The Gospel Invitation: Join God's Trinitarian Dance

God must have created us not to get joy, but to give it. Not because he's lacking, but because he wants to invite you in to joy. He wants to give it. God must have created us in order to invite us into the dance. Come. See joy in this eternal relationship. God's invitation to his creation is if you glorify me, if you center your life around me, if your entire life is on me and around me, you find me beautiful, me and myself, then you'll step into the dance. [00:47:04] (54 seconds)  #DanceWithGod

if God exists but is impersonal and not relational, that means that God is not love. If God is only one divine being, no trinity, no love. Why? Because love can only exist in a relationship. God could be power in that case. God could be greatness in that case, but not love. But if from all eternity, without beginning and without end, if God in three divine persons, a community, a relationship of knowing, loving, and enjoying one another, then the ultimate joy is found in that relationship. [00:45:03] (59 seconds)  #TrinityIsLove

And so Mark is deliberately pointing all of the listeners back to the creation story from the very beginning of all of history. Just as the original beginning of the world was a product of the triune God, the new beginning and the new life is once again a product of the triune God. Jesus comes into the world to bring new life, to do away with sin, and he starts his recreation of all things, and the trinity is present. [00:35:18] (40 seconds)  #RecreationInChrist

You're created to center your entire life on God. The source of all joy and love and relationship. The ultimate joy of our hearts and our souls can only be experienced as you center your life upon a personal relationship with God. And so the invitation of God is this, do you wanna dance? Some are here today and the reason why you haven't surrendered your life to God is because we're just too self centered. We're too pride filled. We're too religious. [00:48:25] (52 seconds)  #CenterOnGod

God is not after your begrudging duty, your religious actions, or cleaning yourself up, outwardly making yourself somehow presentable for God. If I could just look a certain way, if I could just act a certain way, then I would be presentable before God. But God, he sees your heart. And he knows, he desires repentance and confession. And so God, he raised up a prophet like John the Baptist. [00:25:25] (29 seconds)  #HeartOverReligion

He's not just gonna cleanse your behavior or religious duty. He's gonna cleanse you from the inside out. He's gonna give you a new spirit. Jesus will give you new life. John says that's something I can't give. He's so much greater. And then in verse nine, he shows up. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. What a picture. Notice Jesus also doesn't start in Jerusalem, which is where people expected a savior to come from. [00:29:50] (44 seconds)  #InnerTransformation

We look at Adam and Eve in the garden and we say, what fools. Why did they listen to Satan? That didn't make sense. Yet we all have Satan's lie in our own hearts. Even now, that we're afraid to trust God. We're afraid to obey God because what if if it doesn't work out for me? In fact, we're afraid to trust anybody. We're afraid to dance at all. In fact, we're stagnant because Satan tells us that we should be. And we've been deceived our entire lives. [01:00:40] (49 seconds)  #TrustNotFear

We all think our way is better than God's. We all failed. We all failed. All of humanity, everyone in the human race has been failing the same temptation from the beginning over and over and over and over again ever since the creation of the world. Satan never stops tempting. He tells us through a serpent, oh it's okay. Just take it. You're right. I don't understand why he doesn't want me to take it. It looks good, I'm just gonna take it. And because I don't understand, I'm going to disobey. [00:57:36] (34 seconds)  #WeAllFallShort