"The Mystery and Message of the Trinity"

Sermon Transcript for February 11, 2001

By Rev. Mike Beck

 

Let’s take a moment for prayer and reflect on the words that we have heard today. "Help us to be mindful that we are here in these moments to worship you. Make us mindful of how worthy you are of our praise. And let us lift to you our hallelujahs for who you are. And now speak to us through your Holy Spirit, through the words of your messenger, and let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts together be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You, who are our help, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen."

The extended time away has been really good. The three weeks provided time for rest for body and soul. But that amount of time also allows a pastor the opportunity to view the landscape of their church, of our own individual life, of our ministry in some really fresh and neat ways. We have been working hard over these last few years to develop a team approach to ministry. And I think the evidence of that has been seen extremely well during this time of my absence. We want to have a church that is not dependant or built around any one person. And I’m so grateful to our staff, to our lay leaders, who have gone about their work so faithfully when I’ve been gone. And I’m especially appreciative of Reverend Dan, and I know that during the time that I’ve been away, you’ve been able to realize more fully how blessed and how good God has been to us, to send us such a gifted man of God to be a part of our pastoral team. Sandy mailed me tapes of the worship services while I was in Florida. And in listening to them, I found myself reflecting at least on two things:

1. About the fact that you were getting some awfully good preaching while I was gone.

2. As I was listening to the messages I found myself thankful for the way in which God is using this Christian Believer’s series. When we come together to worship, we’re not having sermonettes and a lot of cute stories, but we have truly been able, through this series, to get at the meat of the Gospel looking at some of the basic doctrines of our faith.

This morning we want to look at the doctrine of the Trinity. I would ask you to reflect in your mind how many Trinity churches you have seen of all denominations. We were in Savannah, Georgia this Tuesday and took a tour of the downtown area. They pointed out the oldest United Methodist Church in Georgia--the Trinity United Methodist Church. But I wonder if we realize that the word "trinity" never appears in the Bible! And yet this doctrine, the word of which never appears in Scripture, in our Methodist "Articles of Religion", do you want to know what Article 1 is? It deals with faith in the Holy Trinity.

Here’s what Article 1 of our "Articles of Religion" says, "There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Now, as we prepare to begin, let me stress that in this doctrine of the Trinity we discover a significant distinction with the other two monotheistic religions of Judaism and of Islam who have no concept of this doctrine. We also find some very real distinctions in where some of the non-orthodox religious sects, two examples, the Mormon Church and Jehovah Witness, have no doctrine of the Trinity.

Let me try the impossible to give you a simple definition of the Trinity. We believe that the Father is God. We believe that the Son, Jesus, is God. We believe that the Holy Spirit is God. But yet we are not talking about three Gods, but one. And I want to use Reverend Nikki Gumbel’s excellent discussion of the Trinity in our thinking together this morning. He approaches a consideration of the Trinity with this three-part outline:

1. Is the Trinity biblical?

2. Is it believable?

3. Is it relevant?

Is it Biblical?: First of all let’s look at, "Is it Biblical?", because I mentioned earlier here we have a foundational doctrine that if you go to your Concordance you will never find the word mentioned in Scripture. The first recorded mention of the term is by Theopholis of Antioch about 180 A.D. And as we begin, let me be very clear about one foundational principle--the idea of monotheism, held so strongly by the Jews in the Old Testament. Jews would often recite these words, "The Lord our God is One". That doctrine continues to be clearly taught in the New Testament. One simple example, we could find it many places, Romans 3:30. "There is only one God." The Scriptures tell us. But the early Christians were faced now with two historical events that were revolutionizing their understanding of God. And I bet many of you can guess what they were.

1. First of all, we now had a life, death, and especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No ordinary man.

2. We also had the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

So as the church is coming into being, as the writings of the New Testament are coming about, the writers now in looking to God are also dealing with the person of Christ and the person of the Holy Spirit in relation to God. And I think it is safe to say that the concept of the Trinity, although the word itself is never used, permeates the pages of the New Testament. Let me give you five scriptural examples.

First of all, in the beginning of John’s Gospel, John, Chapter 1, Verse 1, you remember in John there is no Christmas story. He gets right to the heart of the matter with these words, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word...", definitely pointing to Christ, he says, "...was God."

Let’s go to II Thessalonians, Chapter 2. Versus 13 and 14 talk about the doctrine of salvation. Note the highlighted words. "God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of...", who? "...of the Spirit, that you might share in the glory...", the glory of who? "...our Lord Jesus Christ." All three aspects of the Trinity contain to these two versus.

Let’s go to Ephesians, Chapter 2, Verses 18-20 which talk about worship. We are told to "be filled with the Spirit." To "...sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father through our Lord, Jesus Christ."

And then in II Corinthians, Chapter 13, Verse 14, these words of Benediction that you’ve often heard at he end of worship. "May the Grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all."

So, yes the word Trinity never appears, but is the doctrine biblical? Absolutely, because it permeates the pages of Scripture.

Is it Believable?: Secondly, let’s look now, Is it believable? This is not an easy doctrine to explain or to understand. In the rather lengthy Athanasian Creed, written about 550 to discuss the Trinity, I found these words. And this Creed is not in your hymnal primarily because of its length. Get a load of one paragraph of this Creed; it’s almost laughable. "The Father, incomprehensible. The Son, incomprehensible. The Holy Spirit, incomprehensible. And yet there are not three incomprehensibles, but one incomprehensible." Steve, that’s one for you to sort out. Which causes us, at first glance, to react by saying, "Well, the whole thing then must be incomprehensible!"

But when the creed uses that word, incomprehensible, it does not mean that we are talking about something that is impossible to grasp. Rather, it implies, and hear me carefully, that within the persons of the Godhead, we can never grasp them fully, we can never pin them down fully. We’ll never be able with our limited understanding to fully grasp it. In fact, St. Augustine said this in terms of faith. An there’s a word for every one of us here. He said, "If you think you fully understand, then it isn’t God!" Now think about that one. If you ever think you fully understand, you’re no longer talking about the infinite God.

Well, we can never fully understand the Trinity, especially not in a few moments of a sermon. But we can begin to grasp it, perhaps best, through the use of analogies. Analogies are always limited. You never want to push an analogy too far. But let me give you five helpful analogies in understanding the Trinity.

First of all, the analogy of the triangle, where without question you have three distinct sides, but they are all a part of one essential shape that we call a triangle. The shamrock leaf. You’ve got three distinct portions, but you have one leaf. The one that’s always been most helpful to me is the analogy of the molecular formula, H₂O. H₂O expresses itself in three ways--sometimes it is water, sometimes it is ice, sometimes we observe it as steam. But all three of those things--water, ice, and steam--if you break it down to it’s essence, you have two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen.

A slightly more personal analogy includes these two. Let’s think about a book. A book first exists in the mind of the author. But a book also exists on the shelf of a library. And then when we pick up a book to read it, the book now exists in the imagination of the reader. Or finally, an analogy of a house. There are three men walking down the street in front of a house. One man, the architect, says, "That’s my house." A second man, the purchaser, says, "That’s my house." And the third man, the tenant, says, "That’s my house." One and the same house and yet all three men have described it accurately.

Our understanding of the Trinity will always be limited. Any of you that have it fully figured out, please come to my office this week and you will have my listening ear. But, we do not have to fully understand it in order to experience it. Let me use this example. I was playing golf a couple of weeks ago with Aaron down in Ft. Myers at a nice country club. We got in our cart, those of you who are golfers will especially relate to this. I noticed on the back of the cart a little antenna only about six inches long. We got in to the cart and in front of us up on the visor is a computer screen. We come to Hole 1. It gives us a complex diagram of the hole. It shows us exactly where our cart is located. And as we drive our cart up the cart path, we notice the little icon moves. I drive my first drive. I go to get my ball. I won’t lie. I get to the ball. It says, "Your drive went 205 yards. You now have 193 yards to the hole." We were playing a new course, and especially on Par 5 holes, we wondered how far do I hit the second shot to stay out of the lake? And Aaron has discovered there’s a little knob you can turn and you can move what they call, I forget the word, some kind of hair. You can move this down to where you want to hit your ball, and it will say, "You hit the ball 180 yards and you will land short of the lake." All of that, which I’ve never seen before, is being done by a satellite spinning around 220 miles above the state of Florida. They’ve got the same thing in some cars now and in airplanes. It’s called a GPS Tracking System. I did not have to fully understand how it worked. In fact, it blew my mind all day. How in the world is this thing working? But I didn’t have to understand it in order to experience it. The same is true of the Trinity.

Is it Relevant?: And then, thirdly, is this doctrine relevant? And each doctrine that we have looked at, we have tried to conclude by asking this question, "So what? How is this doctrine relevant to my life?" To try to answer that question, let me use a quote from Alistair McGraw who says this, "The doctrine of the Trinity is a summary of who God is and what God does for us." And he goes on to say that the Trinity is absolutely necessary for us to begin to understand God. But no one aspect of the Trinity by itself is sufficient. Let me use this analogy. Many of you like me probably watched the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago. And as always the commercials were better than the game. And there was one other thing, that if you’re a football fan you noticed that you have never seen before. When they did instant replays they had hooked together 32 cameras around the ring of the stadium. Back in the control booth was a person and a computer determining which camera would be used. But the thing that was new was this. You watched the instant replay on one camera, and then he would freeze frame it for just a second and all of a sudden he went to a totally different camera watching the same play from a totally different angle all hooked together. There was one touchdown run that the question was asked, "Did he break the plane of the goal?" And he used that instant replay system. One camera angle didn’t show it, but then they switched simultaneously to the other camera angle and when you looked at it from that angle, without a doubt it was a touchdown.

That’s the same way it is with the Trinity. It allows us to look at God from many different angles. Follow me carefully, we’re going to quickly conclude now. In the Trinity we have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. In God the Father, what do we see? We primarily see the transcendence of God. We see that God is the Creator of all things. When we look at God the Son, what do we see? Primarily we now see the human face of God and we see that God is not only our creator, but God is our redeemer. And when we come to God the Spirit we now see the imminence of God. That God is not way out there in space the creator of all that is. Yes, God is that! But God is also present with us right now here in this place.

Well, I like even better this analogy from the field of psychology which teaches that we all have three essential needs.

1. We need a point of reference. From where have I come? To where am I going?

2. Psychologists say we need a role model, an example to follow as we journey through life.

3. Psychologists also say we need a facilitator. Someone who will take the journey with us.

And some of you are already way ahead of me. Who is our point of reference? God the Father. Who is our role model, our example? God the Son in the person of Jesus Christ. Who is our facilitator, the one who journeys with us? God the Holy Spirit.

Is the doctrine of the Trinity relevant to our lives? Absolutely because it is about the God who is and of the fact that each one of you can experience Him in all His fullness. And so, as we close, I ask you these questions. Do you know this morning that you are created in the image of God and that He wants to be a loving Father to you? Do you know today the saving love of God made known in the person of Jesus Christ? And do you know the power of God present with us right now through the person of the Holy Spirit? You can know those things. God is only a prayer away.

Let us pray. "We don’t want to just talk about or debate this marvelous doctrine of the Trinity. But rather we want to be caught up in an experience of you--the creator of the universe, the redeemer of mankind, and the One who comes to dwell within us. So may each person here experience you. Experience you as the triune God. And in doing so being radically changed both now and for all eternity. Amen.