Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Genesis 1; 2 Corinthians 13:11-14; Matthew 28:16-20
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  June 7, 2020

Today I’m going to preach a doctrinal sermon. In other words, instead of preaching on a specific text, I’m going to survey the lessons from Scripture which each refer to the doctrine of the Trinity. After all, this weekend is Trinity Sunday. Throughout the history of the Christian Church, certain days have been dedicated to certain things, mostly historic events like Christmas (Jesus’ birth) or Easter (Jesus’ resurrection) or Pentecost (The coming of the Holy Spirit). But today is the only Sunday in the year which is dedicated to a doctrine, the doctrine of the Trinity, which alone should tell us something of its significance.

I sense there are a lot of people today who don’t have much time for doctrine. They don’t think of it as practical or necessary and as a result they have a very nebulous faith. They might say something like, “I am a spiritual person. I believe in God but I don’t give me any doctrines.”  But a desire for faith without doctrine is not wise, much less practical. For example, what is a body without a skeleton?  That’s a bit gross to think about, isn’t it? Just a sort of mushy mass of skin and organs. You need to have a skeleton within your body to have integrity. You need bones on which muscles can attach and contract. You need a backbone to stand.

A jellyfish has no backbone. That is what a lot of people are these days: they are spiritual jellyfish. They are a blob of spirituality, a blob of vague assumptions with no spirituality integrity. They want to believe in God but they don’t want to define that belief. They don’t want to struggle with hard teachings or obey them or defend them. But this lack of definition comes at a cost. A faith with no doctrine is a faith that is difficult to exercise because it has no actual teachings to apply and is therefore weak. The faith of a spiritual jellyfish is weak and impressionable, swept away by the changing current of opinion, and cannot stand beneath the temptations and pressures of our world.

Doctrine is like the skeleton within the body that holds us up. Doctrine gives our faith structure and connects the different parts of our beliefs together. Doctrine constitutes the bones of teaching upon which our muscles of faith attach and grow strong. So doctrine is important; it is inherently practical. We need it to stand. We need it to grow. We need it to exercise our faith. Knowing what you believe matters! And when it comes to the skeleton of Christian doctrine, the Trinity is the backbone. 

The word Trinity means that our God is three in one or triune. Tricycle: three wheels. Triceratops: three horns. Triathlon: three events. Unity: The Trinity means that though we only worship one God, this one God has revealed himself in three distinct persons as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Everything we learn about in the body of Scriptural teaching attaches to this backbone. Take a look at our First Lesson from Genesis 1 & 2. The famous account of Creation may not seem to have much to do with the Trinity, but if you take a closer look, you’ll never be able to not think of the Trinity when you read Genesis chapter 1. Look at just the first 3 verses with me. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (The earth was undeveloped and empty. Darkness covered the surface of the deep,  and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  Here we read about God the Creator, the Father, we hear about the Spirit of God which is hovering over the waters and then we hear about Jesus, as God uses his word to speak light and life to all creation. Now at first it may seem like grasping at straws to see Jesus as the Word of God, but then you read a passage like John 1 where the apostle says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The truth is that we find traces of the Trinity’s presence in the Old Testament which provide precious building blocks for the full Doctrine of the Trinity that is revealed in the New Testament. If you pay attention as you read the Old Testament, you’ll come across evidence all the time. For instance, again from our first lesson, listen to the conspicuous wording in verse 26, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness…” Our image? Our likeness? Who is God talking to? The deeper you get into the Bible, the more and more you marvel at the way it all fits together. Although we usually attribute the Creation to the Father, the Son and Spirit were there taking part as well. So to the backbone of the Trinity, we attach the creation of all things, including ourselves, including our own souls! Including, specifically, the fact that God made us in his image, in his likeness. 

The Triune God made us to be like him in perfection and to be in relationship with him. And so when we lost that image in Adam’s fall, the Trinity began the working of our redemption and perfection. That’s what we see in our second lesson. Paul ends his second letter to his congregation in Corinth with this blessing, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: The undeserved, unmerited, unconditional sacrifice which Jesus made is best summarized with the word “grace”. And why did Jesus lay his life down for us? It was the will of his Father who loved us. God’s default position toward you and me, even in our sin, even though we turn from him, is always love. It was the Father’s love that led to grace in Christ. And finally, the fellowship, the partaking, the sharing with, of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who creates our faith and allows us, mere human jars of clay, to have fellowship with the Almighty Triune God. The doctrine of the trinity is the backbone on which our salvation is attached. It is the backbone on which the Holy Spirit attaches the tendons and muscles of faith. And finally, it is that backbone that allows us to stand and put our faith into action. And that’s what we hear about in the gospel lesson from Matthew 28. 

It’s the climactic moment before Jesus leaves the earth and these are his final words: “Therefore go and gather disciples from all nations by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and by teaching them to keep all the instructions I have given you. And surely I am with you always until the end of the age.” The distinction of being his disciple, in Jesus’ own words, is being baptized into the faith of the Trinity. What sets Christianity apart from other faiths? Other religions? We make disciples in the name of the triune God. This is our mission both personally and corporately as a church. We gather disciples. We tell people about a Father who loved them from before time began. We tell them about his Son, Jesus, who in pure grace lived for them, died for them, and rose again to accomplish their salvation. And we speak of the Holy Spirit who lives through faith inside our hearts and strengthens our faith through the Word and Sacrament.

I  very much doubt that learning about the Trinity is brand new to you today. But I ask you right now to consider, how much does the Trinity matter to you? If you found out tomorrow that God is not triune, would your relationship with him feel any different? Would it require a drastic overhaul in the way you think or witness or pray? How much does the Trinity matter to you personally? Pause just for a moment and realize how much you perhaps take for granted addressing God as your Father, or seeing the love of God embodied in the life and actions of  Jesus, or pleading with the Holy Spirit to strengthen your faith and help you in times of temptation? You may not think about all this when you think of God, but all these connections and connotations are present when you think of God. Because of the amazing way he was condescended to comprehensively relate to us in three persons.

There is an incredible blessing in knowing as much as we do about our God. So many people throw prayers up to a God they do not know. They sense there is a god, but they have nothing definite to hold onto. “God, if you’re out there…God, if you can hear me…God, I don’t know if you care, but…” They go about their lives uncertain of his love, of his power, of his very existence. They despair at the hardships of life as meaningless and look at death without hope of a future. We need to tell them about the Trinity. We need to tell them that they can, to a great extent, know God. For though he is infinitely greater than we are, he has graciously chosen to reveal himself in three persons so that we have three times the ability to know him! Three times the ability to understand his affection for us, his presence, his power in every facet of our lives.

The Trinity matters because all people long to know God. Jesus once prayed to his Father saying, “This is eternal life: that they know you the only God.” (John 17:3). To know God is to know him as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; anything less than the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t Christian. It’s more than a teaching. It’s not just something for theologians to discuss. It isn’t something over which pastors split hairs. It’s your backbone. It’s your creation, your salvation, and your mission. It’s knowing the true God. It’s joining his eternal family and having eternal life. In the name of Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Amen.