Second Presbyterian Church

"God - The Three In One"
June 15, 2003

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Sermons Homepage » Sermons for 2003 » Sermons for June 2003

Trinity Sunday, Year B
by The Rev. Daniel E. Hale, D. Min.

• Isaiah 6: 1-8
• Romans 8: 12-17
• John 3: 1-17

Today is Trinity Sunday. It is the day in which the worship of Christians celebrates the triune God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It is the Sunday after Pentecost Sunday in which we noted the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the early apostles and believers and empowered them to go out and to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. On the one hand we believe that there is only one God. We say with the Hebrews the Shema: "Hear O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one." (Deuteronomy 6:4a) Like Muslims and Jews we understand ourselves as Monotheists. We understand ourselves as people who believe that there is just one God.

On the other hand we believe that God, the Lord, is three distinct persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is a mystery. We, as human beings cannot understand this idea of the One God: three persons. Regardless of how we try to make sense of the Doctrine of the Trinity, if we take a way of explaining it too far it ends up wrong.

Let me give an example. One attempt was made to explain how God is One God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit was (is) a heresy called Modalism. It goes something like this. There is only One God (true) and He has manifested himself in three different ways over time. First there was God the Creator; the one whom we refer to as God the Father. Then there came God the Redeemer, the one whom we refer to as God the Son (Jesus Christ). Finally there came God the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. So, there is just one God and He has metamorphosized from Father, then to Son, and finally to the Holy Spirit. The problem with this understanding of the Trinity is that is not consistent with what the Bible states.

In Genesis we read how God created the Heavens and the earth. And we read how the Spirit of God hovered over the new creation when it was without form and was void. In verse three God speaks. Now we have reference to God the Son, Jesus Christ, because in John we read how the Word was in the beginning and that the Word was God. And John 1: 14 notes how the Word became flesh which is when Jesus of Nazareth was born. He is the Eternal Word who became a vulnerable, fleshed human boy child and grew up to be a man.

And throughout the entire Old Testament we have references of the Spirit of God. To name only a few we have the one mentioned above. In Numbers we have the reference about how the Spirit of God was upon Moses and even a slight reference to the Elders of Israel having a charismatic experience. The same thing happened to King Saul. The same thing happened to King David. David, in his beautiful Psalm 51, as he confesses his sin to the LORD pleads to the LORD (v11) to NOT take His Holy Spirit from him.

The presence of God's Son and the Holy Spirit goes from cover to cover in the Bible. And that is ample evidence to convince me that Modalist explanation of the Holy Trinity is not very good at all.

God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is with us all the time and all the way. There exists One God before time was created and He is eternal - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Pretty heavy stuff, you might think. Pretty heady (as in intellectual) stuff. So the question remains, what can it do for us today in our time? My answer comes from our Gospel passage.

Nicodemus was on the right track. He was nervous being caught being with Jesus, because he knew and confessed that He must be from God. He wanted to know more. If he knew more then he could be more comfortable.

But Jesus had him off balance from the beginning. You must be born again (from above); you must be born of the water and the Spirit if you want to enter the Kingdom of God.

And "no, Nicodemus, you cannot manipulate God or the Holy Spirit. It is like the wind. It comes and it goes. And you know not from where it came or to where it went. (Please note that as you read about the "wind" John is writing the exact same word for wind as he does for "spirit." Both wind and spirit come from the Greek word "pneuma."

Again the question, what does this have to do for us today in our time? It has to do with this. Even as we earnestly seek to know God and we grow spiritually we learn that God is knowable ONLY as He is revealed to us in Jesus Christ and witnessed to us by the Holy Spirit. We know we are on the right track when we know and hear and confess that "Jesus is Lord" and that he came in the flesh, died, and rose from the dead. We know we are on the right track because it is the witness of God's Holy Spirit that tells us that Jesus is Lord and that He is the one who died for our sins.

All others gods and understandings are NOT from God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. All other gods and understandings are false and we are to reject them.

In so doing we can begin to have stability in a world that is torn by sin, broken-ness and strife. In so doing we have the rest and tranquility that John Calvin writes about in his commentaries about John 3:16. It is the tranquility of knowing that our salvation is solely from God and not dependent upon our human efforts. It is the tranquility of knowing that

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

In conclusion, if you feel a little confused it is okay. I have been struggling to express accurately to you a very important truth about our Lord. And it is a truth that defies ultimate human understanding. Why? Because it is God. And what we can confidently know from God is revealed to us by God. Amen.