The Trinity

Welcome

This year has been a crazy year for me. In January of 2022 I worked in IT as I have my entire adult life, I actually owned my own IT business. While I was an elder here at the church, I’d never taught in a large group setting, I’d definitely never preached a sermon in my life. Six months later I would find myself on this stage preaching my first sermon, six months after that I was asked if I would consider coming on staff here, and now six months after that, here I am getting ready to preach my first message as a member of the church staff, no longer dealing with IT beyond simple things around the office. Mostly my days are filled with uncertainty, I wasn’t expecting to be changing careers at 40, I’ve never worked in ministry, each days has some new oddity or quirk that I’m not expecting. So, when I was asked if I’d be willing to kick off this section of our Essentials sermon series, I was really excited to take this on. There is something comforting to me about Essentials, the foundations of our faith, the basics of what we believe, and why we believe it.

John 4:23 – Jesus and the woman at the well

Essential Belief Series Overview

So, why do we do this? Well, there’s a couple reasons for this, but primarily, this provides clarity, and clarity in a number of ways. There’s a clarity of Exclusion, what we believe and teach here at Fearless, is what makes this a Christian church and not a Muslim church, or a Jehovah’s Witness church, or a Mormon church. There’s a clarity of Inclusion, our core beliefs allow others to know what we stand for and for other churches to know who we are. In the essential’s unity, in the non-essential’s liberty, and in all things charity.

Then there’s the clarity of Conversation. What I mean by this is you may at times find yourself having a conversation with someone that perhaps disagrees with you or maybe you’re talking about some topic and want to know what the church thinks, well, we have a page, just for that.

Now, there’s actually two words related to essentials that you will sometimes hear mentioned, those words are Theology & Doctrine, don’t check out yet, if you heard those words and immediately thought, well this isn’t for me, I get that, but please stick it out for just a bit with me. Theology is simply the study of God, and Doctrine is simply what we teach as a church based on what we find in our study of God.

So, our essentials series is simply an opportunity for us as a church to go over what we know about God from our study of Him (theology) and, in regard to certain topics, define for everyone what we teach here as a church (doctrine).

Alright, well, that is our “why” for having an essentials series that we jump in and out of over the course of the year and even year to year. Now, today we are actually kicking off a series of 4 messages around God and how he has chosen to reveal himself to us. The overview word for this is called the trinity, or the doctrine of the trinity. If that word means nothing to you at all, put a pin in that, I’ll get back to it here is a bit. Next week, we’re going to be going over God the Father, then, we’ll hear a message on God the Son, and finally we’ll hear a message on God the Spirit.

The Trinity

Trinity. You may have any number of reactions to hearing that word. Your mind may go to things or people having nothing to do with church. [Matrix] But, most of you are familiar with it as a church word. Most of you probably know it has something to do with God. Some of you might be familiar with certain images or icons that represent the trinity. Further still some of you might feel like you could explain it, but you kinda hope no one asks you to. There might even be some of you who would stop confidently at: “yup, that’s a word”.

My hope today is to provide you with something tangible when it comes to this topic. Yes it’s an idea, and an idea with mystery, but as much as it is possible to do so, I want to give you something you can hold on to, something that actually matters to you in your day to day life, and in your interaction and understanding of your heavenly father.

With that, let me pray, cause I need all the help I can get, and we’ll jump in.

Opening Prayer

Heavenly Father… Amen.

Introduction

I’m going to try to get through this without using a lot of big theological vocabulary…

Essential Belief Statement

Let’s start on our website, here’s what we’ve got on there:

We believe that there is one God, who exists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are each God, and that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are each a distinct person (Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 28:19-20; 2 Corinthians 13:14; see also 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 2:9 & Acts 5:3-4).

Boiled Down

That right there is pretty straightforward, but let me boil this down one additional step to three specific truths about God:

There is ONE God.

God is THREE persons.

Each person is FULLY God.

There you go, if my goal today was simply to have you understand our belief on the trinity, we are done. End of message, enjoy the rest of your day. But again, my hope here is to give you a reason to care about this beyond simply the next 20 minutes. I truly believe in and have grown to love the concept of the trinity.

Built back up

So let me put a bit of meat on these bones, and then we’ll move on.

There is ONE God.

1 Timothy 2:5a – For there is one God…

God is THREE persons.

The Father is not the Son or the Spirit

We see Jesus pray: “Our Father, whom art in Heaven…”

The Son is not the Father or the Spirit

What about Jesus? Is Jesus the same as God the Father? John 1:1-2 is quite clear on this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

When it says “the Word” here, John is talking about Jesus, in fact a few verses later John says “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”.

The Spirit is not the Father or the Son

How about the Holy Spirit being a separate person? Well, we get that from Jesus himself. In John 14:26 Jesus is speaking here and he says: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name…”

Each person is FULLY God.

The Father is God

I don’t mean to be a broken record, but we know God the Father is God, right?

From the first verse, Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The Son is God

John 20:27-29 - 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Don’t be faithless, but believe.” 28 Thomas responded to him, “My Lord and my God! ” 29 Jesus said, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

The Holy Spirit is God

1 Corinthians 3:16 - “…you are God’s temple (where God dwells) and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

So What?

Knowing who God is allows you to have a relationship with him.

Knowing who God is shows us he desires to have a relationship with you.

Why does this matter? Why did God send the Son? Why did the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit? The answers to these questions are the good news of the Christian faith.

Who is Jesus? He’s God. He was with the Father from the beginning of time, all things that were made were made through him. Who is Jesus? He is God. Why did Jesus come to live a life and die on a cross? So that you might have eternal life.

This is the gospel.

God is Holy

Sin Corrupts

The Son Redeems

The Spirit Secures

Galatians 4:4-7

Why does the Trinity matter?

The Trinity is how God loves us, how God saves us, and how God comforts us.

The Trinity matters because contained in its truth is the saving reality of the Christian faith.

My hope is that you take comfort in that, that you are able to see the beauty of the love God has for you in the reality of the doctrine of the Trinity. So I’d like to close today with what’s called a benediction and specifically the Trinitarian benediction found at the end of Paul’s 2nd letter to the church in Corinth:

“The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Let’s pray.