DRYSDALE UNITING CHURCH – SERMON –26 March 2013
Prepared by Vince King
TRINITY
Today is “Trinity Sunday”, and what better time than today to explore what the Bible says about the Trinity. The Sovereign Lord God whom we worship is one Being, (1), but He has chosen to reveal himself to us as three separate personalities: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
All three persons of the Trinity are mentioned together in about fifty verses in the New Testament – that is, together in the one verse or in a small bracket of verses. Here is one of many examples - (this one is from Peter’s preaching): “God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and power and he went around doing good and healing all….because God was with him”. (2). Jesus told his disciples to make other disciples in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit - note: in the Name, singular, not plural - in the nameof the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (3).
All members of the Trinity are said to be instrumental at the time of creation. We read these words in Gen. 1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…. and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (4) Col. chapter 1 tells us that “Jesus createdall things, both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…. All things were created for him and by him.” (5). So God the Son is shown to be the dynamic One through whom, with the Father, all things came into existence. (6).
The three Persons of the Trinity are all also found at the end of the Bible in Revelation. The Lord God introduces Himself to John, in chapter 1 of Rev. as follows: “Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was and who is to come,”- that is, from God the Father, - “and from the Spirit before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” (7).
In many parts of the Old Testament, the Sovereign Lord God describes himself as a loving, caring God. Love is God’s essential nature. His loving-kindness, his mercy and his compassion towards humans is referred to well over 100 times in the Old Testament. With compelling divine self-disclosure , God described himself to Moses as “the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin,” (8) and this great self-characterization of God runs like a golden thread throughout the whole of the Old Testament. (9). To give just one other example, God says in Deut. 7, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.” (10), and there are a great many other references telling of God’s love.
But God is also a God of justice. He says of himself in Jer. 9, “I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.” (11). We saw in our reading from Nehemiah, chapter 9, how God responded with justice - but also with compassion - to the repeated disobedience of the children of Israel. In the end, despite his loving entreaties, he had to banish them into exile, because “they had behaved more wickedly than their fathers,” (12), and refused to change their ways. (We tend to think of the God of the Old Testament as being only God, the Father. But we have to remember that, in Neh. 9, we have been referring to the triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the NewTestament!) For those who may not be aware of the many examples of God’s love, the God of the Old Testament may come across as being vengeful and vindictive. But if the Lord God were not a God of justice as well as compassion, (13), he would not be a good God. Instead, the psalmist says: “the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” (14). Praise God for that!
We come now to look at the second person of the Trinity – Jesus, revealed to us in the New Testament as the “Son of God.”
For about twelve months or so, my wife and I shared in Bible study with some friends who were from a so-called “Christian” sect. One of the main planks of their theology was that Jesus was nothing more than a mere human being; that there was nothing divine about him except that he was used by God as his earthly messenger. They said “Look, how many times Jesus is referred to in the passive tense. It says in the Bible, “God sent him”, (15), “God anointed him”, (16), “God raised him from the dead”. (17).So you see, God did all the work! Jesus was merely a man.”
But their argument ran out of puff when we found other verses, also in the passive tense, where Jesus said, in Matt. 28, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” (18), and in John 17, “Father, you have granted me authority over all people”(to offer them eternal life) (19), and in Phil. 2, “God has exalted Jesus to the highest place, and given him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow….and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (20). Jesus readily agreed that his Father was greater than he was. (21). He said, “I do exactly what my Father has commanded me to do,” (22), and he also said, “I say what he has commanded me to say, and even how to say it.” (23). “My father and I operate together as one.” (24).
While he was on earth, we can see how Jesusacted as Deity: Someone has said that Jesus put a face on the otherwise invisible God, showing him to be kind, patient and tolerant. (25). In all his dealings with people, Jesus was warm, endearing and compassionate. (26). He came, offering love, pouring it out passionately and prodigiously on all who were in need, (27), and he left us with one important commandment: “As I have shown you, you go and pour out your love and care on others as I have loved you.” (28).
Jesus alsospoke as Deity: He said things like these: “I am the resurrection and the life.” (29). “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” (30). “I have authority to forgive sins on earth.” (31). In the Old Testament, God told Moses to call him by the name, “I AM THAT I AM” - in other words, the God who always lives in the present tense, the one “who was, who is, and who is to come,” (32), the Eternal One. (33). To Isaiah, he said, “I AM the Lord Almighty; apart from me, there is no other God.” (34). So when Jesus referred to himself as the great “I AM”, the Jews were mortally offended, and so furious that they tried to stone him several times - even more so when he said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” (35).
Jesus was referred to by othersas Deity: Most Christian folk know that when Thomas saw the wounds of the risen Christ, he blurted out, “My Lord and my God”. (36), thereby addressing him as Deity. But what we probably don’t know is that members of the early church had a confession of faith that they used constantly. They confessed, “Jesus is Lord”, for example before their baptism. When they used the word “Lord”, they were using the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Yahweh”, (37), so they were in fact saying, “Jesus is Yahweh” - or “Jesus is the sovereign Lord God from heaven”. But the most ringing affirmation of the Deity of Christ is in the first verse or two of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (38). The Living Bible expresses these words much more clearly: “Before anything else existed, there was Christ, with God. He has always been alive and is himself God. He created everything there is – nothing exists that he didn’t make.”
As in the Old Testament, the triune God of the New Testament is also shown to be a God of both love and of justice. In 1 John, chapter 4, we read, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent His one and only Son ….to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (39) And Paul takes up the theme in Romans 3: “God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice….so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (40). God’s love and God’s justice go together.
So now we come to the third Person of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit. He is variously referred to as the Spirit of God, (41), and the Spirit of Christ. (42). He was said to be sent by both the Father, (43), and the Son. (44). Jesus said He was “the promised gift of the Father”. (45). In the Old Testament, the Spirit of God is mentioned often, (46), mainly to equip his chosen servants to fulfil their God-appointed tasks. In the record, he sort of came and went. But in the book of Joel, God promised to pour out his spirit on all men and women (47) everywhere, (48), and Jesus said, “God’s Holy Spirit would be with them forever,” (49), - not just now and again as before. He would never leave them – he would never leave us either.
How very appropriate it was, that this outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit on all people should occur at Pentecost, (50), on the anniversary of the very day when God first gave His laws to the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai. (51). How appropriate also that it occurred during the Jewish festival of First-fruits, (52), when some 3,000 people from many areas of the Roman world were swept into the kingdom of God, to become the first-fruits of God’s new kingdom on earth,- the church. (53).
Jesus told his disciples to stay in Jerusalem “until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (54). The resurrection of Jesus had not turned the disciples into fearless witnesses. They were still frightened people; they still hid behind closed doors. But what a different story when they had been filled with the Holy Spirit! They were changed men and women. When the crowds came flocking together, to find the source of an incredibly loud noise, like that of a modern day jet-liner accelerating for take-off, (55), they found a group of excited, exuberant men with flushed faces (56), witnessing in a powerful way (57) to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - in languages they could all understand. (58). Power was unleashed on that day of Pentecost by the Holy Spirit, and it is still with us today –providing us with power to witness, power to live the Christian life, and power to perform miracles as Jesus did.
Not only did the early disciples preach with great courage and boldness (59), but they also carefully wrote down the events of Christ’s life. Jesus said, “When the Holy Spirit comes, he will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you;” (60). (Notice: he said to you- his disciples - not to other writers many years later); Jesus said furthermore, the Holy Spirit can be trusted to remind you accurately, because “he is the Spirit of truth”. (61) So there is every reason to believe that all the books of the New Testament were written within the life-time of the first disciples. When you stop to consider that: - 1) John and Peter both strenuously maintain their honesty (62) when recounting their eye-witness accounts of both the glory (63) and the sufferings (64) of Christ; 2) that both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome about 40 years after Christ’s death (65), - they wrote half the books of the New Testament between them - and 3),that the book of Hebrews was written while the temple in Jerusalem was still fully operational, (66), - it was destroyed in 70 A.D. (67). Any books written after such a catastrophic event would have surely referred to it. So it’s most likely that all the books of the New Testament (with the possible exception of John’s gospel) were written within 40 years of Christ’s death and resurrection. Since the Holy Spirit of Truth was coaching and reminding the variousauthors, we can assume that their books are both accurate and authentic.
So great was the power of the Holy Spirit to witnessin both spoken wordand the writtenword that the early Christian church grew at a phenomenal rate across Europe, Asia and Africa. We can gain some idea of how extensive this was, by the fact that, today, we have very early translations of the New Testament books in Latin, Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Sahidic, Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian and many other languages. (68). Most books of the New Testament books were acknowledged by these language groups as scripture, long before the canon was rubber-stamped as authentic by the council of Carthage in 397 AD. (69).
These days, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to live lives pleasing to the Lord, (70). It is impossible to live out Christ’s teaching without the enabling presence of the Holy Spirit. (71). Paul prayed that the Colossians would “be strengthened with all power according to God’s glorious might, to have great endurance, patience and joy….. (72); and Peter said, “God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness, (73), so that, with the Holy Spirit living within us, (74), we find that obeying Christ’s commands (75) are not at all burdensome. (76).
The power of the Holy Spirit to perform miracles is still evident in the world today. There are some who believe and teach that the miracles in the early church (77) were only there to help launch the church and have died out since. My wife and I have a good friend in Sydney who has been a piano teacher for most of her life. She typically had 70 or more students and many of them used to gain honours. But she had a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis from an early age and this continued to worsen until her fingers began to curl into a claw shape. When she found she could no longer reach an octave on the piano, she wrote to all of the parents, explaining that she had to give up teaching. But some of the parents were Christians and they agreed among themselves to pray for her.They took her to a weekly healing service, held in those days in St. Andrews cathedral and lead by Canon Jim Glennon. Although she was a keen Christian, she had never been to a healing service before and she didn’t know what to expect. Part way through the service, while someone was praying for her, she suddenly felt an intense burning fire rising up through her body and out along her arms, and she watched in utter amazement as her fingers began to uncurl and become straight again. Soon, she was back teaching again, and she said to her pupils, “Look! God has healed my hands! Isn’t that absolutely wonderful! I can teach you again!” And we can perhaps imagine how her students, with spine-tingling amazement, would watch those beautifully supple fingers,effortlessly caressing the piano keys as they’d never seen before. Most of them said, “Hey! If God can do that, I want to become a Christian too!” This happened in the book of Acts as well, where whole communities of people became believers after they saw amazing miracles. (78). We called in and had lunch with our friend recently; she still has many health problems – her body has never recovered from the heavy doses of cortisone in her early years – but her fingers are still as straight as mine, thirty years on.
And so this morning, we have touched briefly on all persons of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, the “Almighty One”, (79), the great Creator and Sustainer of all things (80);who loves the human race with an everlasting love, (81), not wanting anyone to perish, but that everyone should come to repentance and faith in Him, (82); Jesus, our great high priest, magnificently revealed to John in Rev. chapter 1, (83), who died to save us from our sins,(84), and now ever lives to intercede for us, (85); he is seated in a position of great power at the right hand of God (86); and we also have the Holy Spirit, who walks alongside us as our Counsellor, comforting us (87), living within us (88) empowering us to do his will, (89), and ensuring us that we are truly God’s children. (90).
No one on earth can hope to understand the Trinity; it is totally beyond our comprehension. Nevertheless, it is the clear teaching of scripture, and we need to receive itand accept it, with trusting faith like that of a small child. (91).
All praise and honour be to our God,for ever and ever– the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes:
Explanations:xx denotes verse commentary in the NIV Study Bible; EDWJ: “Every Day With Jesus” dated daily devotions; A. Orr-Ewing: “Why Trust The Bible?”