A. The story is told about a little girl who was drawing a picture in Sunday School.
1. Her teacher asked her what she was drawing.
2. “I’m drawing a picture of God,” the little girl responded.
3. “But nobody knows what God looks like,” her teacher said.
4. The little girl replied, “They will when I’m finished!”
5. Oh, how we wish it were that simple!
B. Another story is told of a little boy who came home from Vacation Bible School and told his mom that the VBS teacher had said that God is everywhere.
1. “That’s true,” his mother said.
2. The little boy asked, “Is God in the oven when it’s hot?” “Yes,” replied his mother.
3. The little boy continued, “Is God in the cupboard?” “Yes,” said his mother.
4. “How about in the fridge when the door is closed and the light is off?” “Yes,” said his mother.
5. “How about in the sugar bowl?” asked the boy, as he took the lid off the bowl.
6. “Well, I suppose he is,” answered his mother.
7. At that, the little boy slammed the lid on the bowl and triumphantly announced, “Got him!”
8. Obviously, the little boy had a lot yet to learn, and so do we!
C. Too often, we view God just like this little boy.
1. We think that God can be put into a neat little package that we can understand and that we can control.
2. But that’s not how it works.
3. Ultimately, we don’t completely understand God, and we never will, and we surely don’t control God and we never will.
D. “On January 7, 1855, C. H. Spurgeon, the 20 year-old minister of New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, England, opened his morning sermon with these words:
“It has been said by someone that ‘the proper study of mankind is man.’ I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.
There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, ‘Behold I am wise.’ But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild donkey’s colt; and with solemn exclamation, ‘I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.’ No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God...
But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe...The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.”
E. These words, spoken over one hundred and fifty years ago by the twenty-year old C. H. Spurgeon were true then, and they are still true now.
1. But today the human dilemma is that man does not want to engage in “the most excellent study for expanding the soul,” nor does he want to contemplate “Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.”
2. Today, humankind’s true desire is that the God of the Bible did not exist at all and they would rather have the god of their own making.
3. Erwin Lutzer, in his book, “Ten Lies About God,” writes: [the statement] “‘I believe in God’ is perhaps one of the most meaningless statements we can make today. The word God has become a canvas on which each is free to paint his own portrait of the divine; like the boy scribbling at his desk, we can draw God according to whatever specifications we please. For some He is ‘psychic energy”; for others He is ‘whatever is stronger than I am’ or ‘an inner power to lead us to deeper consciousness.’ To say, ‘I believe in God’ might simply mean that we are seeing ourselves in a full-length mirror” (pp.2-3).
4. Donald McCullough adds: “When the true story gets told, whether in the partial light of historical perspective or in the perfect light of eternity, it may well be revealed that the worst sin of the church at the end of the twentieth century has been the trivialization of God...We prefer the illusion of a safer deity, and so we have pared God down to more manageable proportions” (Ten Lies About God by Erwin Lutzer).
F. Today, I want to challenge us, as Spurgeon did, to engage in “the most excellent study for expanding the soul” - to contemplate “the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.”
1. And so we have arrived at the last question in our sermon series “Got Questions? Answering Faith’s Great Questions.”
2. The question is: Do Christians Worship Three Gods or One?
3. What exactly is the Trinity? And is it Biblical?
G. Let’ me begin by saying that the most difficult thing about the Christian concept of the Trinity is that there is no way to perfectly and completely understand it.
1. The Trinity is a concept that is impossible for any human being to fully understand, let alone explain.
a. The word “trinity” is not found in Scripture.
b. The word comes from the Latin word “trinitas” which means “state of being threefold.”
c. So it is a word used to describe the unity of the Godhead as three coeternal, coequal Persons, each having the same, but distinct substance.
2. God is infinitely greater than we are; therefore, we should not expect to be able to fully understand Him.
a. J. I. Packer wrote: “Here we face the most dizzying and unfathomable truth of all, the truth of the Trinity...What should we make of it? In itself, the divine tri-unity is a mystery, a transcendent fact which passes our understanding...How the one eternal God is eternally both singular and plural, how Father, Son, and Spirit are personally distinct yet essentially one...is more than we can know, and any attempt to “explain” it - to dispel the mystery by reasoning, as distinct from confessing it from Scripture-is bound to falsify it. Here, as elsewhere, our God is too big for his creatures’ little minds (I Want to Be a Christian [Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 1977], pp. 29-30).
3. The Bible teaches that there is only one God (Deut. 6:4; 1 Cor. 8:4; 1 Tim. 2:5).
a. Deut. 6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
b. 1 Cor. 8:4 says, “So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one.”
4. But the Bible also teaches that one God eternally exists as three distinct persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
a. That is revealed in the Bible from the beginning to the end.
b. The Old Testament expresses the plurality of the Godhead in its opening words.
1. Gen. 1:1, “In the beginning, God…” – The Hebrew word translated “God” is Elohim – which has a plural suffix – it presents a singular God who is expressed as a plurality.
2. Gen. 1:26 says, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”
5. Each member of the Trinity is God.
a. The Bible teaches that the Father is God (John 6:27; Rom. 1:7; 1 Pet. 1:2).
b. The Bible teaches that Jesus is God (Jn. 1:1, 14; Rom. 9:5 Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:8; 1 Jn 5:20).
c. The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4; 1 Cor. 3:16).
6. The Bible teaches that the persons of the Trinity each have different roles to play in the creation and redemption of all things.
7. There have been many attempts to develop illustrations to explain the Trinity, but all of them fail to adequately explain the Godhead.
a. Some have used the illustration of the egg with its three parts – shell, white and yoke.
b. Others have used the illustration of the apple with its three parts – skin, flesh and seeds.
c. The illustration of water is probably the best, with its three forms – liquid, vapor and ice.
d. But in the end, we realize that an infinite God cannot be fully described by a finite illustration.
H. One thing that I would like us to marvel at this morning is the fact that the Trinity means that God is, in essence, relational.
1. Timothy Keller, in his book, The Reason for God, does an amazing job explaining the relational nature of the Godhead.
2. I will be leaning heavily on some of Keller’s observations.
3. The gospel writer John describes the Son as living from all eternity at the Father’s side, or as early translations said, “in the bosom of the Father” (Jn. 1:18).
a. This was an ancient metaphor for love and intimacy.
4. Later in John’s gospel, Jesus, the Son, describes the Spirit as living to “glorify” him (Jn. 16:14).
a. In turn, the Son glorifies the Father (Jn. 17:4), and the Father glorifies the Son (Jn. 17:5).
b. So the Spirit glorifies the Son, who then glorifies the Father, who in turn glorifies the Son.
5. What does the term “glorify” mean?
a. To glorify something or someone is to praise, enjoy, and delight in them.
b. To glorify someone is also to serve or defer to him or her.
6. What does it mean, then, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit glorify one another?
a. Let’s think about self-centeredness as being stationary.
b. In self-centeredness we demand that others orbit around us.
c. In our relationships, we often do things and give affection to others only as it helps us meet our personal goals and fulfills us.
d. But when we learn to really love others, it is different.
e. When we delight in and serve someone else, we enter a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other.
f. This creates a kind of dance as each of us seeks to serve the other person.
7. This perfect relational orbit or dance is exemplified in the inner life of the triune God.
a. The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness, but by mutually self-giving love.
b. Each of the divine persons of the Trinity centers upon the others.
c. None demands that the others revolve around him.
d. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others.
e. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love.
f. The early leaders of the Greek church had a word for this – perichoresis – notice our word “choreography” within it.
g. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote, “In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing – not even just one person – but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance…[the] pattern of this three-person life is…the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality.”
I. The Bible tells us that God is love, not just that He loves and wants us to love.
1. If the essence of God really is love, then if He were just one person, rather than three, He couldn’t have been loving for all eternity.
2. But if God is both one and three, in tri-unity, then loving relationships in community are the “great fountain…at the center of reality,” as C. S. Lewis said.
3. Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another.
4. That is what the universe, God, history, and life is all about.
5. We believe that the universe was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity, and we have been made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love.
J. Jonathan Edwards, in reflecting on the interior life of the triune God, concluded that God is infinitely happy.
1. Within God is a community of persons pouring glorifying, joyful love into one another.
2. God has infinite happiness not through self-centeredness, but through self-giving, other-centered love.
3. And the only way that we, who have been created in His image, can have this same joy, is if we center our entire lives around Him instead of around ourselves.
K. We might wonder why a God like this created a world of beings like us.
1. George Marsden summarizes Jonathan Edwards answer to that question like this: “Why would such an infinitely good, perfect, and eternal being create?...Here Edwards drew on the Christian Trinitarian conception of God as essentially interpersonal…The ultimate reason that God creates, said Edwards, is not to remedy some lack in God, but to extend that perfect internal communication of the triune God’s goodness and love…God’s joy and happiness and delight in divine perfections…to created beings…The universe is an explosion of God’s glory. Perfect goodness, beauty, and love radiate from God and draw creatures to ever increasingly share in the Godhead’s joy and delight…The ultimate end of creation, then, is union in love between God and loving creatures.” (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, pp. 462-463)
2. So God did not create us to receive the cosmic, infinite joy of mutual love and glorification, but to share it.
3. We have been made to join in the dance with God.
4. If we will center our lives on Him, serving Him, not out of self-interest, but just for the sake of who He is, for the sake of His beauty and glory, then we will enter the dance and share in the joy and love He lives in.
5. We have been made to center our lives upon Him, to make the purpose and passion of our lives knowing, serving, delighting, and resembling Him.
6. This growth in happiness will go on eternally, increasing unimaginably.
7. Just as Paul quoted Isaiah in 1 Cor. 2:9, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”
L. The story of the Bible begins with the dance of creation.
1. But tragically, in Genesis 3, we read about the fall of man and woman.
2. The perfect relationship between God and humankind was broken.
3. And when our relationship with God unraveled, all our other relationships degenerated as well.
4. But God did not leave us there. God had a plan to restore that relationship through the coming of the Son of God into the world.
5. Jesus came into the world to restore the broken relationship – to begin a new humanity and a new community of people who could again be God-centered.
6. And though sin and evil have marred the world and the people of the world, at the end of time, nature will be restored to its full glory and we with it.
7. Paul wrote: The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. (Rom. 8:19-24)
8. The last book of the Bible depicts the future glory that we were made for and that we will share with our triune God.
a. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Rev. 21:1-5)
b. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. (Rev. 22:3-5)
M. When we get to heaven, and are with God, we will say, “I’ve come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is what I was made for. This is the land I’ve been looking for all my life, though I never knew it.”
1. And this will by no means be the end of the story, but just the beginning.
2. As C. S. Lewis put it: “All the adventures we have ever had will end up being only the cover and the title page…Finally we will be beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.” (The Last Battle, pp. 170, 184)
N. What a wonderful and amazing God we serve!
1. He is one God in three Persons.
2. Those Persons live in perfect unity and love, and we are invited to join them in a harmonious eternal dance.
3. We are not expected to be able to understand it all, but we are invited to experience it all.
4. My prayer for us is Paul’s prayer: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2 Cor. 13:14)
5. Let me end with the words of the last verse of Come, Thou Almighty King:
To Thee, great One in Three, Eternal praises be, Hence evermore;
Thy sovereign majesty, May we in glory see,
And to eternity, Love and adore.—Anonymous
O. I hope I have given us some things to think about, and some things to marvel about.
1. Nothing humbles, yet expands the mind, more than the thought of God.
2. May our soul be filled with the mystery of the Godhead Three, in perfect fellowship and love for all eternity!
Resources:
The Reason for God, by Timothy Keller, Penguin, 2009
Our Trinue God, Sermon by Steve Hereford, SermonCentral.com
A Three-Legged Stool, Sermon by John Beehler, SermonCentral.com
“What does the Bible teach about the Trinity?” Article at www.gotquestions.org
