Trinity - The Son

This last week

Just to be more specific a young black male

Lost their life in an encounter with a police officer in Rock Island and there's been reports about it. You can look up but

Jake Van Damme and I were gonna have a Monday night meeting and we were gonna meet at a different place

but then I saw Sheree who is one of the

part of the family that owns roosters and

Roosters is a black owned business here in town that I like to hang out with and so Sheree just said hey a lot going on

She specifically was talking about that and so if anybody wants to talk come come down. I'll be behind the bar

So I told Jake all right. We're going there like instead of going over here because let's go and listen to her

let's go talk to her see how she is and

There wasn't like a large group of people

but

It's the way it's like we're trying to learn how to be not just people who want to reconcile

but actually be anti-racism

which means you have to decide to put yourself in the position to have those conversations and

To carry yourself with humility where you're listening, you know, just having an opinion right away

But be listening to what is happening. And so I appreciate that Andy

If we've never met my name is Greg. I'm one of the pastors here at the house

I would love to have a coffee with you a drink of your choice with you

Whatever that is and get to know you hear your story

If you want to talk about Jesus, I love to talk about Jesus

And so I would love to do that with you

We are in the second week of a series that we are just calling Trinity

Because it's just about the Trinity this this doctrinal idea that has existed in Christianity for really

1600 solid years, but you know

Shadows of it were floating around for a long time before them before they really kind of completely nailed it down now

Advancements in technology. Did you know there was only 66 years between the first manned flight and

a person setting foot on the moon

66 years

to go from

flying for the first time on earth to

traveling through space and

Putting your feet on a floating hunk of rock

That's out there in space. It's amazing how quickly technology

Can advance the engine in that first plane

Had 12 horsepower

If you have a riding lawnmower, you have more horsepower in your riding lawnmower

I'm not kidding riding lawnmowers have between 12 or 14 and 16

Horsepower that first plane flew 120 glorious feet

for 10 seconds

Hmm for I think it was actually 12 seconds so in 10 feet per second 66 years later the Saturn 5

That left Earth for the moon

Had 160 million horsepower

160 million horsepower for keeping track. That's a little bit more than a lawnmower

The first stage of the Saturn 5 flight traveled 58 miles in 168 seconds

58 miles and that is 1800 feet per second

And it only took 66 years

Humans are curious

We are compelled to understand

To improve to expand to explore

Here's the thing after all the advancements after all the discoveries after all the equations

Scratched out on boards the basic physics of flight are the same

Learning more going further didn't and doesn't change or negate the initial truth that they began with

What the Wright brothers did was not erased by Neil and Buzz yeah

So if a fully formed concept of the Trinity is like reaching the moon

Discovering or deciding on a doctrine of the Trinity didn't destroy the initial physics of faith

That the first Christians began with

Those basics were enough

Those basics were enough for hundreds of years like pastor Jen said last week

It was about 350 years after the resurrection of Jesus that the doctrine of the Trinity was cemented

In the Nicene Creed

350 years

So why did it take so long?

We have to keep in mind what kind of Messiah that the Israelites were waiting for back then

They weren't assuming that a Messiah would claim divinity

They weren't assuming that a Messiah would claim oneness with God

They were waiting for someone sent from God, but not necessarily God from God

Why?

Well primarily because Judaism is famously monotheistic

Meaning a religion of only one God

Of all the central concepts of Judaism God being one is about as central as it gets

One of their most important prayers is called the Shema

They're told in Deuteronomy to teach this to their children all throughout their life to say it every day

It says here oh Israel the Lord is our God the Lord is one

They were surrounded by pantheistic pluralistic cultures that believed in many gods

It was unique

For them to believe there was only one so it wasn't immediately obvious how Jesus could be walking around on earth as a human

And simultaneously be one with the Father without making that multiple gods

Do you see that?

Remember all the first Christians were Jewish

All of them

None of them were looking to leave Judaism

Because they believed in Jesus

None of them were trying to stop being Jewish

And so for hundreds of years those early Christians into the next generations

They held the mystery of Jesus's divinity in tension

So for hundreds of years

They moved

From 120 to 120

From 120 seconds of flight

To the moon

Beginning this was enough they believed that God was Father

That Jesus was somehow divinely sent by the Father to forgive our sins to reconcile us to the Father

Romans 10 9 if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord

And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved that was enough

That is what made you a Christian

You didn't have to understand the hypostatic union or the eternal interpersonal dwelling of the triune god

But we're human

We are compelled to understand

To improve

To expand

To explore

Trouble with that

Said if we're not careful sometimes the more we learn the more divided we become

One of the frustrations that Jesus had was how religion had stacked rules upon rules

They learned things they discovered things they decided things and things got stacked on top of each other

The development of Christian theology over the years is very similar

We have systemized the divine

We have turned the loving relationship of Jesus into a factory floor pushing packages from point A to point B

What was the most personal act in history the birth life death and resurrection of Jesus

Son of God has been depersonalized and fragmented into a system of beliefs

That you have to believe a certain way

Theology is good

We need it but sometimes people that have been to the moon treat people in planes like they're not flying

Paul one of the New Testament authors wants us to think about it differently

In first Corinthians 8 he's talking about this divide between people that eat certain foods and those that did it

He says the problem might not be the food guys

It's about our knowledge

Or what we think about this food that divides us he says

Now about food sacrifice to idols we know that we all possess knowledge

But knowledge puffs up

Maybe you've heard that phrase you've heard that phrase knowledge puffs up

He's talking about how spiritual insight causes us to be prideful towards one another

Oh well I know this about God and you don't

I know this about God and you don't oh I'm closer to the Lord now

He continues

But love builds up

Where knowledge puffs up he says that love builds up

Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know

And then he gets to the point he gives us the main point verse 3

But whoever loves God is known by God

He doesn't all the things that you think you understand all the things you're trying to know

If you will just know love then you will be known by God

I feel like it is more important to the writers of the scripture that we be known

Than to be sure of all the things that we know does that make sense?

Paul's warning that what we think we know gets in the way of the most basic things that we all need to understand

Verse 6 and that is for us that there is but one God the Father from whom all things came and for whom we live

And there is but one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things came and through whom we live

That is the base one God the Father one Lord Jesus Christ and that is what he wants us to agree about

That is the base that is the first flight

Because having the right information does not always get you closer to God

Sometimes it pushes you further from each other

And I think I would rather be flying barely off the surface of the earth with a community of faith

Than to feel the chasm between the earth and the moon

Some of us in this room have masters degrees in theological subjects

Some of us have pastoral leadership degrees in education

There are people in our church that actually have PhDs in Bible related subjects

Some of us have never read the Bible from cover to cover

Some of us have never read all four gospels

But you do not need to know it all to be known by God

Because knowledge puffs up

Love builds up

Now I could end my sermon right there like kind of in the name of avoiding puffing up by giving you more knowledge

I should do that every week

I would talk about Jesus for a few minutes and I would not want anyone to get prideful so we will end it there

But we do happen to live on the other side of the Council of Nicaea

And it may be helpful to have some idea of how they got there

And how they landed on the doctrine of the Trinity

So let's go

Remember the roots of Christianity are in what?

Judaism

And Judaism was and had always been what?

Monotheistic

And the Christians in those first hundreds of years had to wrestle with the concept of how to understand Jesus as God

If there was only one God

What did it mean that Jesus said I and the Father are one?

What did it mean that John said Jesus was at the beginning?

That he was with God and was God

What did it mean that Paul said all things were created through him and are held together by him?

If there is only one God

How did Jesus fit?

Because I think that if I told you

If you knew me

And then someone else walked into the room and said oh I'm also Greg

You would probably be like yeah you're not

To reconcile the idea that they believed in God

But then they could see God

200 years into Christianity one of the first ideas that tried to sort it out was called subordination

Subordination is where the Father is God

And Jesus and the Holy Spirit are also distinct beings so there's a triune

Nature to it but in subordination the Father is God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are like servants

There's a triune nature and there's only one God and these two are kind of like their vassals

They would do different things that the Father was asking them to do so they weren't equal

This preserved the concept of monotheism but it demoted Jesus and the Spirit

And so eventually this was labeled a heresy because the scriptures seem to have a lot to say about Jesus being more than God's errand boy

Another idea was called modalism

This one's a little easier to understand because it's like water

H2O

It can be water, fluid, it can also be ice, a solid, it can also be steam, a vapor

So people would try to describe how God is like water

It can be any one of these three things

The problem with that concept is that it can only be one of those things at a time

It can't be all three at the same time

So the concept of modalism would be the idea that maybe God is just putting on a mask and pretending to be a different personality

Or that God is just extending his arm as Jesus to do certain things

The trouble is that if Jesus is on the cross talking to the Father, who's he talking to?

He's just the hand, he's talking to the other part

And if a puppet dies on the cross, what does that really accomplish?

If Jesus says, I'll send you the Holy Spirit, is he just saying, I'll be back?

I'll be back but I'll have a different coat on

And then there was a, this isn't in my notes, but anyone ever watch a series of unfortunate events on Netflix

And how Count Olaf is always showing up as a different character

But the kids are always like, that's Count Olaf and no one believes him

That's what it made me think of, Jesus would be like, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit, ta-da!

Sorry

And then there was this concept called Arianism and it actually had started pretty early

But it had kind of its heyday around 320 when an Alexandrian Christian named Arius was teaching

That Jesus was a creation of the Father

The concept was that the Father had created Jesus before the foundations of the Earth

So that solved the problem of John saying that Jesus was there, was with God and was with God

But he was still a creation of God which means that Jesus was not co-eternal

That Jesus was not of the same substance

Remember, all of these ideas, they're just trying their best to make sense of the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit while maintaining monotheism

And that's why we get the Nicene Creed

Which says we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father

God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father

The first clause of the Nicene is about the Father, the second clause is about the Son

The third is about the Holy Spirit

The Creed defines a Trinitarian doctrine and maintains monotheism

I could put it this way, the Nicene Creed gives the only answer that fits the question

Because the reality is that there's too much scripture that points to all three while there is also no scripture that explains exactly how

Some people aren't always comfortable when pastors talk about how the Bible doesn't explain something

But the scriptures are very rarely like a recipe book, very rarely

If you open up your Bibles to, not right now, but if you open your Bibles to Exodus 25-31

You're going to get six solid chapters about how God wanted them to build a tabernacle

Down to the length of every pole, the kind of wood that was meant to be used, the kind of silt or fine linen or gold

Down to the amount, number of ounces, it is boom boom boom boom boom

And a lot of us wishes we probably would like for there to be six chapters on exactly how the Trinity works

Exactly how is it that there are three yet one?

Why does the Bible talk so much about all three of them and yet leave us to be confused about how they're of one substance

And there's still just one God but we experience all three

But you will not find anything like that in the Bible

Explaining exactly how God is three in one

But you will find scripture throughout the Bible explaining that all three of the one exist

We believe it to be true but we do not understand how

Remember a friend of mine, Glenn Pacum, I loved that he pointed this out

He said this is the reason that the Nicene Creed doesn't say I know

Every line begins with we believe because it is a matter of faith

And there's something about being a Christian, there's something about being a part of any religion that requires an element of faith

Even if it's just a little bit, you may not be on the moon but that does not mean that you are not flying

Personally, I believe the basics of the Nicene Creed

I believe that Jesus is the Son of God

He was born of a virgin Mary, begotten, not made

That he is of one being with the Father

That he was crucified, dead, buried, and resurrected

That he forgives our sin

I believe that God is Father, that Jesus is Son, and that Holy Spirit

Is worshiping and glorified with the Father and the Son

I believe in the mystery of the Trinity

But I want you to hear me saying that if you do not believe that exactly that way, I want to dissuade your fear

I want to dissuade your concern

Because some of the most influential Christians of all time died knowing less doctrine about Jesus and the Trinity than you've heard in the last 20 minutes

Let that sink in

No Christian from the first multiple hundreds of years of Christianity had written down to read and understand the doctrine of the Trinity the way that we understand it right now

But they believed that Jesus was Lord

They believed that God was Father

They believed that Holy Spirit acted on behalf of the Father and the Son

They believed that Jesus forgave their sins

They believed that Jesus reconciled them to the Father

So if you're unsure exactly where you are in all of the systematic theology, and exactly why I believe this and this and this, am I right about this?

I want to encourage you to not worry so much about whether you're right

And ask yourself, do you love God?

Because love builds up and if you love God then you are what? You are known by God

I want you to know Jesus

My hope is that the people that I come into contact with throughout my life are drawn to believing in Jesus on some level by the work of the Holy Spirit through me

Because God the Father is good

Wherever you are in that journey, wherever you are in that path, wherever you are between getting that plane off the ground and the moon

You are flying

You are flying

And that's enough

Amen?

Let's pray

Father we thank you for sending your son Jesus

Only begotten

Son of God

Begotten not made of one being with the Father

Thank you for the work he's done

I pray that each of us as we think about where we're flying and how far we might be up off the ground, pray that you comfort us

That you reassure us

That you lead this flight wherever your spirit has for it to go

Let us not be jealous or envious of those on the moon

Let us be grateful and thankful for the wind that has lifted us

In the name of Jesus we pray

Amen