with the self-help section in the bookshop is how do you know you're going to choose the right book?" But the point about self-help is, you know, I want someone better than me to help me. I mean, I can help me and that's good, but I want someone better than me. I want someone who is great enough and big enough and powerful enough to rescue me from me. You see, God, I need You. I can't do this on my own. I need You to get into my heart, into my mind, into my will. Guide me, strengthen me, change me, get at me. That's the prayer.

Often we come to church and we listen to the talk or the sermon. We think to ourselves, "Tell me what I need to do." But maybe this is what God needs to do in us: God, do what you will. So the topic tonight is God. No kidding. We're at church, aren't we? Isn't that what we always talk about? We come to church to talk about God. But the topic is God and specifically the Trinity. It's Trinity Sunday. So I wonder if we can think for a few moments about the Trinity, about God the Trinity. The Trinity is not a puzzle to be solved. You know, you might have a jigsaw puzzle of the Harbour Bridge and as you put it together you see the Harbour Bridge come into view. The Trinity is not a mystery like detective mysteries or puzzles. You know, "the butler did it"—we worked that out fairly early on. Trinity Sunday. You might think of the Trinity as just a mere technicality, like the embarrassing uncle at the Christmas lunch. You know, he's a bit hard to explain to people. A quaint theological nuance perhaps.

But you know, it's all over the New Testament. The Trinity is all over the New Testament. You hear people say to you sometimes, "Oh, the Trinity of course doesn't come up in the Bible." But it does. It's just in solution. If you were to read that passage from Ephesians chapter 3—let me just take you there, just the first few verses—Paul says: "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." You have it there, that very famous verse that we sometimes end our meetings with: "May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore." It's there everywhere. But I want to ask you to have a look at John chapter 15. It's on page 1069 of the Red Bibles if you can see one. Page 1069, John chapter 15.

If you can't find one that's okay. I'll try and keep it as simple as I can. The passage that Liz read to us, and I really want to focus on just verse 26 and verse 27. Jesus says this: "When the Advocate comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about me." I did try and put arrows, you know, where all this goes, but it's a very complex organic whole. Jesus says there is the Spirit of God. He calls the Spirit of God the Advocate. He also calls Him the Spirit of truth. And you might call Him the Holy Spirit. And Jesus is going to send this Spirit. But He's going to send this Spirit who's going to come from the Father. And how is He going to do that? Well, that's an interesting point. And then this Spirit is going to testify about Jesus. You have the Trinity there in just one verse. Jesus is speaking here about God who is Father. This is like the telescope and the microscope as well. It begins with God. It begins with God who is vast and transcendent and it ends with the God who is near.

It begins with God who just is, who's just there. This is the one Jesus has come from. He's come from God. God who has brought the whole cosmos into being. God who has cast the stars into space. God who is not created but has always been. The great and the almighty one who rules everything from the planets and the comets and the galaxies to the blood cells that are journeying through my body. This is the God Jesus is speaking about. Jesus has come from the Father, come from this God, and He's returning to Him. He is the great one. But Jesus says you can know Him as Father. What a revolutionary thought. And you might think to yourself, "If God is God, how can He care about me? I mean, what am I to Him? How can I bring my little cares and concerns to the eternal God?" I'm like an ant who can hardly be seen from a tall building, let alone a plane, let alone the galaxy, let alone the universe. And if He can see me, surely He's just too busy to be concerned for me.

But Jesus says, "No, the eternal God is also Father." So Jesus transforms our thinking at this point. He revolutionized our relating to God because He spoke about God as His own special Father. And then Jesus says, "No one comes to the Father except by me." So let me see if I've got this right: If you have a savior in Jesus, you have a Father in heaven. That is amazing. If you are just a simple garden-variety believer in Jesus, He says you have the unlimited privilege of having God as Father. And follow the logic here: If God is Father, then therefore you must be a child of God, a child of the very living God Himself. Now in John chapter 15, Jesus is with the disciples in the upper room just before His arrest and death. And He says He's going to go away. And they're a bit rattled by this. But He said, "Unless I go you cannot receive the Advocate, the Counselor, the Holy Spirit." He says that there in chapter 15:26. He says, "Unless I go the Advocate cannot come to you. So I've got to go."

"It's in your interests that I go because the Advocate, the Counselor, will come to you." He says in 16:7, just down in verse 7 on that same page: "I tell you the truth, it's good for you that I'm going, because unless I go away the Counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you." Jesus goes away; it's good because the Spirit will come to them and He will do for them what Jesus did on earth. You see, if you want to meet Jesus, you'd need to travel back in time to Galilee and exist in a 33-year period when He was on earth. It's a very narrow window. But what Jesus is saying now is that you can meet Him wherever you are through His Spirit. And if Jesus sends His Spirit, the Spirit now does in the world what Jesus once did. He's another Counselor. It doesn't mean He's different; He's another one of the same. He's the same sort as Jesus but He'll be with His people forever. Doesn't just drop in and drop out. He doesn't sort of run down in power like my iPhone runs down. He's not rangebound like a Tesla.

He's the Spirit of truth. The great theologian reformer John Calvin said this: "We must examine this question: How do we receive these benefits which the Father bestowed on His only begotten Son, not for Christ's own private use but that He might enrich the poor and needy? First we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us and we're separated from Him, all that He has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. All that He possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with Him. To sum up, the Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to Himself." And then the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. Jesus says in 15:26: "The Spirit will testify about me." He says in 16:14: "He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you." How would you go about glorifying someone? You ever thought about that? You ever seen those extreme makeover shows where they take a person and they kind of freshen them up?

They give them a beautician and a hair stylist and a stylist and a personal trainer so that over weeks and months they get fitter and trimmer and finally they're ready for the catwalk. And often what you see is that they didn't really change them at all; all they did was bring out the person's natural beauty. They didn't add Botox or collagen or anything like that. And at the end the family and friends are waiting with great anticipation, and out they walk and everybody gasps and they say, "It's a different person, I can't believe it." But no, it's not a different person. It's just the same person. You're just seeing them in a different light. They have been glorified. "And the Spirit will glorify me," says Jesus, "and the Spirit will testify about me." And the Spirit will testify because He can't really help it. And He says, "And you also testify," because if you have the Spirit within you, you won't be able to help it either. Every now and then He'll just break out because He's not shy.

His whole horizon is flooded with the Lord Jesus. He can't help Himself. And if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you have God's Spirit within you, you will too. From time to time you just won't be able to help yourself. You just won't be able to help to glorify Him, to speak up for Him, to talk Him up, to spotlight Him, to hallow His name. You won't be able to help yourself because of the Spirit within. And then He is the Advocate. In the original language He's the "paracletos," which is the one who stands beside. Sometimes it's translated as Counselor, but that can be a bit misleading because it seems like that's the sort of person that you talk to to work through your issues, but it's more like the Counselor is much more like the Advocate or the barrister. He will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. He's such a powerful advocate that He carries weight in the courtroom of God. Now to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, if you remember that brilliant piece of Australian film of a few years ago, "The Castle."

I got to say, it's a little bit too close to my family for me to really enjoy. But there is that great moment where Lawrence Hamill QC steps forward and local lawyer Dennis Denuto steps down, and you know that his advocacy is going to carry weight in the highest of courts. And that's what Jesus is saying here. He's saying the Holy Spirit is the Advocate we need who will carry weight in the highest court of all. We humans need a revival. We need a rebirth. We need a regeneration of the human heart. A bit like a renovation of a home. But with the renovation of a home it's kind of like, "Well, we like this bit. We'll keep it. We'll just fix this bit up." But God is talking about a total rebuild, a total rebuild of people from the ground up. When I was in year 12 I had a car. It was a dark blue Volkswagen fastback. It was so good. My father referred to it as a poor man's Porsche. Well, it was a real Porsche as far as I was concerned. It was my pride and joy.

And one day it died. It just stopped running. And I took it to a mechanic that my dad knew and he said, "You can't—we can't just fix this. It needs to be rebuilt completely from the ground up." And so it is with the human life. We are not an otherwise good product that needs a bit of fixing every now and again. God says we need to be made new. We're broken down. We need a renovation. We need a rebuild. He's not shy about this. But God says He will do it. He says things like this: "I'll give you a new heart. I'll take away your heart of stone." And rather than one that is dictated by fear or where cynicism is the default position, I'll take the hard one away and replace it with a soft heart—a heart that is soft towards God. And I say, "God, if You can do this, do this. Get at me. Get through me. Be in me." If you believe in Jesus, if your dependency is in Him, then the Holy Spirit has done this. He's convinced you that you're on the wrong side and you need to be on the right side and He's united you with the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you are a believer in Him, the finished work of God has been done in you. Thank God for that. Thank God for sending His Spirit, for opening your eyes. If you have the Spirit of Christ, you have Christ. You don't just have a bit of Him; you have all of Him. You have every blessing that God the Father would bestow on the Son He's bestowed on you. You have a Father in heaven and there is an intimacy with God made possible by Jesus going to die and rise. Great reason to be happy on Trinity Sunday. God make me new. Let's pray, shall we? Heavenly Father, we thank You for these great truths. We thank You that You've not just left us by ourselves. You've not just told us to try harder but in the Lord Jesus He's done all that is necessary. That He's brought us back to the Father and through His Spirit made us whole. We thank You for this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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