“Full of God's Glory”
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8
Sermon Transcript for June 11, 2006
By Pastor Bob Coleman
This is Trinity Sunday. That’s a term that some of the church knows about and some do not. It comes in the liturgy of the church on the calendar of the worship services. Last Sunday was Pentecost, what I consider almost as important as Easter or Christmas because it was the birthday of the church. And the church, in its wisdom, has chosen to have Trinity Sunday follow. And I hope you will see after some of the explanation of the particular Scripture for this morning from Isaiah, a prophet of the Old Testament, what the meaning and purpose of Trinity is about. Let me first say to you that trinity, if you do a Bible search with your software and your computer, you will not find the word “trinity” in the Bible. It is a contrived word. It was created by the church to help explain something both mysterious and powerful—the revelation of God! God tells us who God is if we’ll just but listen as we read Scripture. And the trinity, the declaration, is to tell you the three ways that God has been revealed. And those three ways are God, the Father; God, the Son; and God, the Holy Spirit. The power of that is sometimes lost on people because we get so used to hearing it. It’s used in baptism, it is used in communion, it’s used in the end of prayers, and it’s used in the benediction many times at the end of the service. So we get used to hearing it. But there is very powerful teaching and foundational understanding and what I’m going to walk through with you this morning is the hopeful understanding of how you can experience God in three ways. For that is what it means. As Stacey used the image…I’ve never seen the trinity described as a snowman before, but it was a good one. There are interesting observations, but what I simply say to you is all we are trying to do, in the best human way, is to describe something that is indescribable. When you try to put into words who God is, the character of God, the revelation of God we fall short always because the words just do not capture the totality of it all.
In Isaiah, in the passage which you will be hearing, and as we walk through it, it was interesting because it came up for this Trinity Sunday; and I said, “Hmm, why for Trinity Sunday? I thought maybe there was something else. But in reading through it, it became at least clear to me, and I hope it will be to you, that God actually is revealed in three ways not exactly on the surface, but if you look deeper into what is there. One of the interesting thesis for the setting for this Scripture is the power of what Isaiah is experiencing in the holy of holies, or the sanctuary. Now people of good faith built this sanctuary for the purpose of housing a place where you could call it holy, a sanctuary to come to find peace and comfort and healing and wholeness, to hear the Word preached, to experience communion and baptisms and weddings and funerals and all other kinds of services. That’s what a sanctuary is about. When you walk in you may or may not feel that. Maybe you don’t fully know or have not experienced all of those parts and pieces that can be a part of a sanctuary. But Isaiah is experiencing it. He knows it when he walks in he’s in the presence of something mysterious and holy and powerful beyond himself. He is in the presence of God.
So it starts out in Isaiah, Chapter 6, Verse 1 and following, “In the year that King Uzziah died,” Isaiah says, “I saw the Lord seated on the throne high and exalted. And the train of his robe filled the Temple. About him were seraphs (those are angels) with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; and the whole earth is full of his glory’.” Well, if you walked into this sanctuary or any church and saw those kinds of creatures flying around, what would be your experience?—fear, you got the wrong place, what’s going on here, this is not something I am used to, scary experience? Surely Isaiah felt that too. For when he walked in, he was in the presence of God. Literally seeing God sitting on a throne? That’s his best way of describing what he saw and experienced. The angels themselves broaden the scope and awareness in their response. And thereby comes the first part of the Trinity for God is creator and creator of all there is. It is God, the Father that we use as a term to describe the generator of all that we know including ourselves. The angels said, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; and the whole earth is full of his (God’s) glory”. From the very opening pages of Scripture, the recording of it is to tell us of the power of who God is to create from nothing, everything, to create from darkness to bring forth light, and all of the stages of creation that are gone through. And then human beings are a part of that ultimate creation. The purpose of our creation is the same as the purpose of birds and trees and stars and universes and all of the things that are a part of the total. It is to bring glory and the whole earth and all of us are to be full of God’s glory.
It’s interesting, this Trinity piece. Some people said, “That’s who God is and that’s all that God can do and be.” There are some that have taken the stance of the deist, “God creates the world, started a system, the mechanical type of system that will go on and create everything as it is now today, but God goes off to some corner of the universe and does something else forever.” But this God, the God that is described by Isaiah and the creation, is still intricately involved in the total of creation today. It is not a system set aside for which God has left, but God is clearly with us and a part of us and a part of creation in this world today.
So if we say, “Who is God?” we start with God, the Father. But then we say, God, the Son, and that is the proper way to say it. The Muslims and people of other faiths complain, rightly so, about our language. It sounds like we say there are three Gods. There are not, there is only one and three revelations of that God. Moving on in the Scripture it says, “At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook and the Temple was filled with smoke. Woe to me, I cried. I am ruined for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips and your guilt was taken away and your sin atoned forever.’” What a powerful witness of the role of who Jesus Christ is. God chose later to come in a physical form that we know as Jesus, the Christ, son of Joseph and Mary upon this earth. It is through that incarnation that we know the second person of the Trinity—it is the Son, the Savior. Now God wishes and offers in many ways salvation well before Jesus Christ. And that can be a misunderstanding at times. But it is through Jesus Christ that the full revelation of salvation is presented. And it is through Jesus Christ that we now know the personalness of God where a creator God can feel some sort of connection with God’s creation. But until you come in human form and experience what your creatures’ experience, how can you truly be in touch? And God chose to do that. So we ask and we say, “God is creator. God is Savior, in Jesus Christ. And it is in Jesus Christ that we know the personalness of this great God Almighty.” And so we see the second person in this way.
And moving on in the Scripture it says, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us’? And Isaiah responds, ‘Here am I! Send me!’ How does that relate to the third person?--Simply in the fact that it is God who says, as Stacey quoted through Jesus Christ, that “I will be leaving you.” God would not stay with us in the physical form forever. But “I will send you another counselor. That is the Spirit, the truth, the Holy Spirit who will be with you and help provide you and send you forth to do the things that I call you to do.” Without the Spirit present here today in this sanctuary, we are only talking an ancient religion of something that happened so long ago. But the power of the Trinity is that God started the creation long ago, moved forward in all that is recorded in Scripture, and then all of you know of history is fulfilled completely and fully in Jesus, the Christ. But then it continues to be with us in a personal, spiritual way that touches not just the head, but the heart of who we are. God said, “Let there be light.” And the word was made flesh in Jesus. And together they come and we know God in one revelation as God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit.
It’s a powerful message that if you read John Wesley’s words, he too struggled with the power of what it means to try to say in a way something so mysterious. What he tried to bring it to, and what I hope will bring it to you by this illustration, is simply the personalness of God. We must always hold God up as it is described here in a place of holy of holies, the grandeur of which we should never take for granted but also that God Almighty comes to us in a personal way. You see, I am Bob. I am Bob, the son of Betty and Wayne. I will always be the son of my parents. Nothing will change that. All of you are a son or a daughter of someone. That is a relationship; it is a description of who you are. I’m known. When my dad was alive, when you saw us together it was clear to see I was his son. We looked alike in that way physically. But more importantly I became a part of who they are as their son. But then I met a wonderful woman named Joyce. And by her blessing of accepting my proposal, I became her husband. And so now that is different. I am now a husband of someone. A son and a husband! But then I moved forward and together Joyce and I were blessed to have two daughters, so I became a father. Bob, the son; Bob, the husband, Bob, the father! Three roles, but I am still Bob. And you know me differently yet but let’s not get complicated because we are only talking about the three persons of God.
But you see how delicate, interwoven, unique and special and simple God’s revelation to us is? We know there is one God—one God and Father of us all, one God and Savior of us all, one God and Sustainer of us all. The Trinity is not in the Bible. It is the church’s best opportunity to try to understand who God is and put it in a way that we can take with us. So maybe if at least one thing today you will do is to say, “Who am I?” in three different ways and to understand those personal connections that all of us can have at least three relationships if not more. But that’s Gods way of telling us, “I am yours and you are mine. When I call you by name, I call you not by a name taken off some list somewhere.” God calls us by name in a personal way as He did with Isaiah. Isaiah says, “I am here! Send me!”
The Spirit calls us forth. Whether we do it in the baptism, whether we do it in any other setting, it is God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit. It is keeping the desire of salvation for all of creation and the restoration that was perfect in the beginning to be restored in some future time in God’s plan will be the completion of our understanding of who God is. But until that moment comes, we can claim all three. Know that God has made you, know that God has saved you and know that God is with you. All three are important in your journey with the Lord.
How have you come to know God? Did you come to know God first as Savior then later as Creator or a reverse of that? Did you feel some powerful experience where the Spirit was moving and you knew God personally in that way and then knew that it was a revelation to lead you to Jesus, the Christ and God, the Creator? It does not matter which point you first touched God, but what does matter is that you continue to grow and experience God in all three of those ways. For the full revelation of three is how we can best fully understand not just who God is in a mental way, but who God is with us in a personal way.
I want us to take a moment now in prayer. Consider how you first came to know God. Or maybe you haven’t yet? Maybe you are still wandering in the wilderness? Maybe the opportunity to know God as the Sustainer or Creator or Savior has not yet come to you and you need to seek God’s blessing in one way or another? But, otherwise, think about how you first came in contact with God, how you first knew God, and hopefully how you continued to grow in understanding, receiving, and experiencing the revelation of God. Let us do so in prayer at this time, “Lord we may enter a sanctuary beyond the top of a mountain or along a quiet stream, we are in awe by your creation. Lord we may have fully been aware of how we have fallen short of your glory and we need to be restored to your grace and your forgiveness, the sacrifice of Jesus. Lord we may come to you in a quiet moment of the night, the holiness of worship, the touch of your Spirit through someone else’s touch who came to us in a moment, an hour of need. There are so many ways you come to us and you reveal yourself and we thank you, Lord. For each of us here today, we had that opportunity to be reminded, renewed, strengthened, remade, restored, and reclaimed by your power, your forgiveness, your Spirit. May we be filled with your glory so that the glory of your love in us will shine forth like a bright light and others will see you in us, that you might be revealed through us to others by the light of your Spirit. We thank you, gracious God, in your name as Father, in your name as Son, in your name as Holy Spirit, Amen.”
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