Sermon Tone Analysis

Notes:

Call to Worship

Prayer

Adoration (God’s wisdom)

Confession (Our failure to trust in view of this wisdom)

Thanksgiving

Supplication

Benediction

Sermon:

(Read vs. 11-14)

Maybe you’ve had an experience in your life where someone has showed up at your door offering a bible study or a conference put on by the watchtower society—the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Or maybe you have a Jehovah’s Witness friend or neighbor, or have stopped to talk at one of their street displays.

If you’ve had such a conversation, and the topic turned the doctrine of the Trinity, you may remember how strongly your Jehovah’s Witness friends argued against it.

The doctrine of trinity, simply put, is that God is:

“…one God in trinity, and trinity in unity”: that is, he is three persons, who are yet one essence, one being.

The persons are distinct from each other—not mixed together.

Yet, the substance of God is undivided—he is one God.

That is the historic, orthodox, and biblical faith.

But, if your eyes just rolled into the back of your head, or if your brain just started to shut down, or if you even felt a slight sense of panic at the mention of this doctrine, hang on.

Stay with us.

Perhaps when you were talking with those Jehovah’s Witnesses, and got into an argument about the Triune nature of God, you were stumped at certain points.

Or, perhaps you were able to hold your own.

And yet, to you the doctrine of the trinity is really just an awkward, difficult doctrine—one which must be defended because it is true—but otherwise feels like a math problem that you just can’t solve… 1+nothing=3?

And Jehovah’s Witnesses are not the only ones to object to God’s triune nature.

They say that Jesus is only a god, and not God the Son in the flesh.

Mormons, on the other hand, say that there are three separate gods who merely work together in unity (and many other gods besides).

Unitarians and rationalists say that there is only one God, who has no triune nature, and that Jesus was not God in the flesh.

They accuse us of being irrational, of contradicting ourselves when we say that there are three persons who are at the same time one God.

And our Muslim friends sometimes even charge us with polytheism.

What should we say to these neighbors of ours?

Are we crazy to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity?

Spoiler alert: we are not.

Their accusations, examined in the light of Scripture and of sound theology, don’t stick.

God is, in truth, the Triune God.

OK, so, that’s that.

We may have our closing song and benediction.

But here’s the problem: we could spend lifetimes doing careful study of Scripture in order to refute those who deny the trinity.

But do we really grasp it ourselves?

And how does Scripture mean for us to grasp it?

As an awkward math problem?

Certainly, in the Christian life, there is a place for simply saying, “the Bible says it, so I believe it.”

When seeking truth, in fact, that is where we must start.

And, the Bible teaches that there is only one God:

Isaiah 44:8 “Is there a God besides me?

There is no Rock; I know not any.”

Isaiah 45:21 “…there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me.”

And the Bible also teaches that not only the Father, but also the Son and the Spirit are God.

For example, Thomas says to Jesus:

John 20:28 “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus is truly and fully divine.

And also, Paul says that God’s Spirit among us is God’s presence in his temple:

1 Cor 3:16 “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

This is only possible if the Spirit is truly and fully God.

And so, God’s triune nature is biblical truth.

But this probably still doesn’t remove the awkwardness and confusion that you may feel about it.

Brothers and sisters: it doesn’t need to be this way.

The truths of Scripture—especially about who God is—are never meant to be merely acknowledged and defended.

They are meant to be a source of delight for us, leading us to a more joyous and exalted worship of God.

So, we are supposed to grasp this glorious doctrine of the Trinity not merely by agreeing with it, but by delighting in it.

And the key to this delight, at least in Ephesians 1, is to see that the gospel—our salvation—has a glorious, trinitarian shape to it.

Now, what I can’t do this morning is suddenly make God’s Triune nature easy for you or simple to grasp.

There are two reasons for this:

God is lofty, high above us, mysterious and transcendent in his being.

Because of this, there are things about him which are ultimately mysterious.

Not illogical or irrational, but still mysterious and beyond the ability of creatures to grasp.

Rich theology can’t be microwaved.

It’s not a TV dinner.

It’s a slow roast.

It takes time, soaking in God’s Word, hearing it preached, and contemplating his glorious perfections in worship, to develop a true and deep grasp of what God has revealed about himself to us.

But what our text this morning can do for us, if the Spirit will give us eyes to see, is give us a starting point for how to begin delighting in this great doctrine—to begin to know it more truly.

And again, the starting point is this: to see that our salvation is trinity-shaped; that God has acted as a triune God in his work of redemption; that our experience of being saved is an experience of the trinity; and that even our fellowship with God is based on his triune nature.

And actually, the truth is, we’ve already been delighting in the Trinity for the past two Sundays.

Remember: the Trinity is Father, Son, and Spirit.

And what did we already learn about the Father in Ephesians?

That he chose us before the world was made, to be adopted in love (1:4-5).

But what was the basis, the framework for our adoption?

God’s own Triune nature!

Listen to these words which the Son prayed to the Father just before he was arrested and crucified:

Love from before the foundation of the world.

Eternal love, from Father to Son.

A glimpse into the fathomless nature of God.

But just two verses later, he prayed:

So the infinite and eternal love between Father and Son, as we saw, is mysteriously somehow now given to us—a richness of grace which cannot be measured.

And we, mere creatures, are in this way lifted up and caused to experience the very life of God.

And again, we do not become gods, or members of the Trinity, or part of God.

Yet, we must not diminish the truth that we really do, in a creaturely way, experience and partake in the life of God.

We have union with the Father through the Son.

So then, the Father chose us and predestined us to a trinity-shaped adoption.

But what about the Son?

Well, as we saw, his eternal, only-begotten, unique sonship is the foundation for our own adoption, where we became the Father’s children.

We call the Father, “Father,” because we are united with the Son.

And we also saw, last Sunday, that the Son is the one who made our redemption possible.

By giving himself up for us on the cross, he secured our forgiveness and so opened up the way for us to be adopted.

So then, the Father chose us in love and predestined us for adoption, and we have been adopted in union with the Son.

Also, the Father sent the Son to redeem us (1 John 4:14), and the Son accomplished our redemption on the cross.

[Now, some of you may have noticed that someone is missing here: the Holy Spirit!

Bear with me.

He’s no less important in our salvation, and we’re going to see that in today’s passage.]

But look the beauty of this: how the Father and the Son together accomplish our redemption.

Have you ever run across the idea that the Father is angry, but Jesus, the Son, is loving?