THE TRINITY II
A Love Story
09/30/12
One of the things that I have taken notice of with our culture is that so often people confuse desire with love. I believe, in fact that desire and love are very different. But because we confuse these two emotions, we tend to use the term “love” in the place of desire. Or we think we love something, when we just desire it.
For example, when I say I love cheeseburgers, it is obvious that what I am really saying is that I desire cheeseburgers. I don’t have some sort of affection for cheeseburgers. People I find often use the term “love” when what they really mean is desire. Desire is in essence to just want something, to long for something. It falls well short of what love is.
This is not to say that desire is not part of love, it certainly is. I love my wife, part of that love is I desire her. I do not mean that in a strictly physical sense. I desire to spent time with her, I desire to make her happy, desire to bring her joy.
The same is true with God, I love God. But I also desire God. I desire to please God, I desire a close fellowship with God. Part of my love for God is that I desire Him.
As I said, Love is more than desire. Love is about not just wanting, but the willingness to put whatever it is you love above yourself. Love is like a mixture of affection, self-sacrifice, humility, and desire. When I say I love Darleen, I have an affection for her and I must be willing to put her needs above my own. I must be willing to make sacrifices for her. In my desire for her, I must humble myself and placer her desires over my own. There must be a willingness to serve her.
So it is when we speak of the love of God. God desires us, He desires to have fellowship with us. But love as I have said is more than desire, thus God in His love, showed affection by sacrificing Himself. By humbling Himself, in that He send the Son, the second person of the Trinity, to become one of us, to die for us. As John 3:16 tells us, ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
And as we are told in Eph. 5:2; “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
But what I want us to understand is that if love is about affection, self-sacrifice, humility, and desire, than for God to simply sent another creature into the world for us, that would not be a demonstration of love, For it would not be an act of self-sacrifice and humility.
Think about this for a moment, if Christ is a created being, would it not be possible for God to make million of the same kind as Christ. He has made billions of people, billions of atoms, could He not have made a million Christ’s if He chose to.
You see if Christ is indeed a created being, and it doesn’t matter if you say, well He is the first created being, he is still a created being, the possibility is still there for there to be a million others.
So if Christ is a created being, I cannot begin to understand how that is a true demonstration of God’s love. When you get down to it, how was Christ’s sacrifice different than the other created beings that were sacrifices in the OT. The bulls, the lambs, the doves, etc. All created beings. If Christ is a created being how can that be an act of love that includes humility and self-sacrifice on God’s part. It was Christ who made the sacrifice, not God, it was Christ who it is said humbled himself, not God.
If Christ is a created being I cannot see how His death is a demonstration of love on God’s part. It does not make sense to me. It matters not which number He was in the created order, in the end He is still a creature, a creation of God.
But my friends, if you believe the Word of God that Christ is indeed the second person of the Trinity, believe the Biblical testimony that Jesus Christ is God, the whole thing changes, and the Love of God come bursting forth.
We are told in Phil. 2:6-8 that is was Christ “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Christ was God, He is the eternal Son, the second person of the Godhead. In other words, God gave of Himself. And I put forth to you, if that were not so, then the love God would be less that the love we can give back to God. You see we can and should, give ourselves humbly to God, we can make sacrifices to God, in fact we are told to do so, yet if Christ is not God, then God simply send something He could have made a million of.
But He did not do that. He gave Himself, that is magnitude of His love. In it was see the ultimate example of affection, self-sacrifice, humility, desire. That is one of the points I pray you will keep in mind as we continue our study into the Trinity. And that is why you will hear me say over and over, that it is about love. Our love for God, and especially God’s love for us.
This weeks sermon title is “A Continuing Love Story” because I want us to continue to see how the Trinity is about love.
Last week I presented to you an illustration I believe gives us a very clear and understandable way in which we can see this thought, that understanding the Trinity is about love. Love is at the core of the doctrine of the Trinity. That is love for God, and God’s love for us.
The illustration went as follows. I make it a briefer than last week. You go into Brooks restaurant to eat. There in corner you see me with a young blond haired, blued eyed women who appears to be about 5’9” tall. We are doing the kissy kissy thing, holding hands etc. You come over to confront me, wanting to know what I thing I’m doing with this women who is not my wife. I protest and tell you that this is my wife Darleen. You object by saying, you know my wife Darleen, she is 5’ tall, has brown hair and brown eye, and this is not my wife. I continue to say, no you are wrong, this is my wife Darleen and you do not know what you are talking about.
My question was, what would be going through your mind about then. Anger, hurt. You would probably not like me very much after that, you would certainly feel bad for Darleen. And all those emotions would come from love that you have towards Darleen and myself.
I then asked you to consider if it were my daughter Brooke who saw me. Think of what would go through her mind if the same thing had happened. She has a more intimate love for Darleen that any of you. She knows first hand what a loving mom and wife she is. Think of how she would react if I said “This is my wife Darleen” to her. The hurt would be greater because the love is greater.
I also asked you to consider if it were my wife Darleen in that situation and I said the same thing to her. There would certainly be some emotions there. Hurt, jealousy, anger. Again, the hurt would be greater because the love towards me is greater and also of a different kind.
Last week I pointed out what each person in our scenario would illustrate, we have myself, illustrating those who worship false gods. The women, would be a false god. You, an immature Christian. Brooke, a mature Christian, and my wife, would illustrate God Himself.
What I want to do today is look to the scriptures and see some specific Scriptural truths that this illustration makes clear to us. There are four truths I want us to see.
First, God is God! That sound so simple. To apply this to our illustration we can say Darleen is Darleen. There is only one Darleen Fournier who is the wife of Stephen Fournier in the world. Darleen, my wife is unique.
God is unique, of course in much greater way. While Darleen may be unique in some ways, she does in have many things in common with others. She’s a person, she’s a women, she’s a wife and mother, and grandmother. Those are all things she has in common with others.
But God is God!! There is none other like Him. But that simple phrase, God is God, is so hard for people to accept. What I see as happening in the church is that we have sought to lower God down to our level. We want God to be our buddy, not our God. We want a grandfather, not a God who hates sins and demands holiness. We want a God who is fair, that is what we call fair. We want a God who measures up to us, instead of us measuring up to Him.
The reason I believe this has happened to such a large segment of the church today, is because folks want to come to church to feel good about themselves as opposed to worshipping and learning about God.
Here’s the thing, and this is important, it is ok to have simple faith, but we must never have a simple idea of God. I believe that far to many self-professing Christians have confused the two.
Alister McGrath in his book “Understanding the Trinity” states, “…if this idea of God is simplified, we don’t end up with the simple faith of the believer – we end up with no faith at all!” And I see that happening. That is why for so many people who call themselves Christians, the triune nature of God doesn’t matter. They have taken their simply faith to the degree that they have simplified God.
This simplistic view of God has turned the hidden and unfathomable God, into a god that is easy to grasp and easy to understand. He is just this guy in the sky, who is all about love, He’s my go to guy when things get tough. This simplistic view of God fits rather nicely into the box of our understanding. No need to concern yourself with complex issues like His nature.
It is like using the term to “female” to describe Darleen and saying that that is good enough. Think on that. If you say to me describe your wife and I say “female”, that is not going to tell you much because there are about 3.5 billion other females walking the planet. I cannot define my wife as just “female” because if that is all there is to her, then we can’t say there is anything wrong with my actions in the illustration, because after all, I was with a female, I am calling her “Darleen” therefore she must be my wife.
But that does not work, yet some want to try it with God. But, again God is God. I believe that God, that is the God of the Bible must be described as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And we must have an idea of what that means. Because God as the true God, must be distinguished from all the false god’s of the world. That is how God has revealed Himself.
What we neglect to realize sometimes is that God is not one whom we have to discover, God is the One who has MADE HIMSELF KNOWN!
Please listen and take note of the following the passage that show the uniqueness of God; Exo. 8:10; “Be it as you say, so that you may know that there is no one like the LORD our God.”
Exo. 15:11; “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”
Duet. 4:35; “To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.”
Isa. 45:5; “I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God;”
Psalm 86:8; “There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours.”
Isa. 40:18 “To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?”
Isa. 42:8 “I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.”
One of the most clearest teachings found in the Scripture is the absolute and total uniqueness of God. So my friends please do not think you can know God and have a simplistic view of Him. God is God and is worthy to be known, and in fact demand that He we know as He has revealed Himself.
The second truth that I want us to see is that calling something God, does not make it God. Our illustration certainly can bring home the truth of this statement. Just because I called the blond haired, blue eyed women my wife, does not make her my wife. That is something we can all understand.
The statement just calling something God, does not make it God may sound like a simple enough statement for us to understand, but I see this simple statement of truth of often times ignored by Christians. To many folks think that if someone calls something God, and they call themselves a Christian then its all ok. But what we must understand how are they defining God? We must be sure that when they say God, or Jesus, they are referring to the Orthodox Biblical view of God.
I will give you two examples from our society. I want to preface what I am about to say with this. Just because I disagree with the two groups I will mention, does not mean I dislike these people. In our culture we have redefined disagree with as hating someone. I do not hate these people, I love them through Christ. I believe they are deceived. So please do not think I have any dislike or animosity towards them.
The first example is a church over in West Oneonta called Spirit & Truth Christian Assembly. This church holds to what is called modalism which is very similar to an ancient heresy called Sabellianism, also known as oneness theology, some call it “Jesus Only” because they believe that you are only to be baptized in Jesus name. Because of time I am not going to get into the major differences but we will get to that in a future sermon.
My point is this, when you have a conversation with these folks, that is those who understand what is being taught by the leadership, they will you use the same terms as you. Lord, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, but what they mean by those terms, is not what we mean by those terms. They will say that yes Jesus was deity, but He is not the ETERNAL Son of God. In there theology God DOES NOT exist in triune nature. God is not one being made up of three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Yes they use the same terms, but it is not the same God that we worship, it is not the God revealed in the Scripture.
Again, me calling another women my wife does not make her my wife, and them called their god God, does not make it the truth and living God of Scripture.
Another group that you are perhaps more familiar with is Jehovah’s Witnesses. They hold to what is called subordinationism. Which is the teaching that Jesus Christ is not deity, He is not God, but the first created being. The Holy Spirit is simply the force or power of God. He is not a person. Again we will talk more about this a later time. But the point I want to drive home is while JW’s may in fact use the term Jesus, their Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible. Their definition of who and what Jesus is not orthodox Biblical Christianity. When they talk to you about Jesus, it is not the Jesus that is preached from this pulpit.
Once more I want to say that just because I am pointing out the fact that these two religious groups do not worship the God of the Bible, does not mean I do not like them, or hold some animosity towards them. I just believe that it is very important for us to stand up for the truth of Scriptures, and understand clearly that just calling something God, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, does not in fact make it so.
Think of ancient Israel for a moment. One of the themes of the OT is the fact that the people of Israel were to be different. They were to be different from the world, different then their neighbors because they were God’s people.
Suppose for a moment an ancient Israelite went to visit his Canaanite neighbor. There was the neighbor bowing down to carved idol worshipping it. Do you think it would matter what the Canaanite called his idol? Assume for a moment he calls his idol Yahweh. Would the Israelite say, “oh, that’s my God, let me worship with you? That’s pretty cool, we worship the same God.”
If the ancient Israelite knows anything about his religion, knows anything about who the God of Israel was, he would never, no matter what, bow down and worship an idol, just because the Canaanite called it Yahweh.
If he understood what the Lord had commanded in Exo. 20:4-5 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God…”
He would never bow down to any idol.
Yet some in cases that is what we have today. People bowing down, worshipping false gods, because they are called God, or Jesus. Part of the problem is that they don’t know what the Bible teaches about who and what God is. That is one of the reason I believe this series on the trinity is so important.
You see those who worship a false god will say, I love God. But they love a god that is not the true God, for they will love what they worship.
The Lord states this in Ex 34:14 “(for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God),” You see it does not matter if you are worshipping another god out of ignorance or not. It does not matter if you create an idol with your hands or with your mind, it is still idolatry. Not only is it is an abomination before God, but Scripture states when things are done such as that, we BECOME an abomination to God.
So we have looked at two specific Scriptural truths that our illustration makes clear to us. We will be examining two more of those truths next week.
I want to say again that I cannot stress to you enough how important I believe this series is. For I we really love God, we will want to know all about Him. If we love Him it should give us a desire to see Him as He has revealed Himself to us. As we go along in this series I hope to show why it is so important.
I will leave you with the gospel, that gospel that is power of God unto salvation. Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day. And has the eternal Son of God He sits at the right hand of the Father. I pray that the power of the Holy Spirit be upon you. That you might repent and trust in Christ.
LET US PRAY
