Trinity Sunday: Relating with the Triune God

Unedited Transcript Below:

In the name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy. Oh man. So Trinity, Sunday It's a, it's a important Sunday of the year. And our colic starts us in an important place, right? Christians are given Grace. They're giving Grace to confess a true faith. We see Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to your servants Grace.

By the confession of a true Faith to acknowledge the glory. And it goes on from there, but we've been given a gift of Grace. Those of us who have received the doctrine of the Trinity have received a gift And it's a gift of Grace and it's unearned. It's been passed down to us by Christians before us and preserved Through the Ages, by the Holy Spirit, who's continued to preserve this Doctrine or the this true faith for us.

You've you've heard me talk about this before those of you've been around here a while on Trinity Sunday. But we have to reiterate it strongly every time. Because something that because something is difficult to understand. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try and that we should stop talking about it. Okay, I this is like Uh, this is more obvious.

Um, to say out loud, then what a lot of us experience. So a lot of us experience like, hey, things that are hard to understand, you just don't bother talking about it, you know. Um, we don't bother wrestling with something and so you probably have heard someone say. No one understands the Trinity.

They don't mean that like, The statements by themselves. All that difficult to understand but but what the issue is that when we put them all together that they that we're talking about the incomprehensible God and then all of a sudden whoa we just realized God turns out, God really is incomprehensible.

And so what what happens when we start talking about the Trinity as we quickly sometimes we'll be like, oh, that's just that's just stuff for like, theology nerds or people that want to go to grad school and psychology, but like, for regular people, you don't need to bother with that.

In addition to that, as I tell my kids, if The fact that you're feeling a bit bored, At some point in worship. Is not a sign that the church is doing something wrong. Like you guys know that liturgical worship is kind of built on that premise? There's like a whole lot of People like, Entertainment based church that's like, hey, oh it's a sin if anyone's bored in church.

Like no one should ever feel bored for like a single moment in church or you're doing it wrong? Let me explain something to you liturgical worship. We we don't believe that. Like you might feel bored at some point in church and it's not because the church is doing it wrong.

Might be an opportunity. For you. To reflect on. Hey, why am I feeling bored? Right now. Why is this? Boring me, why, what's going on with me when prayers of the people draw on forever? And you find yourself saying I'm bored. It's not because we have the wrong version of prayers of the people.

If they would just turn to the renewed ancient texts and do that shorter version, it wouldn't be so boring. Maybe the question is about me. Why am I so Restless? That I can't sit still for five minutes. You know, maybe that, maybe that's something that I have to do with me.

And listen. That's not like, just a lay person thing, pre-skip board too. So, uh, so like it, but it's something that we have to Ask the question. And when we're talking about something like Doctrine, like the doctrine of the Trinity, it's important to say that at the outset. A lot of times, people will say what we want, our teaching, we want our preaching to be relevant and that it's really just a code word for entertaining or, interesting, or titillating.

That's what is meant by relevant. Um, Of it. I'm like if the Trinity is true, it's relevant and your experience of being entertained by preaching has nothing to do with whether it's relevant or not. It's relevant. If it's true. Um and it's irrelevant if it's not, but that that's the reality.

If if this is who God is it's relevant to you and it's relevant to me regardless of whether you're feeling entertained. Um and whether you're feeling interested, so that's just an important thing to recognize. When we come to the outset of something like the Doctrine of the Trinity is like Okay, so it's hard to understand and reading about it might be kind of boring.

I'm telling you, like, if I read like, Long books about the Trinity. I fall asleep like several times like like I might but that's not a a book problem that's like often to me problem that I'm just lacking the ability to have sustained attention on something, right? So if we're to just lay out the doctrine of God, and we're going to do this quickly because we're actually spending more of our time, talking about what Saint Paul talks about with our, which is our relationship to God.

But the doctrine of the Trinity. If we're to lay this out and it's important to lay this out. We we lit you guys live in an area where maybe no one on your street. The doctrine of the Trinity. So it's, this is kind of a unique place for that like, um, And, I mean, in a lot of places in the country a lot.

No one on your street could articulate the doctrine of the Trinity. But but at least they would say, they believe it. Now, we live in a context where Most people would explicitly deny, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Most of the people that you interact with Um, so it's important that you're able to articulate the doctrine if you're going to live in Utah, like it's important that you're able to articulate.

So when someone asks you, hey, what do you believe about God, you can answer that question. I'm not saying you can win an argument with them and flex your muscles and like, but like you can at least answer the question. What do you guys believe about God? Right, that's pretty basic.

Like that's that's not combative. If someone were to ask you that, it's not Crazy that someone might ask you that like someone might ask you that. Well, hey, what do you guys believe about God? And it's important that you're able to at least articulate what you believe about. God, that's lay people that's pastors.

That's all of us. We have to be able to articulate that. So if we're quickly going to lay it out, Here's here's the doctor, the Trinity really quickly laid out. There's one being who is God, Right. There's one being who's God? He's made all things. All things came from him.

All things were made by him. Everything that is not. God is God. We're monotheistic meaning that we believe that there is one being that has the claim to being God. The other things in scriptures that are mentioned as gods, smallgy gods, they're powerful beings. They're but they are created by God.

That's what makes them different from God himself that there's only one uncreated. All self-existing self-determining being in the universe. This is God right? One God one being. Who is God? The father is fully God. The son is fully God. And the Holy spirit is fully God. Right. And these three persons.

Are distinguishable. Meaning that the father is not the son or the Holy Spirit, and the son is not the father, and the son is not the Holy Spirit and the holy spirit's, not the father or the son, right? So they're distinguishable. From each other. But yet, they're Inseparable. In both their shared being.

One being who is God right back to that, both in their shared being and in their work in the world. This is called the doctrine of inseparable operations of the Holy Trinity, right? So what the that's why Jesus can say, hey, don't, you know, Philip that to look at me is to look at the father, Not saying I am the father, but he's saying our operations are inseparable.

Where I am. The father, is because we share in one being, right? So I am the father are one to see means to see the father, And yet, he's not saying I am the father. Okay. So again None of these statements are that difficult to grasp on their own, but once we are Holding them all at the same time, we're quickly realizing.

Hey, this now we're in the realm of incomprehensible. There's one God. With three distinguishable yet not separable. Persons. Who each have a claim to be fully gone? Yet, there are not three Gods, but one, we'll say all that in the efination Creed which you guys will get to recite in a moment.

So, uh, so but but yet, um, and so what once we're holding it all together, we're recognizing, okay. This is incomprehensible, that doesn't mean we can't articulate it. It means that we recognize, it's beyond our ability to fully apprehend. And, and The only one who fully apprehends the being of God is God.

He's the one uh, he because we'd have to be infinite to do so and self-determining to do so, and uncreated to do so and all the things that only God is for us to be able to fully comprehend or apprehend it. What's important is that we're able. So it's important to be able to articulate that practice that you know, being able to say those things.

Um, so that you can you can explain to people. Who might almost everybody walking around. Even people that have rejected. The doctrine of the Trinity have probably rejected, a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. Um, Because in order to make it more comprehensible often, we have, uh, not spoken those three things, and I just said to you, And we've suppressed one or the other.

We've talked about three Gods and we've talked about one person, um, or like so sometimes we just struggle to put all that together and so practice, if you need help getting conversation with others, you can call me anytime. I love talking about the Trinity. Even more importantly than that.

Um, I wanted to talk about our relationship to the Trinity. And what's pretty amazing when we talk about our relationship or our connection to God? Is that first of all, like our colic leads us to praise You realize that so we, we talk about the confession of a true faith and that's important But it says to acknowledge the glory.

Of the Eternal Trinity. It what's important to recognize here that when our call leads us to praise The goal isn't like to pass a doctrinal exam. Okay, the doctrine is important. But the goal isn't like, we haven't. Reach the goal if we can like Articulate, the doctrine of the Trinity.

What the goal is is to praise the Lord. To be able to enter into worship and to offer glory to the Majesty of God that when we are confronted with the Doctrine of the train, we we are confronted with God's incomprehensibility. We praise Him. We praise Him and worship him.

And we acknowledge the glory of the mystery of the Triune God. Saint Paul does such a beautiful job laying out our relationship with the Trinity In this passage. I I was I was reflecting on. I don't think there was a there's a better place in scripture if you want to say like when Saint Peter says, God made us participants in the divine nature or partakers of the divine nature and you're like, huh?

You know what? What does that mean? Saint Paul here. Tells us what that means. I mean he he explains to us what it means to be participants in the divine nature. What it means to relate with God? The God is a personal God. The guy who relates with us as three persons.

And one of the things we see here is that we're we're made full-fledge children of God as we participate, In the in the Divine Life in the life of the Trinity where we participate as children of the So we what Paul tells us is we're given this Spirit of adoption, right?

We're given the Holy. Which is he describes as the spirit of adoption. Now, the cool thing about adopted children, hey, this isn't hard but but we have to remember adopted children. They're they're children. They're children there. There is much children as biological children are so we don't have a huge amount of people that have experienced adoption.

I know Bob has and I don't know if others have experienced the beauty of adoption, but these are our kids. So when we adopt a child, they are our children, right? So, so when, when, when God describes us as his children, by adoption, he's saying, You're my children, you're as much my children as any begotten, child would be.

You are my adopted child you. So, you who have received the spirit of God are children of God. And it. Think about that. Um, and those of you with children, think about your relationship with your children. Um, those who don't have children yet or or don't have children at all.

Um, Can consider. Someone, you know that has like That has children. And when I think about my kids, I I'm so proud proud of them. They don't have to do something that neat for me to be proud of it. You know, like when they when they, when they give me like A piece of artwork that they've drawn.

Like it's beautiful to me. Like it, it's not going to get hung in any Museum. I assure you like no one's like, uh, but that they're my kids. So it gets it goes up on my fridge. And I'm like, that's the, this is, I mean, my kids drew this, or my kids did this or look what they have accomplished.

God, describes our relationship with him like that. Like a good father with his kids, like a good mother with her kids. This is the relationship we have with God. So we're children of God and our baptism were made children of God, we're baptized into the family of God, and at the same time, we're made co-heirs with Christ.

That's what Paul talks about here. So because, so we're children of the father and we're co-heirs of Jesus. So, the the air, Jesus, receives everything, the father has right? He, he, he's the rightful receiver of everything he has. His is, the yours is the kingdom, we say to God, everything belongs to you, and it all is given to the son.

As co-heirers with Jesus, we Receive all that. The kids have coming to them the wholeness of the Kingdom. Along with Jesus because we've been, we've received the spirit of adoption and we've been adopted in the family. So, we receive everything. The kids receive. So, it's important to just ask when we think about the Trinity, what do you and I, what do you believe about your relationship with God?

When you think, About how you stand with God. What do you think about? What do you think about that? Is he? Stern. Angry Monarch. Um, running things.

Like, an element on the periodic table, that's fun to. Dissect and think about, Or is he a father? Is he your father who loves you perfectly? And who's adopted you and his family and given you the spirit of adoption. Because when we are baptized into the faith, into the Trinity, we become children.

This is how we Relate to God. This is what it means to be. Partakers of the divine nature, we become children of God, And co-heirs with Jesus.

And finally, he says, We suffer. Provided we suffer with him. Now that part might be kind of weird, right? Everything was going so well. Uh, you know, Paul was saying, hey, we're going to inherit everything that a kid. Has we receive the spirit of adoption? We're coheirs with Jesus.

Everything's awesome. And then he just has to throw in this provided we suffer. Oh, that well, that was less cool. Um, What's the basis of that suffering? Well, part of it can be the low-hanging fruit that persecution comes when we proclaim the gospel in the world, but that's not mostly what Paul's talking about here.

He's talking about something else. He describes what the suffering is actually. If like, if you have your Bibles, which most of us don't because we read it from the little paper and I know that, but he goes on, you know, like Romans 8 doesn't stop where we at verse 17 where we stopped our reading.

And he actually goes on to talk about what that suffering looks like. He gives an explanation Following and it talks about P verse 23 is really the climax. But he talks about those who have received the first fruits of the spirit groaning with longing for Redemption of the created order.

So those who have received this Spirit of adoption are now groaning along with the spirit. Looking for Redemption. And so what, what to see here is like Okay, if we could all lie to ourselves. And say like this is as good as it gets. This is uh life is great.

Life is awesome. Everything is working splendidly. If we could allow to ourselves, we wouldn't have the type of suffering that that Paul is talking about here. But the problem is that we can't because we've received the first fruited spirit. And with that first fruits of the spirit with the Holy Spirit, we've received his longing for what is perfect.

We've received the spirits longing for all to be made right? And all to be set right in all creation to be redeemed in everything that was broken by sin, and evil, and death to be fixed. And all that's messed up to be made undone and and everything. That's true to be exalted.

And all, we're waiting for all of it and we know that we're not there yet and we who have received the first fruits of the spirit who have received that Spirit of adoption. In this. Current place where where things are? Are God's extending his kingdom? We're on the upswing.

I promise. It doesn't always look like it, but we're on the upswing, but we ain't there yet. We haven't made it home. And so because and we have the spirit recognize that and long for the day. That God will set this thing, right? And we'll heal, what is broken?

So, when we are baptized, we receive the Holy That's why we say to baptismal candidates. You are sealed with the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as God's Own forever. Right. And getting the holy Spirit's pretty great. I mean, receiving the holy spirit's pretty great? I recommend it. It's, uh, it's great to receive the Holy It's also hard.

Because with receiving the Holy Spirit, we receive God's longing for Redemption and we groan along with the rest of creation for God to make things right? And to heal So we suffer, it's a new type of suffering. Right, it's a new type of suffering. A lot of times when sufferings described in scripture, it's talking about participation in Christ's passion die with Christ.

Rise, again, to life here, it's talking more about our participation in the spirit groaning, So we suffer we suffer because we we have this new type of suffering where we're saying this isn't how it's supposed to be yet. But God's going to make it right? So, Christians, all of us, all of us, have a responsibility to articulate, what we mean.

When we talk about God, If someone asks you and I who God is, we should be able to give them an answer from a Christian perspective, right? This isn't true, only for people who go get degrees in theology, it's true for all people who would claim to worship this Triune God.

But it's not the end of our call. As if relating with God, is primarily about knowing the right data. The doctrine of the Trinity is a called a praise. As we learn about, who the God we worship is, and we acknowledge the glory of his majesty. And ultimately, it's about Union.

It's about participation in the Divine Life. Saint Paul gives us this beautiful articulation of what it means to participate in the life of the Divine we relate with God, as Sons and Daughters because we've received the spirit of adoption from the father and because of that, we get all the inheritance that children get as co-heirs with the son.

Come without suffering though. We suffer because we've been given the Holy Spirit. And when we are given the Holy Spirit, we have this longing for that inheritance. For all that is supposed to come. If we could convince ourselves as good as it gets or is this is how things are supposed to be.

We would have avoided this type of suffering, but we can't because we have the first fruits and we're waiting for the completion and the Fulfillment. The participation in the Divine Life is glorious. It's worth it. It's good but it does bring suffering. Finally, this should just This should lead us to praise.

Reflection on the Trinity leads us to worship the Trinity. The incomprehensible God has offered us relationship with him. That we might participate in the life of the Divine. So, let us worship. The Triune God today. Amen.