May the true God be glorified for His goodness

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Romans 11:33-36  +  John 3:1-15

Last week, on American Idol, there was a performance of a song entitled, “The Goodness of God.” It received high praise from Christians around the country. They were so astounded that ABC would allow such a “powerful worship song” to be broadcast. “God was truly glorified” by this performance, they said.

But, which god was glorified by it? If you listen to the song, it’s a lot of repetition about the goodness of “god,” without ever narrowing down which god they were singing about, and without mentioning anything that this god has done that was so “good.” The fact is, any believer in any god could sway and sing along to that song. Any listeners in the audience could imagine that they’ve had a real encounter with God, while having learned nothing about the true God. They can go on living in their sins, believing that God is so “good” that He supports their sinful lifestyle.

Now, some will object, “There is only one God.” That’s a true statement. But what some people mean by that is that anyone who claims to worship any God is worshiping the one God. They think all paths of worship lead to the true God, no matter which beliefs about Him a person holds. Each religion, in their opinion, is just as good as the next. But they’re dead wrong. As we confessed today in the Athanasian Creed, together with the catholic, that is, the common Christian Church: “Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold to the catholic faith; anyone who does not hold to it whole and undefiled will, without any doubt, perish eternally.” And then we went on, in the same Creed, to explain what the catholic faith is. To summarize, we worship the one God in “threeness,” that is, in Trinity. And we worship the Trinity of God in unity. The Trinity is a reference to the three Persons whom we worship—not three Gods, but three Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). We worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one God. And we worship the one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s it. And I urge you to take your Service Insert home today and read through that Creed a few times. It’s the clearest explanation of the Trinity that I can think of. We don’t have to fully understand our God, but this is how we have to know Him, because, if we know God differently than this, then we don’t actually know the one true God at all.

Now, long before Jesus spelled out the threeness of the one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Old Testament Scriptures also revealed it. In Psalm 110, for example, “The Lord said to” David’s “Lord.” That is, the Lord who is the Father said to the Lord who is the Son. And the Son said about Himself in Isaiah 61, “The Spirit, of the Lord God, is upon Me.” Did Israel notice it? Apparently not. But it was there. It was there to be more fully revealed by Jesus, the One who came down from heaven, who came from the Father’s bosom to reveal God to us.

Jesus reveals the one God who is three Persons to us perfectly well in today’s Gospel from John 3, where all three Persons are mentioned. And they’re mentioned as having, each one, a vital role in our salvation. We’re told that Nicodemus, one of the Jewish rulers, came to Jesus at night (as quietly as possible) with his question. Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing, unless God is with him. Nicodemus isn’t yet a believer, but he’s heard some of Jesus’ teaching and seen some of Jesus’ miracles. And so he concludes that Jesus must have come from God. He doesn’t realize just how right he is. He thinks Jesus has come from God like the prophets came from God, as men who were sent by God. The truth is much deeper. The rest of us human beings only begin to exist when we’re conceived in our mothers’ wombs. But the Person of the Son of God existed already in the beginning with God the Father. He is the “only begotten” of the Father, born of the Father in eternity as light is born of the sun, and then, later, in time, sent by the Father into the world as a man. As Jesus says later on, No one has ascended into heaven, except for the one who came down from heaven, namely, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. Or possibly, “who was in heaven,” that is, before He became flesh. Either way, Jesus “came from God” into the world, a reference to His relationship to the Holy Trinity.

But notice what Jesus does next. As the Son who has come from God the Father, Jesus immediately points Nicodemus to the work of the Holy Spirit.

Truly, truly I tell you, unless a person is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus thought he knew God. And, to the extent that he believed in the God of the Old Testament, he did know God. But he needed to know God better than that. He needed to know God as the Father, and as the Son whom the Father sent into the world to save the world from sin, and also as the Holy Spirit who gives new life to those who have been born in sin. Truly, truly I tell you, unless a man is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

The only way to see, to enter the kingdom of God, Jesus says, is to be born again. Because your first birth was only a birth into the world, not a birth into God’s heavenly family. The flesh that we’ve inherited from our parents, and they from theirs, isn’t clean, isn’t pretty, isn’t innocent. It’s wicked, twisted, corrupt, and devoid of the Spirit of God. By nature, all people are hostile to God—to the true God, I mean. Most people love the idea of “god.” Man has always sought to worship and to curry the favor of a god or gods, but not the one true God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But worshiping a generic god isn’t good enough. You have to be remade, become an entirely new person, and that new life can’t come from you, as little as a baby can give life to him or herself. It has to come from above. It has to come from God the Holy Spirit.

Jesus tells us: Those who have been born of the flesh have to be born also of the Spirit. “Water and the Spirit,” a reference to one of the primary tools the Holy Spirit uses to give that new life and new birth, Holy Baptism, which is, as St. Paul calls it, a washing of rebirth and renewal in the Holy Spirit, and “the washing of water by the Word.” The Spirit is the one who works faith in our hearts through the Word, as it’s preached by itself and as it’s connected to water in Holy Baptism. The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. But just because the Spirit also gives new life through the Word alone doesn’t mean Baptism is less important or is optional. The very Word through which the Spirit works faith calls us to Baptism, points us to Baptism, and attaches promises to Baptism: the promise of the forgiveness of sins and salvation, the promise of being clothed with Christ and made children of God, the promise of resurrection to a new spiritual life now, and the promise of a future resurrection of our bodies to eternal life.

But what is it exactly that the Spirit draws us to, turns the eyes of our hearts to, brings us to trust in? To what does Baptism connect us? Jesus explains that to Nicodemus: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. So Jesus pointed us to the Spirit, and now the Spirit, through the Gospel, points us to Jesus, the Son of Man, whom the Father sent to be lifted up on a cross, so that we might believe in Him and be saved. Just as Moses long ago made a bronze serpent and lifted it up on a pole, at God’s command, so that the Israelites who had been bitten by venomous snakes might look up at it and be mercifully healed by God from the venom that was killing them, so Jesus, the Son of Man, had to be lifted up on a cross, so that all the perishing people of the world might look to Him in faith and be saved—look to Him, no longer hanging on a cross, but now preached in the world as the One who gave His life on the cross and then took up His life again; preached in the world as the One whose death we are connected to in the eyes of God through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, where the name of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is placed on the baptized, and the one who once was lost in Satan’s domain is rescued and given entrance into the kingdom of God.

And that’s the goal of our one God, of the Holy Trinity. That’s what the history of the world has been about. It’s why the world hasn’t been destroyed yet, in spite of people’s multiple attempts to bring the wrath of God down upon themselves with their godless behavior and their endless idolatry, with their refusal to believe the Word and to amend their sinful lives. God the Father knows that He has children who have yet to be born, and to be born again of water and Spirit, sinners who will become His children by the work of God the Spirit, who will bring them to the knowledge of God the Son, that they may not perish but have everlasting life.

We don’t talk about the Holy Trinity as a theological abstraction. No, when we talk about the Holy Trinity, we talk about the works of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit on our behalf—not three gods working together, but one God devoted to saving fallen man. One day we’ll understand our God a little better, when we see Him face to face after this life. For now, rejoice in Him as He has revealed Himself to us: as a Father who loved us and gave His Son for us, as the Son who loved us and gave Himself on the cross for us, and as the Holy Spirit, who gives us new birth as children of the heavenly Father by bringing us to repentance and faith in Christ Jesus. That is the true goodness of God, of the true God. To this God alone be the glory, both now and forever. Amen.