Posted on 06/06/2009 6:50:48 PM PDT by Charles Henrickson
“We All Believe in One True and Saving God” (Isaiah 6:1-8; Acts 2:14a, 22-36; John 3:1-17)
“We all believe in one true God.” Well, good for us! Is that what this is all about? Is that what Holy Trinity Sunday is about? Being able to pat ourselves on the back because “we got it right”? On Trinity Sunday we haul out the Athanasian Creed and feel good about, or at least put up with, saying things like, “neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance”--even if we are confusing the persons who say it! You know, we can kind of wrap our minds around the Apostles’ Creed and even the Nicene Creed, but the Athanasian Creed. . . . Just be glad there are not three incomprehensibles but one incomprehensible!
Seriously, though, I am glad we have Holy Trinity Sunday, and I am happy to confess the Athanasian Creed--I even understand it a bit. And the reason is, not so we can congratulate ourselves on coming up with these intricate doctrinal formulations. No, we celebrate Trinity Sunday because this triune God whom we confess--this is the God who has acted to save us and has revealed himself to us in this way. Therefore we as the church believe, teach, and confess what God has made known to us, and we defend that truth against all error that would try to twist or subvert the one saving faith. We do Trinity Sunday because we all need, and we all believe in, the one true and saving God.
Our readings today reveal this God to us. The Old Testament from Isaiah 6, the Reading from Acts 2, and the Holy Gospel from John 3--all bear witness to our saving God, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is a joy to have this saving gospel declared to us--it meets our deepest needs--and so we give our attention and our ears to hear and take in what God has to tell us and give us today.
Isaiah 6, the call of Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah is given a vision of the Lord, enthroned in his temple, high and lifted up. The angelic seraphim call out to one another, in awesome worship: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” What a majestic, awe-inspiring experience this must have been! Overwhelming, nothing like it! To come this close to the holy God, the God who created the heavens and the earth! What a privilege! Imagine how Isaiah could have felt: “Wow! I must be pretty special, that out of all the pious holy men in Israel, the Lord has chosen me to receive this unique experience! The Lord of heaven is calling me, Isaiah, to be his prophet, his special spokesman here on earth. He will use my lips to speak his holy word.” Isaiah could puff out his chest and hold his head high at receiving such an incredible honor.
But that was not Isaiah’s reaction, was it? No, quite the contrary. Instead, Isaiah cries out: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Yes, even Isaiah, the great prophet, had to bow his head and beat his chest when he looked at his own unholiness, and the unholiness of his people, in the brilliant, blazing light of the holy and righteous God. You see, the closer you come to God, the longer you live as a Christian, the deeper you go, the more you realize what a bag of worms you are, how really you are just a poor miserable sinner who must throw himself at God’s feet and beg for God’s mercy. There is nothing to boast about when we come into God’s presence. There is only humble repentance--but hope also, because God’s holiness and his glory are shown precisely in having mercy on lost and condemned sinners.
That brings us to Acts 2, Peter’s Pentecost sermon. Men of Israel, men who should have known better, were responsible for handing over Jesus of Nazareth to be crucified and killed. This shows the blindness and the unbelief and the hostility toward God that even the religious among us harbor in our hearts. By nature we all do not believe in one true God! We do not fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Instead, we shake our fist at God, hate God, hide from him, reject his prophets, and kill his own Son. We all believe in ourselves as our own god, and we want nothing to do with the true God, except to cloak ourselves in the appearance of godliness and goodness. That is our natural state, whether men of Israel or men and women of today.
But, as Peter preaches, the triune God has acted to save sinners, the likes of you and me. For Jesus of Nazareth was delivered up “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.” This Jesus is God own Son, whom the Father sent to carry out the divine plan to deliver sinful mankind, to rescue us from sin and death and hell. This Jesus shed his holy blood on the tree of the cross, to redeem us sinners and free us from the judgment to come. This Jesus God then raised up, loosing the pangs of death, because God’s Holy One could not be held by death. God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, crucified to pay the price for our sins, raised to give us the hope of our own resurrection, ascended and exalted to pour out the Holy Spirit on his church--the Spirit who empowers the church’s preaching and works faith in those who hear.
And now this Jesus is preached into your ears for you to know and believe and rejoice in! This is the good news, the saving gospel of our triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The same good news Peter preached is what you yourselves are hearing today. These are living and active words, quickening faith in your heart, so that you do believe in the one true and saving God.
Now on to John 3, where Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Jesus tells us why we need the triune God to save us and why we cannot save ourselves. “That which is born of flesh is flesh,” Jesus says. In other words, you cannot rise above the level of your origin. If your father and mother were sinful flesh, like their fathers and mothers before them, going back all the way to our first parents, who wanted to be their own god and so were cursed with death--that’s what Jesus means by, “That which is born of flesh is flesh”--that tells us it’s not going to be any different with us, their children, or with our own children, for that matter. Flesh gives birth to flesh. Sinners who end up dying give birth to more sinners, who likewise surely are going to die. We need a whole different origin, a divine “restart.” “You must be born again,” born from above, in order to see and enter the kingdom of God.
That’s where the Spirit comes in. “That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life, by whom we are born again, “born of water and the Spirit” in Holy Baptism. Born of the Spirit, we now are the children of God, God’s new creation, the Spirit blowing the breath of life into our mortal dust. The Spirit bears witness to Jesus, preaches Christ to us, so that we believe in him, our crucified and risen Savior. “For God so loved the world,” the Father so loved us, “that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And the Holy Spirit is the one who leads you to believe in Christ and keeps you in that one true faith, through the church’s ongoing ministry of Word and Sacrament.
And that brings us full circle, back to Isaiah 6. When Isaiah the prophet realized his own sinfulness, even as we realize our own sinfulness, Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips.” But the Lord did not leave Isaiah to wallow in his woe. The holy God dispatched his messenger, having in his hand something from the altar to cleanse Isaiah’s unclean lips. So it is for us today. Today at this altar, God’s messenger will bring you in his hand a gift that will cleanse you from your sin. It is the Blessed Sacrament, the very Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. The cup and the bread will touch your mouth, and God’s messenger will say to you, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
Dear friends, now do you see why we are glad to confess the Holy Trinity on this Trinity Sunday? For there is salvation in none other! There is no other God! This is why we insist upon doctrinal precision, to be absolutely clear about the one true and saving God as he has revealed himself, to guard against any error that may try to intrude itself against the truth. The glory of God and the salvation of souls are at stake! God has entrusted this wonderful, life-saving deposit of truth with his church, and there is no greater treasure on earth worth our constant attention and diligence. This is saving truth we’re talking about here, the only gospel that will forgive our sins, put us right with God, and save us for eternal life.
I am so happy and blessed to celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday! And so are you! Truly, we all believe in--and rejoice in, and live because of--the one true and saving God!
Ping.
Well, while I believe that the divinity of Jesus, the Messiah of Israel is a key, essential and foundational part of the teaching of true Christianity — don’t expect the cult groups (around here on Free Republic) to agree with you...
Thank you for the Trinity Sunday “preview”, Pastor.
While the mystery of the Triune God may seem uninteresting to current Christianity, perhaps we should ask its value to Christians who live in Muslim countries where the Trinity is attacked as being idolatry, the worship of three gods instead Islam’s worship of Allah, the one god.
As the Serbs were rolling in on tanks to defend their borders from the Albanian Muslims, they held up three fingers, their symbol of the Trinity. Of course, the United States under Pres. Clinton took the side of the Muslims, and many Christian churches and monasteries have been burned down since Kosovo fell to the Muslims, who continue to persecute the few remaining Christians there.
1. We all believe in one true God,
Who created earth and heaven,
The Father, who to us in love
Hath the right of children given.
He both soul and body feedeth,
All we need He doth provide us;
He through snares and perils leadeth,
Watching that no harm betide us.
He careth for us day and night,
All things are governed by His might.
2. We all believe in Jesus Christ,
His own Son, our Lord, possessing
An equal Godhead, throne, and might,
Source of every grace and blessing.
Born of Mary, virgin mother,
By the power of the Spirit,
Made true man, our elder Brother,
That the lost might life inherit;
Was crucified for sinful men
And raised by God to life again.
3. We all confess the Holy Ghost,
Who sweet grace and comfort giveth
And with the Father and the Son
In eternal glory liveth;
Who the Church, His own creation,
Keeps in unity of spirit.
Here forgiveness and salvation
Daily come through Jesus’ merit.
All flesh shall rise, and we shall be
In bliss with God eternally. Amen.
Hymn #251
The Lutheran Hymnal
Text: The Nicene Creed
Author: Martin Luther, 1525
Titled: “Wir glauben all’ einen Gott”
Tune: “Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott”
We sang that hymn this morning, as you might have guessed from the sermon title and opening line. Lots of great hymns today (from Lutheran Service Book):
498: Come, Holy Ghost, Creator Blest
954: We All Believe in One True God
960: Isaiah, Mighty Seer in Days of Old
507: Holy, Holy, Holy
940: Holy God, We Praise Thy Name
506: Glory Be to God the Father
The choir sang 504: Father Most Holy
And of course we spoke, responsively, the Athanasian Creed (pp. 319-20 in LSB).
Hymns from the Lutheran Book of Worship
191 Praise and Thanksgiving be to God Our Maker
195 This is the Spirit's Entry Now
166 All Glory be to God on High
165 Holy, Holy, Holy
248 Dearest Jesus, at Your Word
The choir sang Carey Landry's Abba, Father! based on today's Epistle Lesson.
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