Trinity Sunday

Romans 8.14-17

Hymns:193, 195, 315, 194

There are any number of things in life where "getting it right" is absolutely essential in order to avoid a serious mistake or, at least, in order to accomplish whatever it is that you want to do. For example, we’ve learned from NASA that the coordinates for reentry of the space shuttle have to be exactly precise or the shuttle will burn up and the astronauts will not survive. Accura-acy is vital. "Any coordinates will do" is not acceptable.

Other examples: "any key will do" (to open a door or start your vehicle); "any letters will do," when you enter an email address; "any liquid will do," when you need to fill your gas tank. It just doesn’t work that way. You need the right key to open a door, you need to enter the correct combination of letters to send an email, you need gasoline, not any liquid, to run your vehicle. Everyone understands these things.

Yet when it comes to the worship of God many people will say, and the number of people who say it is growing, "any god will do." You know that this has to be the work of Satan. Satan is the father of the lie, the master of confusion. It was Satan’s lie, "You will not die," that convinced Adam and Eve to worship him and not the God who created them. As we now live in a world that suffers the consequence of sin in the form of wars and disease, terrorism and materialism, Satan would have us believe that these evils are the result of God’s negligence and indifference to our plight in order to make us believe that we don’t need a personal Savior from sin. And Satan, throughout the history of the world, promotes the greatest lie that going to heaven when we die is up to our own goodness and effort, and that it doesn’t make any difference which god we worship as long as it’s not the God of the Bible, the Triune God.

On this Trinity Sunday when we annually make a special point of identifying who the only true God is, let us say with clarity once again that THE TRIUNE GOD WORKS AS ONE FOR OUR SALVATION. That is to say, there is no other God be-side the triune God...no other God who has saved us because he loves us and wants us to be with him in heaven.

We must confess that there is no way that we can understand, in a logical way, that the God of the Bible is whom we refer to as the Triune God. The word ‘triune’ is not found in the Bible. It was the church father, Tertullian ( 230 A.D.) who first used that word to describe what logic cannot comprehend but what the Bible clearly teaches. The word ‘triune’ means "three-in-one" and expresses the idea, which we can understand, that there is only one God but that there are three unique and different per-sons who make up the identity of God.

In order to examine everything in the Bible that expresses the identity of God it would take one or two hours of a Bible study class to do that. However we can look at a few passages that reveal the trinity, the three-in-oneness of God. Isaiah 61.1; Mt 28.19; 2 Cor 13.14. And we have the trinity identified in our sermon text (read and identify each person).

What is that Paul is telling us about the triune God in this section? He is telling us that the Triune God works as one for our salvation. First vs 14-16. It is the work of the Holy Spirit who made you a child of God ("sons of God") by giving you the faith to believe in Jesus who took away your fear of death by paying for your sins. Again and again the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit calls us to faith, brings us to faith, enables us to say with conviction that we believe in Jesus.

Secondly, the Holy Spirit is described here as the "Spirit of God," that is, of God the Father. So the two are working togeth-er, the Father and the Holy Spirit. We confess in the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.) that the Holy Spirit goes out from or proceeds from the Father (and the Son) to do the work of bringing people to faith. This is based on what we read in the Bible about the Father and the Son sending out the Holy Spirit.

Thirdly, in our text, v. 17. Having been made children of God through the gift of faith in Jesus, we are then heirs, that is, we inherit from God what he gives us through Jesus his Son, and that is the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in heaven. When Jesus suffered on the cross for our sins, it is as though we suf-fered with him. Our sin, all if it, is paid for by Jesus.

And so we say that the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit works as one for our salvation. The three persons of the Trinity all work in harmony, yet individually, to save the human race from the condemnation in hell that we deserve because of the eternal joys of heaven that God wants us to have. This is the God of the Bible; there is no other who created the world, who paid for the sins of the world or who brings the people of the world to believe these wonderful truths. Therefore any god other than the Triune God is a false god, a god that does not exist and certainly a god who cannot save. It is not correct to say that "any god will do" when it pertains to matters of re-ligion and the worship of the divine.

Which brings us to important purpose of the three ecumenical creeds of the Christian Church. Let’s look at the history of the church: Adam and Eve knew and believed in the Triune God. Their son Cain didn’t; he worshiped the god, ‘money.’ From the time of Adam and Eve to the time of Noah, billions of people came to believe in many gods but not the Triune God and for that reason he destroyed the world with a flood. Obviously it was not true then that "any god will do."

The Children of Israel believed in the Triune God...during some parts of their Old Testament history. At times they worshiped the true God, at other times they worshiped Baal and Ashteroth, false gods. And God caused Israel to be led into captivity in Babylon because of their unbelief. Obviously it was not true then that "any god will do."

Jesus’ disciples believed in the Triune God. But soon after Je-sus ascension, members of the Christian congregations in Ephe-sus and elsewhere came up with different ideas, false ideas about who God is. By the 4^th century it became necessary for the church to identify and condemn false teachers. Creeds were written, which we still use today, for the church to confess as to the identity of the Triune God and what he has done for our sal-vation...which is why we still recite these creeds to this day, creeds that are timeless, as truth is timeless, as we confess our faith in the Triune God who works as one for our salvation.