John 3 1-15 Trinity 2006
Trinity Sunday
John 3:1-15
June 11, 2006
“God Immortal, Invisible, Inaccessible, Hid from our Eyes?”[i]
Introduction: Art Linkletter saw a small boy drawing a picture. He inquired, "What are you drawing?" The small boy replied, "A picture of God." Linkletter told the boy that no one knows what God looks like, to which the boy confidently responded, "They will when I get through." Lots of people are running around today telling us that they have the inside scoop about who God is. On the other hand, many people in the United States and Europe would say that yes, there is a God, but you can’t see Him. He is out there but really unknowable and unapproachable. And certainly you can not understand or comprehend Him. Other people say they know who God is, they knock on our doors, hand us pamphlets on the streets and tell us the secrets of God on late night television. Then there are all the religions of the world and the different spirituality concepts of how to know God or find him within ourselves.
Today is Trinity Sunday. The Christian Church has celebrated this day for hundreds of years. As we do we contemplate the mystery of our God that has revealed Himself to be one God and yet three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How can He be one and yet three at the same time? How could he be the Father that creates, a Son that became a man and died for our sins and the Spirit that moves like the wind and creates faith in our hearts? It seems like our God is incomprehensible and we Christians are faced with the same dilemma that all the propagators of religion have. Maybe this is why we are reluctant to talk about God. “A little girl went up to her father and asked, “What is God like?” He thought about it for a while but didn’t really know where to start. He thought of the Hymn that they sang in church, Immortal, Invisible, God only wise, Inaccessible hid from our eyes.” He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing at all except, “Go ask your mother.” The little girl asked her mother, “What is God like?” Her mother paused, she to thought about the hymn, “Immortal, Innvisable, Inaccessable, hid from our eyes,” then she said, “Honey, that’s a good question for your Sunday school teacher. After the girl asked her teacher the question the teacher looked at the little girl and asked, “Didn’t you ask your mother and father?” She said “Yes, but they told me to ask you, you would think that after all these years of going to church and knowing God that my mother and father could tell me what He is like.”
Sometimes we get lost in the greatness of our God. Nicodemus had the same problem. He came to Jesus at night and in the dark. I mean, he was in the dark as far as his understanding of God and His kingdom. Jesus explains it to Him. Jesus talks about Moses in the desert and snakes being lifted up, the forgiveness of sins and the new birth that must take place. Nicodemus just didn’t get it. He didn’t understand. Finally he looks at Jesus and says I know how human children are born, how are the children of God born. Jesus tells Him that it is beyond his understanding; the Spirit of God comes and goes like the wind blowing through a field of wheat. But then Jesus tells Him, you can’t see the Spirit but you can see the evidence of His work, just like we can’t see the wind yet we see the trees and grass moving. Then Jesus gets to the point…if you want to understand God, if you want to see the work of the Spirit, to be truly reborn you must look at and believe in God’s Son and see Jesus for who He is…For god so loved the world that he sent His only begotten Son, that who ever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. I don’t know when, but the breeze of the Holy Spirit blew into the life of Nicodemus, He saw Jesus raised up on the cross then buried in a tomb and then raised from the dead. In the face of Jesus Nicodemus understood what God was like.
We have an idea about who God really is. A Jewish rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth went around claiming that He was God. The religious leaders didn’t like it. We know of two occasions when religious leaders in Jesus' day were ready to stone Jesus to death because of His claims. They finally succeeded in convicting Jesus of blasphemy and executing Him. The Jewish leaders had logic and common sense on their side. "How can the infinite God fit in a measly little speck of dust such as a man? How can Jesus be God?" That's like believing that we could stuff the earth into a thimble. It seems impossible to believe that God could fit into Jesus. Yet this is what we believe!
Many people think that we are silly for believing such a thing. Some say Jesus was a great moral teacher. Others say He was an inspired leader. Some, like the Moslems, believe Jesus was a great prophet. But few people are willing to believe that Jesus could be God.
The Apostle Paul made a clear confession about Jesus: "He is the image of the invisible God," "by him all things were created," "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together," "for God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things." Now, either Paul was a fool, like David Koresh's followers down there in Waco, Texas, who were willing to be burned to death with him believing his claims to be Jesus Christ, or Paul was a fake, someone who thought he could make a fast buck selling this religion to gullible Christians, or Paul's faith was true. Of course Paul was persecuted, hunted down and finally put to death because of what he believed about Jesus. That would have been kind of stupid if he truly didn’t believe what he taught and confessed. Paul understood what God was like because of Jesus.
We can strain our brains trying to understand how God can be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and not get very far. But we can get to know Jesus Christ and get a good idea from him who God really is. From Jesus we learn that God wants to save us from this evil and damaged world. From Jesus we learn that God's plan uses evil as a tool to bless His people, thereby showing His power over evil. While it would be a display of divine power to stop evil in its tracks, how much greater is the power that lets evil run its course and then makes evil turn into good at the end, better than things were before evil came along! Jesus showed that in His own life and death and resurrection.
How can Jesus be God? How can a mere man be God? A man was shown a glass bottle and asked what he thought was in the bottle. He replied in succession, "Well, it looks like wine or brandy or whiskey." When told it was full of white milk, he could not believe it until he saw the milk poured out. What he hadn't known, of course, was that the bottle was made of red glass, and its redness hid the color of the milk it contained. So it was and is with the Lord's humanity. People saw Him tired, hungry, suffering, weeping, and thought He was only man. He was made in the likeness of men, yet He is God over all, blessed forever. "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Him." The human body of Jesus was the bottle into which God poured himself. How God did it, I leave to him. It's no fun watching a magic show if I have to know how every trick is done. In a greater way, what good would it do me if God explained how He performs any miracle, let alone the grand miracle of pouring himself into human flesh! Instead, we sit back and enjoy the grand miracle of God pouring himself into Jesus.
All I know is that the Jesus who is in the Bible is the only God ever to give me the idea that God is gracious and able to save me completely from all evil. Jesus Christ is the only God who turns the kind of bad things that happen to people into blessings. Jesus showed complete mastery over the forces of nature. He showed authority over the enemies of humankind, the kind of authority a victorious general shows over the troops and people of the defeated country. He alone has undone death. No one stood outside His grave and told Him to come out. He raised Himself from death! If a dead man can tell himself to come back to life -- that's significant! If Jesus isn't God, then we are without hope. All we would have left is the other gods of this world who expect us to earn a place in heaven, or worse, the gods who would condemn us to endless cycles of lives. Who is God? Let us join with saints of all time and all places who have pointed to the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. When our children or anyone else asks us what God is like, may we point to Jesus. Amen!
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[i] After J. Lucas