Scripture Reading:
Matthew 28:16-20
The world “Liturgical” is built on the Greek
words for work of the people, or public acts of service. The word eventually
came to be used only in reference to worship service. Eventually the work of
doing worship was organized for the whole calendar year. When you talk about the
season of Advent, or the season of Lent before Easter then you are talking
about the liturgical calendar.
Last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, the
day we recall the Holy Spirit being poured out on all people. The Holy Spirit
is the third person of the Trinity and the last to be revealed as a member of
the godhead, and so it makes sense that once the full revelation of God’s
trinitarian being has been made known, the next Sunday after Pentecost, or
today, we celebrate what we now know of God, that He is God the Father, God the
Son and God the Holy Spirit. So today is Trinity Sunday.
In our text today in Matthew 28, Jesus
mentioned the Holy Spirit before Pentecost happened. He put the Holy Spirit
right up there in equal status with the Father and the Son. In an earlier
gospel account, John 15, Jesus told them that the Spirit would come. But he
didn’t actually say, that the Holy Spirit is God. Even earlier, in Matthew 3,
we see all three persons of the Trinity show up when Jesus was baptized. In
verses 16 & 17 we read, “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of
the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God
descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said,
“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
It wasn’t until the Holy Spirit came at
Pentecost to dwell in the believers that they could begin to believe that this
Holy Spirit, who Jesus had been telling them about actually is also God. This
was not an easy thing for the Jews. The Old Testament had taught them that God
is one and there is no other. That was the prevailing teaching even though
there were hints of something more in the Old Testament. For example, in
Genesis 1, “God said, “Let us make
mankind in our image, in our likeness.” Did you hear the plural
pronouns in there?
The development of faith in God as a
trinity was a big deal in the world. Remember, the first Christians were Jews
who knew Jesus and became followers of Christ. They remained Jews who began to
believe that Jesus is God. It was Thomas, the so-called doubter, who first said
to Jesus, “My Lord and My God.” He was no more of a doubter than any of the other
apostles, who all needed to see Jesus in the flesh in order to believe that he
had risen from the dead. But Thomas, when he met the risen Lord, bowed to
worship him and was the first to call him God! Now since that is the case, it
doesn’t seem to me that a man of such faith really deserves to be called
doubting Thomas! It was a huge shift for Jews who believe God is one, to begin
to understand his oneness also has a threenes about it.
During Jesus’ earthly ministry he
claimed to be God, and the Jews understood him. He was telling them that he was
equal to God, in other words, actually God! The Jews wanted to stone him for
daring to make such claims. And the refusal to believe that Jesus is a divine
member of the trinity still persists today. Most non-Christians today will acknowledge
that Jesus was a good man, a great teacher, and maybe a powerful prophet. Even
Muslims say Jesus was a prophet, though they claim that Mohammed was a greater
prophet. No unbeliever can admit that Jesus is God, for the moment anyone
acknowledges that Jesus is God, they would have to become Christians, believing
in the words and message and mission of Jesus to save the world from sin
through his own death and resurrection. The tragedy is that they don’t know
what they are missing out on. By refusing to believe in a personal relationship
with God, they are missing out on all the love that our relational God loves to
pour out on us!
We know God as Father Son and Holy
Spirit, one God with three persons. Not three Gods, not three personalities but
three persons on one God. You want me to explain how that can be? Can’t do it. We
can only get close. There are a few rough analogies you might have heard of,
such as the egg with its shell, yolk and white, that all combine to make one
egg.
But that makes it look like each person of the
trinity is just one part of God. Yet, each person is all of God. Another one is
water, that can be solid, liquid or gas. But that makes it sound like God comes
in phases. Water can’t be all three at once, so neither can God? And yet all
three persons of the trinity were evidently present for Jesus’ baptism.
I have two of my own favorite pictures
that might help us understand the trinity a little better. The first one I’ll
share is one I read about in a nice little book. I’m sorry to have forgotten
author and title on that but it was a while ago. That author pointed out how
three-dimensional space helps us understand the trinity. Every object has three
dimensions, height depth and width. Similarly, God has three persons, Father, Son
and Spirit.
If you imagine a cube and you start
subtracting its height, as long as it has three dimensions, you still have one
object.
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But as soon as all the height is gone,
say zero inches high, you actually have no object left at all. You might call it
a concept. But it’s not really there. Similarly, if you take away any one of
the three persons in the trinity, you no longer have the Christian God to speak
of.
Also, for an object to be real in our
world, it must have three dimensions. And the object takes up all the height in it, all the width in it and all the depth in it. So, you could say
height is fully object, in exactly the same way that we say, Jesus is fully
God. If you take away any of the three, you no longer have God. You have
nothing.
My other favorite picture is one that I
think I came up with on my own. First, we have to remember that we live in a
world in which our perceptions are limited to three- dimensional space, and God
lives outside of the universe he created although he can enter into it. So that
lead me to think of our created universe as sort of the way fish live in a fish
tank, with us in here and God sort of out there. Now what would happen in a
fish’s perception if I put my right hand in the tank on one side of him and my
left hand in the tank on the other side? The fish now sees two objects, but he
doesn’t necessarily know they are connected. Both hands are me, just like the
Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove, and Jesus being baptized, are
both God even if we don’t see the connection.
But now it’s worth asking, why do we
bother to talk about the trinity if it’s so hard to understand? Wouldn’t it be
easier to just let the trinity idea fall by the way side, and yeah, we have to
accept it, but maybe it would be better to leave that for philosophers and
theologians to talk about. Your common, ordinary Christians trying to share the
gospel might think that talking about the trinity would just make it harder for
people to believe in the god of the Bible.
In fact, I have experienced this first
hand. I often witness to Muslims through a Facebook group. One of their biggest
objections to the Bible is the whole idea of the trinity. They often wonder why
we would try to believe something that is so seemingly illogical. They often
ask questions like, who was running the universe while your god was dying on a
cross?
Well, as you may have realized, the real
reason we believe that God is a trinity is because the Bible tells us so. We
could say, God said it, and I believe it and that’s good enough for me. But that’s
not going to be good enough for the people that want the universe to be logical
and make sense. So, I really want to be able to talk about these things, at
least a little bit. But beyond explaining it, I want you to know some things
that make our God as a trinity really beautiful and amazing.
First of all, because the trinity is so
hard to believe, no human being would have come up with it. If a person was
trying to invent a new religion or a new understanding of God and wanted to get
many followers, he would want his theology to be plain and simple and easy to
believe. And for sure if you were trying to tell monotheistic Jews who had a
death penalty for worshipping idols, you wouldn’t try to tell them that God is
three! But that’s exactly what some of the Jews started saying when they began
to believe that Jesus is God and so is the Holy Spirit. The faithful apostles
died for daring to believe it!
The only reason you would ever talk to
Jews about a trinity, or anyone for that matter, is if you yourself had been
fully persuaded by God’s revelation to you that, as hard as it is to believe,
that is exactly who God is. So, the difficulty with believing the trinity
actually indicates that God is really more amazing than any human being could
ever have imagined and since we are just his creation, we would expect him to
be more marvelous that we can comprehend. Daring to talk about the trinity is
actually a sign that you have had a genuine encounter with the real living God
who revealed himself to you as a trinitarian being.
The second point, and this is even more
important to realize, is that if God were not a trinitarian being composed of
three divine persons coexisting eternally in a loving relationship with each
other, there would never have been any such thing as love for us to enjoy. He is a relational God and that is why he
wants to relate to us!
We know that God is love. But we also
know that love is a relational word. You can’t have love if you are not loving
some one. And since we humans have
not existed forever, God would have had no one to love and he could not have
been a God of love. If God were not a trinitarian being, sharing love between
the three persons of the trinity for all eternity and from before the beginning
of time, it would not have entered into his mind to be loving, because it would
not be a part of who he is. It would not be in his eternal character.
If God was a singularity, existing in
himself with no relational aspect in his being, he would not have had any love
to share with humans. No one to love before he created us, would mean no love
in him to share and therefore no reason to create us.
But because God exists as a trinity of
three persons in one God, God is love and love is the true foundation for the world in which we
live. Three persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit must all
love each other because God IS love. God exists in eternal loving relationship
between the three persons of the Trinity. He is a relational being. This is
shown to be true when Jesus says that the first and greatest command is to
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your mind.”
Now, we
really have to get this down to where it is personal and we can live with it.
So, picture this. The three persons of the Trinity are talking to each other,
rejoicing in the glorious creation they have created and given to us. There is
so much good in it and so much beauty. But then, they turn to the sorry subject
of what the humans have done. They grieve over the loss of the love that should
be theirs from the people.
Jesus
points out, “Well, just as through the disobedience of one man the many were
made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man the many will be made
righteous.’ It’s the only way to fix this. So, I will go and be the man who
lives a perfect life and offer mine to pay for all of theirs. I’ll go.”
And the
Holy Spirit says, “I’ll help!” And God the Father, moved with compassion says,
“I will make sure it all turns out right!”
So, God the father chooses the man Abram
to become the Father of the Jews and through whom all nations will be blessed
and he begins to set the stage in history. His mighty acts and his many
prophets create the nation of Israel, establish its Laws and the sacrificial
system that will serve as a picture of what Jesus is all about so that when he
came into the world, at just the right moment, people, helped by the Holy
Spirit, would be able to see him as the fulfillment of God’s plan and
understand what faith in him accomplishes.
Now here comes the really amazing part.
As believers, we are in Christ, members of the body of Christ. But what that
means is that we are not just forgiven, but also lifted up to the high
privilege of being just like Jesus, serving a similar role in this world. We
are sent as he was sent, to seek and to save the lost. Jesus said, “Go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you.”
First of all, let me point out that what
Jesus said there has a strong parallel in the original mandate given to mankind
when God said to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the
earth and subdue it.” As we obey God and make more and more disciples we are
effectively multiplying the church and subduing sin as we create a new
Christian community!
This work that we are asked to do puts
us in the fellowship and conversation relating to our relational God and with
each other, because none of us can do this alone. We are created to be
relational people and we each bring our different gifts to fit into the larger
whole of what God wants to do through us as we work together in harmony. But
think of it. God is giving us the opportunity to do the same thing that Jesus
did, to play a role, a much smaller role, but still and important role, in the
cosmic scale drama of redeeming the world from all its sin and suffering. Let
each of God’s children say, “I’ll go.” And as we do, the Holy Spirit
enthusiastically says, “I’ll help you!” And God our Heavenly Father
compassionately proclaims, “I will make it all turn out right!”
Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting
God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true
faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of
your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and
worship. We commit to obeying you and going to do what you have asked of us. We
will rely on you Holy Spirit to help us and lead us in the work you have set
out for us to do. And Jesus we give you thanks for being the way, the truth,
and the life and for opening to us the door into fellowship with you. Bring us,
we pray, at last to see you all in all your one and eternal glory, O Father;
who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and
ever. Amen.
2
Corinthians 13:11-13
Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell.
Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in
peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. The grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all
of you.
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