Who Really Is God?

Trinity Sunday, May 18, 2008

Prayer – Heavenly Father we come to you today thanking You for introducing us to You. We thank you that you describe just who you are so we know exactly who God is, exactly what you expect of us, and exactly what You have done for us. Thank You for being who You are. And now as we read about You, as we hear about You, we ask, Lord God, that you would reveal Yourself in a greater way to each of us. And we pray all this in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Scripture Readings-

First Reading - Acts 2:32-33  God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

Second Reading - 1 Peter 3:15-16  But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

Gospel – John 3:5-8  Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Sermon –

I’d like to show you my new calculator. This thing looks like a calculator, it has keys, it has numbers, but it’s missing some parts; it’s missing the screen so I can read the answer and its missing the add, subtract, multiply and divide keys. So even though it may look like a calculator, it’s not real because some of the parts are missing – it’s a remote for the TV! And that’s the illustration we always use on Trinity Sunday for God. God tells us in the Bible exactly who He is, He tells us all the parts that are there and if we, in our mind, leave parts out, we don’t have the true God. And if we leave parts out and don’t have the True God, does God work for us? It’s like trying to calculate numbers on this TV remote - it just doesn’t work! When you leave out parts of God, you have a false god, a false god that just doesn’t work.

On this Trinity Sunday we want to talk about some parts of God, who God really is. The first part is obvious from today’s readings. They tell about who God is; God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is Triune. God is Three-in-One; He is One God but three distinct Persons. There are many passages in the Bible that tell us about the Triune God, but my favorite is Genesis 1:26, “And God (singular) said, ‘Let us (pleural) make man in our image.’” And in the last few verses of Matthew, Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them…” The Bible teaches One God, three distinct Persons. If you leave out any of those Persons, you have a false god.

One of the questions that people ask time and time again is, “Aren’t there just different names for God? For example, don’t the Muslims worship the same God we do? Maybe Allah is the same as our God, just with a different name.” Let’s look at the Islamic writings and see what they say, Sura 4:171 says “Jesus Christ is the prophet of Allah; He is not the son of God or God Himself”. Their own testimony says that Jesus Christ is not God. Their Allah is a false god as God reveals Himself in the Bible.

This week in chapel at the school we talked about how impossible it would be to design a better God than we already have. What do we need? We need a Father who can take care of us. And when we do things wrong, things that irritate the Father, we need someone who is going to reconcile us to the Father, someone who can pay for our wrong, someone who can patch things up, someone who will give us peace with the Father. Do we have that in our God?   Yes we do in Jesus Christ who paid for all our sins. And we need someone who is going to give us faith in that promise and someone who is going to empower us in daily life. Remember the Bible passage that we talked about last Sunday, about how we get through life? It is not by might, not by power it is by God’s Spirit (Zechariah 4:6). God’s Spirit carries us along. What else do we need? Nothing! We have the most perfect God who can take care of everything we need.

The next two points are very interesting. These are the things that the Holy Spirit used to really convince me about Christianity, that the God of the Bible is the true God. The first is God’s kindness towards us has absolutely nothing to do with our good behavior. That makes Christianity and the God of the Bible different from all other idols and false gods. You have to do something to get the attention of all the false gods in the world, you have to earn their kindness, you have to earn their favor through your good works and actions. Again, in the book of Sura, the Islamic faith tells that you get Allah’s attention by doing the five pillars of the faith; you say certain prayers, you act a certain way, and you do certain things in an effort to try to get Allah’s favor. And every other false religion is like that; you have to get their god’s attention.

Christianity is the only religion, our God of the Bible is the only God who says, “I’m going to show you mercy and it has nothing to do with your good behavior.” We read in Romans 5:8 “God shows His love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s kindness has nothing to do with our good behavior. Titus 3:4-5 says, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we have done, but because of His mercy.” What a great scheme. Christianity, the God of the Bible is the only One who works that way. That was a real clincher for me. God’s forgiveness has nothing to do with your good behavior. The mansion He’s preparing for you in heaven has nothing to do with your good behavior. His willingness to answer your prayers has nothing to do with your good behavior. His kindness has nothing to do with your good behavior. It has everything to do with Christ’s perfect obedience and His payment for our sins. God is so excited, so thrilled with what Christ did for us that He is willing to forgive us, love us, take care of us and take us to heaven.

The next point we have been touching on over the past couple of weeks and I want to really nail this down. The God of the Bible is the only God, and this is the proof that He’s the True God, He’s the only God that says you cannot believe in Him. He’s the only one that makes that claim. He’s the only God that says you cannot believe in Him – on your own. He has to enable you to do it. You and I can’t do it. You can believe in the false gods like Baal or Ashtoreth on your own. You can believe in Allah on your own. And if you want to make money your god, you can do that all on your own. You can believe in any of the false gods, any of the idols that are out there on your own, but you cannot believe in the God of the Bible all by yourself.

We talked about that last week. 1 Corinthians 12:3 says, “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit.” What that means is that you cannot believe in Jesus on your own, you need the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:12-14 says “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” That means you cannot know God, you cannot understand God, you cannot believe in the One True God unless you have the Holy Spirit within you. It is only God who enables you to believe in Him. Christianity, the God of the Bible, is the only religion that makes that claim.

And if you want proof that God is a Triune God and that you’re in the right religion, let me show you my calculator. You’re probably saying, “Oh no, not this again!” because I tried to fool you once! But what I have here really IS a calculator. Let’s try to multiply 2 x 2. The calculator shows that the answer is 4. Does that prove that my a calculator works? It doesn’t because 2 x 2 is second grade math and I can figure that in my head; I don’t need a calculator to do it. My calculator could be a fake!  So, let’s try a bigger number, like 4 x 4. The answer shows 16. But I’m smart enough to figure out the answer to 4 x 4 in my head also, so that doesn’t prove that my calculator is real. Let’s try something that I can’t do; I can’t multiply three digit numbers by three digit numbers in my head. Let’s try 658 x 749…and the answer is 493,842!  This really is a calculator, we’ve proved it!

God has set up a scenario in life to prove that He really is God. He set it up that you and I because of our sinful nature cannot believe in Him by the power of our mind. We can’t do it. If people do believe in Him, it means Someone enabled them to do it and that Someone is the Holy Spirit, God Himself. That’s the proof, that’s the real capper. Look at all the people here this morning, all of you who believe - you believe because the Holy Spirit has enabled you to believe. You didn’t do it in your own mind, God did it. That’s the proof. And, God is always revealing something new. I’ve been studying the Bible for years and there is always something new, some deeper truth that I find in the Bible. You can read it a thousand times and there will always be some new, deeper truth that you will find.  That’s the Holy Spirit.

The God of the Bible is the real God, He get’s results, He does things. And that’s the greatest news in the world! Because you believe, it means that our God is real. He is the Father who takes care of you, He is the Son who reconciles you permanently to the Father and He is the Holy Spirit who is in your life to enable you to believe, who gets results. Our God is alive, He’s well and He’s working. He is the True God. He is the Triune God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He gets results.

Prayer –

Heavenly Father, we thank you on this Trinity Sunday as we look at just who you are, that you’re the perfect God, far superior to all the false gods that people have manufactured. And Heavenly Father, you not only tell us you’re the true God, but you give us proof that you’re the true God; you convince us. Thank you for that. For those people here this morning who are possibly in doubt or shaky about their faith, Lord God, may your Holy Spirit make your truths clear to them. And as we go off into our week, help us to keep all those pieces there. Help us to keep you as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Help us to understand your truths and keep them there, not take them away, so that we would have joy and peace in life. And we pray this in Jesus’ Name, Amen.