God Who is Trinity

So this is Mark, the Gospel of Mark chapter one, starting at verse one. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, makes his paths straight. John appeared baptising in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptised by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.

Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached saying, after me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptised by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased. The spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. Well, one of my abiding childhood memories, and I believe it's one that's shared by others, is of walking around museums, or a zoo, or some other touristy attraction, and my father would read every single plaque, every single poster. In fact, anything that had writing on it, he would stop and he would read that. Now me and my siblings were happy to walk up and, you know, have a look, maybe read the title, and then move on. Surely that was enough, but no, not for dad.

We would have been around five times, and he was just in the doorway, and we'd drag him through. Come on, dad. Come on. Well, you know what happens now, don't you? We go to a museum, and I stand there.

Isn't that interesting? In fact, on the way up here, my wife very kindly dragged our children to a museum that she had been dragged to as a child. A tour guide or something. I don't know. They went on a boat somewhere.

Now, I guess over time, I've become curious. I wanna know what happened. I wanna learn the stories. I wanna discover the facts. And so I stop and have a look.

Well, you know, I think sometimes when it comes to God, especially if we mention a word like theology, we can be a bit like the child at the museum. It's not that we're not interested at all. We're interested, but please don't make us get into the details. Don't make us stop and read the sign. I mean, that's for ministry type people.

That's for book type people. It's for those people who love to nitpick about everything. Not me. I'm happy to look, happy to read the title. You know, I'm happy to know the facts, but come on.

Do we have to stop and really get into it? But the difference is, when you're in a museum, you're just looking at curiosities. Interesting facts, but they probably don't matter that much. But when it comes to God, we're talking about the creator of the universe. We're talking about our Saviour.

We're talking about a God who is impossibly deep and glorious. And so what we did in Redlands over the last three weeks is we looked at a series which we called it's called Big God, Big Truth, or Big Truth, Big God, because we wanted to just stop, as it were, and read the sign. Read the plaque and have a look at three key truths about God. Now this morning, I'm going to be doing a God who is Trinity. But if you're interested, you could go on our website, and I've also done God who is eternal and God who cares.

You see, because you probably know about the Trinity, but is it, you know, is it that big a deal? Is it that important? Does it change our life at all? Why do we need to know that God, this confusing doctrine of God three in one? So that's what we're looking at this morning.

Well, rather than just assume the truth, let's see what the Bible has to say on this topic. And probably the easiest thing to do when it comes to the Trinity is to show that God is one. Now this verse is probably one of the most well known verses. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Famous verse from Deuteronomy where God is revealing himself to his people.

But you could also go to Isaiah 45:22, turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other. See, particularly in the Old Testament, I mean, it's through the New Testament as well, but particularly in the Old Testament, it was important to establish that the God of Israel was different to the pantheon, the multiplicity of gods of other nations. This was not a god who was wrestling theoretically with other gods for control. He was in full control. He was the absolute standard of goodness and perfection of love and justice.

There's no uncertainty with this God. He is God. And so a repeated refrain throughout the Old Testament is there is one God. There is only one God. There is no other gods.

But then we get to Mark one, the beginning of the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Right at the beginning of the New Testament, and you're like, yeah, I know. Matthew is beforehand. But from Mark, actually probably wrote his gospel first, this is the first explanation of Jesus. And straight away, we see something different happening.

Right at the beginning there, you have that prophecy, and we're told from Isaiah that one is gonna come to prepare the way for the Lord and make part of the paths straight for him. Now you can't see it in Mark, but if you went back to Isaiah, the word Lord there is like the word Lord up here in little capitals. Now you may not know what that means, but what that means is sitting behind that in the Hebrew is the personal name of God, Yahweh. Now we write in Lord because we're not a hundred percent sure that it is Yahweh. That's our best guess of how to pronounce it, but it was the personal name that God revealed himself to the people of Israel.

So Yahweh, our God, Yahweh is one. That's kind of what He's saying. And this person is gonna come and prepare the way for Yahweh. Well, who does John prepare the way for? He prepares the way for Jesus.

Oh, so Jesus is Yahweh. That's what Mark is telling us. Now at that point, you might say, well, that's okay. We're still that's still only one god. You know, maybe Yahweh came down and is Jesus.

But then, of course, you get to the baptism. And this is really the only reason we read Mark one. There you see Jesus being baptised, and a voice coming from heaven. Now there's only one person that gets to speak from heaven. Right?

God. So you've got Yahweh being baptised, and you've got God speaking from heaven. But you've also got the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus, who is the one God Yahweh. And the spirit, we're told, in verse 12, sends him out into the wilderness. Now who gets to send Yahweh somewhere, God somewhere?

Well, there's only one being that can send God somewhere, and that's God. And so within these few verses, you see what the New Testament does time and time again. It doesn't say, hey, guys, there's something called the Trinity. It just shows you the Trinity in action. And in fact, Trinity, you understand, is a word that we made up.

You won't... People often say, oh, the word Trinity's under the Bible. No, it's not in the Bible. And in fact, it's not a very, you know, clever word, because tri means three, un means one. So really, it's a word that means three one.

That was the best we could do. And so, again, you see here in Mark one, and you see it all through the other Gospels, and in particular, the Gospel of John, the God who is one God, three persons. Persons is the word we use, because again, we're not quite sure what word to use. Three persons in that one God. Now, of course, there are people who say they believe the Bible, but don't hold that Jesus is God or the spirit is God, and probably the most well known group that you've bumped into is the Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah is another way of saying Yahweh, and so what they're saying is we're the witnesses of this one God of the Old Testament. That's why they've called themselves that.

So let me just give you a couple of other verses where we see that Jesus is in fact God, and the spirit is in fact God. So the first is John 8. This is Jesus speaking first. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad.

You are not yet 50 years old, they said to him, and you have seen Abraham? Very truly, I tell you, Jesus answered, before Abraham was born, I am. At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds. Now Yahweh looks awfully like the Hebrew for I am. And when Moses says to God, who shall I say sent me?

He says, tell them, I am sent you. And so what Jesus is saying here is, before Abraham was around, I am. I am. I'm Yahweh, which is why they pick up stones to kill him, because they know exactly what he's claiming. Jesus said he was the very same God of the Old Testament.

And then for the Holy Spirit, this is from Acts. Then Peter said, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn't it belong to you before it was sold, and after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of such a thing? You have not only lied to human beings, but to God.

You see, what does he say? You've lied to the Holy Spirit. And then at the end what does he say? You've lied to God. Now there are just two more examples.

There's lots of examples. We could go to Jesus telling his disciples to baptise people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as though they, in fact, they are all equal. We can see the blessings, and I'll read one right at the end of our service, where the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all mentioned side by side. The Bible, over and over again, it never explains, it never says, hey, listen. There's one God and three persons, but it's just there.

It's there over and over and over and over again. Now that's very hard to get our head around, isn't it? One God, three persons. And so theologians have tried to come up with some sort of definition. Let me just give you one.

There is only one God. Statement one. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God.

The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. You might say that's not saying a whole lot, granted. Here's one of the creeds that we hold to.

This is called the Athanasian Creed. You've probably almost certainly heard of the Apostles' Creed. There's also the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, and in particular, those second two creeds were actually wrestling with the idea of the Trinity and also Jesus as human and God. Now there is, now this is the Catholic, that is universal faith, that we worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in unity, neither blending their persons, nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another.

But the divinity of the Father, Son, and the Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal. And you might say, and it's not saying a whole lot. No, it's not saying a whole lot. And in fact, what the best we can do as human beings is say, well, we're not putting God in a box, but is to kind of say, well, we know the Trinity's not out there. Like, we can kind of define it somewhere in here, but that's the best we can do. We can't know with more accuracy than this. Now that, again, is unsatisfying, and so what people have done over time is they've tried to come up with analogies to explain the Trinity. Now you've undoubtedly heard some of these. Here's one: ice, water, vapour.

So this substance, H2O, that we know of, sometimes it's ice, sometimes it's vapour, sometimes it's water. They say that's just like the Trinity, but that doesn't work. That's something called modalism. So different modes. Because in that idea, water, H2O, is only ever one of those at one time.

It can't be gas and frozen solid at the same time. But God, as you see in Mark chapter one, is Father, Son, and Spirit all at the same time. Another one that's been used is that someone will say, well, I'm a man, but I'm a father, I'm a son, and I'm a husband. But again, that's kind of the same as the previous one. It's like wearing different hats.

I am a father, and I am a husband, and I'm a son, but I'm not the son to myself. And in fact, the relationships within the Trinity kind of define who they are. Both of these fall down because they overemphasise the oneness. Another analogy that you may have heard is this one. The Trinity is like an egg.

There's a yolk, and there's a shell, and there's the white, but it's all an egg. The problem with that is each part is kinda going together to make up the whole. And Jesus, but Jesus is fully God. The Father is fully God. The Spirit is fully God.

They're all God. They don't kinda go together to make a whole. If it helps, if you don't like the egg, other people have used Voltron. Don't know if anyone's old enough here to know Voltron, but the different lines went together to. Never mind.

It doesn't work either. That, in a sense, the failure here is it overemphasises the separateness of them. The reality is, actually, there's no analogy that's gonna work. And I think the reason there's no analogy that's gonna work is because God's not part of our material universe, not as we know it. Now some of you, some people, someone might say to me, you see, you Christians, you've got this thing you can't explain.

It's totally contradictory, and you just try to run away from it. But actually, no. I want to say to you that the fact that the Trinity doesn't fit our reality is actually evidence that God is exactly who He has said He is in the Bible. You see, because what person would make up the Trinity? What person could come up with it?

We can't even conceive how it works, let alone make it up. Now I know there's mystery in all religion, but it's just not something a human would come up with. Again, someone might come back and say, oh, you're just trying to cover up for a. You know, you're trying to cover up for Mark. Mark just, you know, wasn't thinking when he wrote this down. He didn't. He'd forgotten or something.

That there was only supposed to be one God back in the Old Testament, and now he's kind of accidentally made three. Or maybe was he just trying to promote an idea that no one else agreed with. But again, that doesn't work. It's just all through the New Testament. It's not one writer who's made a mistake.

It's something that the writers talk about, but never try to explain. And I think the only place that this could come from is God. And for me, it's an enormous kind of proof to me that God is exactly who He says. The God who we see in the Bible is the real God, because where else would this come from? How else could you conceive of such a weird idea?

One God, three persons. We can't. But God doesn't have to obey our rules of matter and so on because He doesn't exist in this universe in the same way that we do. He creates this universe. And if you want to hear more about that, come and listen to God who is eternal.

Now why is all that important? You might be sitting there thinking, yeah, okay. I've had enough of this plaque. Seriously, man. Just move on.

Why does it matter? Why is it important that we understand the Trinity well? Would it really matter if we accidentally thought of the Trinity as, you know, ice? Whatever. Well, it does matter, and let me give you some reasons why I think this is so important.

The first is this. It helps us to understand God. I mean, kinda obviously, but we have the privilege as human beings, created beings, of seeing and understanding God, God who is our Saviour, God who is our chief delight. And how are we supposed to delight in Him if we don't actually understand who He is and what He's like?

Now it was actually a great privilege for me as I prepared this sermon, because I got to dive into a whole lot of books and read about the Trinity. Now you might think that's not interesting, but it actually is. It was really fun to read all about the Trinity. Let me just give you a little bit of insight into that. Because one of the things that I particularly enjoyed was when you came across passages like this one.

Because here you see the Trinity engaging in the Father and the Son engaging with each other. Father, the hour has come. This is Jesus praying right before His death. Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify You. For You granted Him authority over all people that He might give eternal life to all those You have given Him.

Now this is eternal life, that they know You, the true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have brought You glory on earth by finishing the work You gave me to do, and now, Father, glorify me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the beginning of the world. You see here into the mind of God as He talks to Himself. You see why Jesus came to rescue us. It's out of love.

Yes, we're told that earlier in John's Gospel, but it's also for His glory, to show how magnificent He is, to show how awesome He is, that He's the sort of God that would die for His people. The Son seeks the glory of the Father. The Father seeks the glory and the honour of the Son. You also see the Trinity working in lots of other places.

In creation, the Father creates through the powerful word, Jesus, and it's through the Spirit, the power of the Spirit, that it's accomplished. Our salvation, the Father plans, the Son carries it out, and the Spirit applies salvation to us. The power and the love of God in us, that's the Spirit. And so the Trinity helps us to see God in action in this world, and it's a wonderful picture.

It's a bewildering picture at times, yes, but it's a wonderful picture, and it helps us to see and understand our God. The second reason it's important is that it helps us to understand how love can be eternal. You see, if there's only one God in the sense of one being only, such as in Islam, how does that God love before creation?

He can't, because there's nothing to love. You can't love without having some object of your love. The Trinity helps us to see how love is actually integral to who God is. There is perfect love within the Trinity from before time. The Father loving the Son, loving the Spirit, loving the Father, and so on.

And it seems that one of the reasons that God creates us is to actually allow us to enjoy this incredible love, perfect love that He has from all eternity. He's inviting us into that. This helps us to understand why we, as human beings, are so relational. We are intrinsically relational. In fact, it's not by accident, is it?

That when God creates humanity, He creates man and woman and puts them into a particular relationship we call marriage, where the two become what? One flesh. Now I'm not saying it's an analogy for the Trinity, but it's a remarkable what's the word? It's a remarkable kind of reflection of God, isn't it? Because you have two very different people who now have to become one and work together as one.

And indeed, I would say all relationships which seek the good and the honour of the other reflect to some degree the wonderful love of the Trinity. No wonder we as humans thrive in good relationships and struggle when we do without. We were made to be relational, made to love, made to care for others, and to be cared for by others, just as God loves. You see, the Trinity not only helps us to see God's eternal love, but it helps us to understand ourselves as people who love. And thirdly, the Trinity helps us to understand unity and diversity.

People have noted that within the Trinity, though each person is equally God, they do not all undertake the same roles. You see, the Father sends the Son. If you go and read the Gospel of John in particular, even that passage I read earlier, you get this very distinct impression that Jesus is carrying out the Father's plan. He's doing what the Father has told Him to do. He's submitting to the Father.

The Father and the Son send the Spirit, and the Spirit's role is not to draw attention to Himself, but to remind us of all the truth of Jesus, to point us toward Jesus, to make us like Jesus. See, they're all equally God, but they don't all do the same thing. They're not mirror images of each other. There's difference. There's submission within the Trinity.

And so submission is not a bad thing, whether it be submitting to the authorities of the land, whether it be submitting to the authorities in the church, whether it's, controversially, husbands and wives submitting to husbands. Now submission can go wrong, and if you ever get into a place where you're demanding submission from someone, then something's gone terribly wrong. But you see, you see, within the Godhead, the Father acts only out of love for the Son and for His glory, and the Son vice versa. See, it's a perfect loving relationship, but that doesn't mean they don't have differences. Difference is glorious.

It's interesting. Our culture loves diversity, doesn't it? Loves diversity. We're watching the school spectacular last night, and there was a song all about how, you know, we're all different, and this is me, and you should love me for being me, and that sort of song is just everywhere. And I think to myself, we're determined.

We're determined to celebrate difference, and yet we have to keep reminding each other how wonderful it is. It's almost as if we don't believe it. And we also have this situation where, at the same time as we have created on things like Facebook and elsewhere, hundreds of different genders, at the same time as we're doing that, we're saying, well, there's no difference between men and women. They're exactly the same. Well, what's happened there?

You see, we... I... We want difference. We understand we have this sense that difference can be a good thing, but we don't know what to do with it. Well, in the Trinity, we see difference in unity. Unity.

And in the church, we should see the same thing. Difference.

Difference in personality, difference in temperament, difference in gifting, difference in opportunity, difference in background, difference in culture. But when that difference is bent toward the will of Christ in service of Him to promote His mission and His glory in this world, it becomes a glorious difference. Each part of the body doing its part, playing its part. And when we do that, we image, to some degree, the Trinity to the world. So the Trinity helps us to see how unity and diversity can work.

The Trinity is hard to grasp. Impossible, you might say. It doesn't match anything in our world. But I would say it's a glorious glorious truth. And far from making God hard to believe, I think it shows us a richness to God that is completely beyond us.

The Trinity also invites us to keep deepening our thinking, investigating, and enjoying the truth of God as we find Him in the Bible. For as you do so, you will delight more and more in God, our great great and awesome God, who is totally beyond us. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank You that You have revealed Yourself to us. We would never know You unless You had spoken to us through Your word by Your Son.

Thank You that You've shown Yourself to us as You are: Father, Son, and Spirit. And though we can't understand how You are one, we see the amazing way that You work in this world to create the world, to save us, to love us, to work in us. And we pray, Father, that far from wanting to skip on by and not take too hard a look at You in the Bible, that You would help us to long to deepen our understanding of You. And as we do that, we pray that You increase our delight in You. Our enjoyment of You would rise, and we would long to live for Your honour and glory in this world.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.