Holy Trinity Sunday 5/26/13

Trinity Sunday 5/26/13 John 8:48-59 Holy Trinity Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. It is the one Sunday each year that the service focuses on the Trinity, as in the Triune God. There are three great creeds; that is statements of faith, of the Christian Church. Each one of them states in detail the fundamental beliefs of Christianity. Please get your hymnal. Turn to the very back page of the book. There you will see two creeds, the Nicene and Apostles Creed. The oldest of the two is the Apostle’s Creed. It was not written by the Apostles, as so many believe, but a council of the Christian Church fathers who needed to have a concise statement of the Christian faith, as taught by the Apostles; those who knew Jesus during his time of ministry before his death and after his resurrection until he bodily ascended back into heaven from where he had come before his birth. It was finalized around 235. It states the basic Christian belief. The second great Christian Creed is the Nicene Creed. It was finalized in 385. This creed came out of the Council of Constantinople which was started in 381. This creed while dealing with the Christian belief, as the Apostles Creed did earlier dealt with a heresy that taught Jesus was created and thus not divine. You will notice that the creed is longer than the Apostles Creed and although it deals with God the Father and the Holy Spirit it mostly deals with the divinity of Christ. Now please turn to page 319 of your hymnal. There you will see the Athanasian Creed. Although it is titled after Athanasius, a devout Christian who took part in the writing of the Nicene Creed he did not write the creed that is named after him. He had already died some 40 years before the creed was written around 415. By 600 it was accepted by the Christian Church as being a true confession of the Christian faith. You will notice that the first half of the creed deals with the Holy Trinity proving their coequalness, with the second half focusing on the doctrine of Christ. This creed, as the others was written and still confessed today to combat a heresy, namely that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not equal, with the Son and Holy Spirit being subordinate to God the Father. It is the custom of many orthodox Christian churches to read this particular creed on Trinity Sunday. We are not going to read it today, although I would recommend you read it on your own, a little at a time, so you can absorb the words. I do want us to read together the first four lines. Please notice that the word catholic does not refer to the Roman Catholic Church, but to the universal faith of the Christian Church. That is why the word catholic is not capitalized. “Whoever desires to be saved must above all, hold the catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally. And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.” The creed then goes on to prove that each person of the Trinity is uncreated, limitless, eternal, and all-powerful. Thus each person of the Trinity is equal without any being subordinate to another. This is absolutely vital to the Christian faith and to one being saved, for if you don’t believe that you really don’t believe the Christian faith and thus cannot be saved. Can you imagine making a statement like that today? How many of us would take such a stand in this age of all truths being equal, especially those that are said about God. How many of us would say that unless a person believes what the confession states they cannot be saved? To say that a person cannot be saved unless they believe the words stated in the creed would be seen as being hateful and intolerant. We are told by many powerful and influential Christian pastors today that the God of the Mormon faith, the God of the Jehovah Witness faith, the God of Judaism, the God of, just insert the name of any religion that rejects the Holy Trinity that the God they profess to believe in is the true God. That is what we are told, but is that the truth. It is not true according to God’s Word and the ancient creeds of the Christian faith. There is only one God in three persons of who we can be saved. Here is what Pastor Bo Giertz a Swedish Lutheran pastor who stood for the truth of God’s Word and suffered mighty persecution for it wrote about in his devotion for Trinity Sunday. I highly recommend his daily devotion book titled To Live With Christ. You can get it from CPH or Amazon. It is available both for the Kindle or in hardcover. The hardcover version cost 13.84. The Kindle version is a few dollars cheaper. If you would like one let me know and I will order it for you so that you don’t have to pay freight. “The Holy Trinity is a mystery; something mankind cannot visualize and only partially understand. The nature of God is incomprehensible. If we were able to fully understand God, we would probably think of him as a product of our own imagination. The Holy Trinity is something no human speculation could have produced. People want to describe God and his nature as something comprehensible, logical, and consistent. However, God is something else than we think we want. He is a reality and has revealed himself to us. He has showed us who his is piece by piece, to the limits of our understanding and needs. The inexhaustible depth of his nature caused the prophet to rejoice: “Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.” (Romans 11:33) We know the Holy Trinity because God has revealed himself to us in that manner. He has not given us theoretical teachings, but has stepped forward and dealt with us as he Father, our Creator; as the Son, our Savior; and as the Holy Ghost, who works in the Church and our hearts. Throughout the Bible we see the work of the Holy Trinity, sometimes so clear that we can say with certainty: “Here is the Son at work” or “This is the work of the Holy Spirit.” It is the exception, rather than the rule, the he’s called by all three names of the Trinity at the same time, such as during Baptism or in the Apostolic blessing. (2 Corinthians 13:14) However, many times we are confronted with the mystery that what the Father does, the Son and Holy Spirit do also. All of Trinity Sunday’s Scripture lessons examine the mystery of God’s nature and how he has revealed himself to us. The important thing is not to understand how he can be all three at once; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but rather to meet him as he really is so you can believe in him as your Father, your Savior, and your Helper, who leads you down the right path. It does not matter if we address our prayers to our Heavenly Father, to our Lord and Savior Jesus, or to our dear Holy Spirit. It does not matter if we choose to talk to God without directing our prayer to the Holy Trinity. What is important is that we are open for and willing to receive all of God’s works, all the goodness and wealth lying in the nature of the Trinity.” My dear brothers and sisters in the faith, belief that the Holy Trinity, is essential for one’s salvation, as the Athanasian Creed states, “Whoever desires to be saved must above all, hold the catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally. And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.” Your forgiveness, your salvation, your eternal life depends on it. There is only one God, the Triune God. In the face of all the false teachings that God appears to different people in different ways take a stand. Be bold and firm in your faith. Amen.