We Can Understand the Love and Work of the Trinity. Sermon on John 16:12-15 for Trinity, May 19/22, 2016

Many years ago I had a student in my catechism class. You probably know the type, he was one of those who would sit in the back and always had his hand up, “Ooh, ooh, I know the answer.” “Ooh, ooh, I have a comment.” Well, one day we were studying the Apostles’ Creed and I was talking about the Trinity, and this student had his hand up. “Ooh, ooh, I know the perfect explanation for the Trinity.” He was paying attention. His comment was related to our discussion. But I had to tell him, “Hold on to that until we take a look at the Bible passages in our lesson. If you think the Trinity can be explained, you might come up with some new false doctrine or you might be bringing up an old one.” The Scriptures clearly point us to one God—that was the Old Testament creed, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Yet Jesus commands us to teach and baptize “…in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:18). Jesus showed himself as God by his miracles, doing things only God can do—even creation, changing water to wine, bringing life to the dead, and by his Word as he says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). And the Spirit… the Spirit was moving over the waters at creation (Genesis 1:2), King David wrote about the Spirit’s presence in our hearts (Psalm 51:11), and in the New Testament, we read that the Spirit can be grieved by our sin (Ephesians 4:30), in today’s Gospel the Spirit actively guides, speaks and instructs. All three are active, living persons or personalities, yet one God, and how that can be is beyond our understanding. Those who claim to understand the Trinity either dismiss it completely (Arianism or Unitarianism) or they end up blending or confusing the Trinity (Modalism). Even our art and symbols fall short of the true nature of God. Triangles or three interlaced circles serve only as reminders of our God as three-in-one. They can’t really represent it accurately. But there are some things about the Trinity we can understand. We can understand the love and work of the Trinity.

 I. The Father who made us.

1. In the threefold blessing we hear Sunday after Sunday, we hear “The LORD bless you and keep you.” God first blessed us by creating us and creating a self-sustaining world to provide what we need for body and life. Something that we must remember is that our heavenly Father blesses in good times and in bad, because he even has his ways of making the bad things work out for our good—sometimes a bad experience changes our focus. Sometimes a loss destroys our faith in ourselves or it destroys our faith in other things we’ve been paying too much attention to, and then our faith can then be directed back to our God where it belongs.
2. He keeps us. He protects us. As we are taught to pray, he delivers us from evil. Older folks sometimes ask us, “Why am I still here?” After a health crisis or an accident, you may wonder, “How did I get through this?” Or you look at your life, and you see what others have suffered, and what you have been spared and you ask Why? Your heavenly Father blesses, keeps, and does it all in line with his good purpose and will. You may never know why, but you know that he knows. You also know it’s not luck. You’re not lucky. Fortune doesn’t smile on you. No. You have a heavenly Father who has a plan. In good times and in hard times you are always blessed, because God has his good purpose for you. He’s with you even when the earth seems to be giving way (Psalm 46).

II. The Son who made us his own.

1. Psalm 100 says “Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” We are his because he made us. But our first parents disowned God when they thought that the devil’s empty promise and the bite of an apple[1] were more important than obedience to the God who made them. And we have our apples, too. The temptations we fall for. The empty promises we believe. The wayward paths we take. The treasures of God that we throw away and we put garbage in their place. What Adam and Eve did, we have done too. That’s why we need Redemption— rescue— renewal—restoration. In his justice, God threw Adam and Eve out of paradise and told them that the wages of sin is death (Genesis 3:19). But in his love, he promised someone who would come to crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). Jesus, who came to make us his own—who came to bear the guilt of our sin and make us his own, completely, once again. He came to renew in us the holy image of God that Adam and Eve lost by renewing us with his holiness. In Christ we have overcome the world (1 John 5:5).  In Jesus, God gives us eternal life—the one way, truth and life (John 14:6).
2. One of the best teachers in our church body has said, “Whenever one of the members of the Trinity speaks about the others, they do so with awe, praise, and even some excitement.” Think of the Father’s voice speaking from heaven at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matthew 3:17; 17: 5). Think of Jesus speaking about himself and his Father: “My sheep listen to my voice… My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:29). …

III. The Spirit who makes this known to us.

1. …And in John 16 Jesus speaks about the Spirit. “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” That is the Spirit’s work, to teach us what we need to know.
2. The Father’s work is glorious—we think of creation, we think of every sunrise and sunset, we think of the change of seasons. The Son displayed his glory, too. He showed his nature as God by healing the sick, stilling the storm, walking on water, raising the dead, and rising himself. The Holy Spirit displayed his glory only once. That was what we heard about last Sunday with the miracle of Pentecost—a rushing wind, tongues of flame appearing on the disciples’ heads, and the disciples speaking languages they hadn’t learned, speaking boldly about Christ. It seems that the Spirit is content to step back and direct our attention to the Father and the Son. Really, that’s what the Bible is. It’s what the Spirit moved the prophets and apostles to write about the glory, love and work of the Father and the Son.

Conclusion: There are indeed many ideas about God in the world today. Earth-force, life-force, universal mind. Some scientists who still mention “God” think of “God” as the rules and laws of physics. All of these are only human guesswork, and all of these say so much less than what God has chosen to reveal to us by his Spirit. A Father who made you, a Son who reached out to you and made you his own and a Spirit who makes this known to you is a God of love. A God who has been working for you from the beginning. A God who invites you to himself, and who calls you to follow him closely. He also calls you to be his salt and light in the world, bringing this message to others—making known what has been made known to you—and making your joy complete (see John 15:11 and 2 John 1:12).

Amen.

John 16:12-15

¹² “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. ¹³ But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. ¹⁵ All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

 Pastor Stratman’s sermons are available online through the St. Stephen’s Sermon page www.ststephenspulpit.wordpress.com, and on his own sermon blog, www.pastorstratman.wordpress.com.

[1] The Bible doesn’t specify the kind of fruit.  I use the word “apple” because it’s the common image we have.