Trinity
Rom
11:33-36
6/11/17
Today is the Feast of the Holy
Trinity. The timing of this Sunday
really isn’t hard to understand. During Holy Week we saw Jesus Christ - the Son
of God who was sent by the Father - die on the cross for our sins. On Easter the Father raised him from the
dead. Forty days later, Jesus was
exalted as he ascended into heaven and was seated at the right hand of the
Father. Yet before he did so, he promised the Holy Spirit and told the
disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they received this gift. Then last Sunday, we celebrated the dramatic
outpouring of the Spirit by the risen and exalted Christ.
Like Jesus’ baptism which began his
ministry, the Day of Pentecost focuses our attention on the triune nature of
God. Peter said in his Pentecost sermon
about Jesus: “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of
God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has
poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” And so on the first Sunday after Pentecost,
we pause to reflect upon the nature of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Unfortunately, this morning I have
some bad news for you. Our text, which is the epistle lesson for the Feast of
the Holy Trinity, is not talking about
the Trinity. Perhaps it was chosen
because it mentions “him” three times in the doxology as it ends by saying,
“For from him and through him and to him are all things.” But this is not specifically a statement
about the Trinity. There’s nothing in
the context to support that claim.
Instead, what Paul has been doing
since the start of chapter nine is to talk about how we are to understand the
descendants of Israel – the Jews – and their general rejection of the
Gospel. Paul has just expressed a
mystery – that somehow God has been at work through this to save the
Gentiles. Yet at the same time in doing
so he has not abandoned Israel. Instead the
apostle says, “For
just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy
because of their disobedience,
so
they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they
also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he
may have mercy on all.”
Now we
probably want to ask: “So how exactly does that work?” But at this point, the apostle has run out of
answers that he can explain. Instead he
just exclaims, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” Paul’s “answer” is to throw up his hands and
say he can’t explain it. God’s wisdom and knowledge are just too
deep. His judgments are unsearchable,
and his ways inscrutable. Don’t go there because you are just not going to be
able to get it. God is God, and you are not.
In making
this point, Paul quotes verses from Isaiah and Job as he says, “For who has
known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a
gift to him that he might be repaid?”
Both of these verses come from sections where God declares that no one
guided him in creation, and no one can explain how he did it. We just have to
admit that when it comes to God, we are out of our league. As God says in Job, “Shall
a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer
it.”
Yet it is here that we begin to see a
connection with this day in the church year – Trinity Sunday. For if we are unable to understand what God
does, then certainly we are not going to be able to understand who God is. He will be a mystery to us. And sure enough, he is.
God is relatively easy to describe. He’s
impossible to explain. There is only one God.
But that one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy
Spirit is God. And yet there are not
three Gods, but only one God. That’s
what God has revealed about himself – about his nature; about who he is.
We should just be willing to concede
the point and say with Paul: “For
from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.
Amen.” We should leave it right there.
But we don’t. Because we really don’t
want to stand in a position of trust. We don’t want the stance of faith. The first sin was about wanting to be God,
and we’ve been playing that game ever since.
We think God should explain things to us. We think God should be
justifying himself so that we can judge
whether he make sense to us; whether his ways are acceptable to us.
It is, of course, a silly
demand. We are his creation and he is
the Creator. We are sinners and he is
holy. Because we are fallen and sinful,
we don’t even always understand ourselves and our own actions. How much less can we expect to understand God
and his ways? We can’t.
Yet it is at this point that we need
to consider why we even have a Trinity Sunday.
We do, because God has revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And we have this knowledge – this revelation – because God did something amazing for us.
In the days of the Old Testament,
God’s people knew with certainty that there was only one true God. They knew that Yahweh was the Creator of all
things and that there was no other god.
Sure, everyone else had lots of gods – Baal, Asherah … the list went on
and on. But none of them were really
God. Only Yahweh was God.
Now along the way, there were things
that made you go, “Hmm….” God said, “Let
us make man in our image.” There was remarkable
language about Wisdom. There was one
like a son of man in Daniel 7 who received worship. It made you wonder if there
was more to the story. But there was
nothing clear; nothing explicit.
And then, as St. Paul tells us, “when the fullness of time had come, God
sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were
under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” God sent forth his
Son in the incarnation as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the
virgin Mary.
God acted
to provide the answer for the very sin that makes us do dumb things we don’t
even understand – the cruel words we wish we could call back; the hurtful
action we wish we could take back. He did something unexpected and surprising
in order to save us. And in doing so he
revealed more about himself.
That’s the
main point I want you to take away from today.
You know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the triune God – because
he acted in love to save you. Or to put
differently: Your knowledge of the Trinity bears witness to God’s love and
salvation. That’s the only reason you have this knowledge about God.
Jesus
Christ’s ministry began at his baptism.
And boom! Right from the start we
see the Trinity on display. God the
Father speaks about Jesus the Son as the Spirit descends upon him. Anointed by
the Spirit as the Christ, Jesus carried out the Father’s will. He offered himself as the ransom in your
place. He drank the cup of God’s wrath,
so that you will never have to do so.
And then the Father raised up Jesus through the work of the Spirit as he
defeated death.
This is
what God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – has done to save you. And in order to apply that forgiveness and
salvation to you, the Son of God instituted Holy Baptism. He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit.” The triune nature of God
revealed at Jesus’ baptism is now spoken at every Christian baptism. The saving work of the triune God is applied
to you by water and the triune Name.
Trinity
Sunday is about God. We confess who God is.
In the Athanasian Creed this morning we confessed very clearly what God
has revealed about himself in Scripture.
We can’t explain how it is, but we can describe what is and is not
true. This is very important because if
you get it wrong you lose the incarnate Son of God, and you lose salvation.
But as we
think about the Trinity today, we rejoice in what our knowledge of the Trinity
says about who God is for us. He is
the God who loves us – the God who has demonstrated that love through
action. It is the action to save us that
revealed the triune nature of God to us. To confess that the one God is Father,
Son and Holy Spirit is to declare the astounding love of God that guarantees
our present and future.
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