Below is the transcript of Pastor Matt’s recent sermon on the Trinity.
Thank you, Steve, for reading that for us this morning. This is the the last week in our series on living in exile, lamenting and living in exile. We’re actually starting next week, a questions of the faith, four week series leading up to then will be an Advent. Yes, Advent is upon us. We will be getting details out to you soon about Advent and all that we have planned for Christmas season. Excited to be heading into that season. It’ll probably be it’ll definitely look different during our COVID world, but we hope that it will be the things that we have planned for you will be meaningful, to connect you with our Savior Jesus and remembering his birth and His incarnation into our world.
But here we have this text. And I want to talk today about this idea of kind of reorienting ourselves in a new new normal. As we live and lament, we lament what has been in our life, and then we live into something new, we are in something new, we’re in a new world.
It was definitely hit me upside the head this week, in a personal experience, we got the text on Thursday morning, that somebody we had been around the previous weekend, I had tested positive for COVID. The anxiety that we had, as a family kind of went very high. And we realized, wow, we we are in a new world and we have to go get tested. And then we have to reach out to everyone we knew had interacted with this person. And so to make sure that they were tested as well. It just reminded me acutely that we are in a new world. You’re anxious kind of waiting for your test results, wondering what that means for you what that means for your family, what that means for you know, church and job and all those things.
And so thank you for you know, your prayers for those reaching out. Thank you for just encouragement and your flexibility. Thank you, you, St. Paul’s, you. You’ve been a great church to lead during this pandemic. And we get a lot of compliments about how we’ve led through this. But you as a church body make it easy. You’ve been super flexible, super supportive. And so thank you again for that.
Here we have Moses in this passage, he’s passed on their leader passed on there’s a change of leadership. And anytime there’s a change of leadership, it can be, there can be a lot of turmoil. But fortunately, Moses was an incredible leader where he had developed a new leader in Joshua, Son of Nun. And and there was this idea that that that the new normal will be led by Joshua. But I think it’s important as we think about as we head into the future to talk about who we are and who is leading the charge as we head into the future.
And in our emphasis, I want to emphasize the Trinity leading us. The Trinity is the Godhead, three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each are God. All equally God, yet have different roles in the Godhead. And so I’m going to walk through some of that, this morning, and then I’m going to have an announcement video to kind of explain our annual meeting and things that we’ll be talking about it that in question opportunities for you to engage in questions with that.
But the Trinity as as our God that we worship, will be our leader into the future. So here we see in this passage, Deuteronomy chapter thirty four, Moses, the leadership of Israel had had had died and passed away. And now there’s a new leader. But in this text, actually, we see all three persons of the Trinity. I want to briefly talk about each one in their role. And I think it’s important for us that we understand that there’s this not one person of the Trinity. This is not just God the Father, it’s just not just God the Son. It’s not just God, the Holy Spirit, but it’s three in one and then and then the Trinity invites us into this. What some Christian writers call the divine dance.
We were actually invited into this dance to dance with the community of the Godhead in a new way. I want to describe for us as we head into this kind of new normal together as we head into a new future as St. Paul’s, that we’re called into a divine dance with the Trinity, and we have a specific role as the people of God in that dance.
So here we see verse four. And the Lord said to him, this is the land in which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob, I will give it to your offsprings. And I’ve let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there. And so we know, through the story of Moses, we follow in track with the story of Moses, the last two months here at St. Paul’s, that he made some mistakes along the way. And so God had told him, that he would not be able to enter into the promised land, but he gave him the opportunity here, to be able to see it, to probably smell it, to taste it a bit, but not to actually physically enter into the land.
Here in this part of the passage the Father has the authority. This is the work of the father of the of the Trinity. The father with the authority say you will not enter the land. But I have given you this mission, right. And so we see, even in this verse in Deuteronomy, chapter 34, verse four, that he has sent His people into this land that he promised Abraham, Isaac, and ultimately, he sent me he sent Moses to Moses didn’t quite get there. Joshua is the one who ultimately gets to then enter into the promised land, by the power and authority of the Father, God the Father.
For for many of us, we might use the language just simply God, to describe God the Father. But technically, it’s God the Father. The Father has authority,
In Deuteronomy 34:9 we see that it says, Joshua, the Son of Nun was full, the voice of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. So we see here that the Spirit of God is upon Joshua. And so Joshua, we see in verse nine, in Deuteronomy, chapter 34, verse nine, at the Holy Spirit empowers Joshua to lead.
In the same way the Spirit empowers us to go. That’s a beautiful thing for us. It’s not up to us. I talked about giving earlier in the service. We can’t give on our own strength, but the power of the Holy Spirit will prompt us will push us to then give and to serve. And so the Holy Spirit empowers us to do those things. And so when we’re giving or we’re serving, when we’re walking in our setting this by the authority of the Father, we are we go by the power of the Spirit. And so we see here that Joshua is going to lead through the power of the Spirit.
In verse 10, we see evidence of the Son. And I hope throughout this series, you’ve, you’ve connected the dots of Jesus being part of this holy Godhead. Even in the Old Testament, even while they’re in exile, that Jesus, the Christ was always present. So verse 10, we see, and they’re not there has not risen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew, face to face. Now we know through hindsight, through the through the New Testament, that the flesh of the Godhead is the son right is Jesus. And so Jesus is God. I believe that in these early texts when, when Moses was meeting with God face to face, he was actually in the presence of Christ. And so it’s important for us to understand that that the Trinity here was with this transition of power from Moses to Joshua.
It’s the authority is from God the Father. The power is from God, the Holy Spirit. In the flesh, what gives God flesh is God, the son. We are sent by the authority of the Father, as the flesh of Jesus by the power of the Spirit. We sing it every week in the Gloria patri is Glory to the Father. To the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and will forever be. The wholeTrinity always was and the Trinity is inviting us to be part of what it’s doing.
Jesus is God.
I don’t know if you ever thought it like that before he is God’s Son. Yes. But in the spirit of the Trinity, the Trinity is three persons in one. And Jesus is fully God. In fact, it says many times in the Scriptures, that Jesus was God and Philippians chapter two, verse six is is one of the clearest forms or Paul says, Jesus was in form, God. Here’s Paul, the apostle Paul telling us Jesus is God. If you don’t believe Jesus is God today, then you’re disagreeing with the Bible. Jesus is God. Hebrews chapter one, verse three says, He is the radiance of the glory of God. We talked over the last couple weeks that the glory of God is Jesus, John chapter one, verse 14, and the glory of God came and dwelt among us, and His name is Jesus. Right, and Moses couldn’t look upon the glory of God, we could not see the glory of God until God came in the flesh.
His name is Jesus.
Jesus, even in john chapter 17 says, and declares that he is God. It is clear in the scriptures that Jesus is God. Colossians chapter one and Colossians chapter two, talk about Jesus being preeminent, Jesus being the foundation of the world, being before time. First John one, verse four, and eight nine says, anyone who does not love God does not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. So the love of God says in First John 4:8-9, was made manifest through Jesus, and then we live through him. So, as followers of Jesus, we live out Jesus.
We are called and I, I talked about this, if you can remember back back in January, the first series I talked about here, as I started, was, we are called to live the cruciform. We are called to be the flesh, the apostle Paul tells us, we are the body of Christ to the world. So as we think about our mission statement, as we think about bringing God’s love to the world, the love that we actually bring is, we bring Jesus’s love, we live out Jesus in the flesh, we are the body of Christ as the church we are the flesh of God to the world, and who was the flesh of God to the world, Jesus. And so we live this cruciform life.
The cruciform life is a life of taking up our cross of denying ourself, and serving others, as I talked about with the kids, that it’s not about what we get. It’s about what we give. It’s not, it’s not always about us, it’s about sacrificing for the good of others, that we put others before ourselves, that is the love that we bring into this community. So the God had his three persons in one and we are invited into that dance with God. You see, Jesus is the decision of the revelation and act of God and time and space. God shows us who he is. In Jesus, he shows us exactly what he’s like, in the form of Jesus. In fact, we’re about to celebrate Christmas, in a few weeks, we’re going to head into advent, right? And in a common phrase we hear is he Emmanuel, which means God with us, Jesus is God with us.
So we go, as the church we are sent to bring God’s love to the heart of the community, which is Jesus. We are sent to bring by the power and authority of God the Father. We are we go by that authority, and we are sent with the love of Jesus. We are set to be the flesh of God to the world we are set by the love of Jesus. And then we go by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so one of the things that we’re going to do here is we want to flesh out the Godhead in our mission statement. We’re not going to fundamentally change the mission statement, we’re going to make that mission statement that much more simplified and specific to what kind of love we’re bringing, because God is so broad and so big, that God had three and one three persons in one is so powerful. And as we as we are transformed by Jesus, by the cruciform by the cross of Jesus, we want to teach people to live out that cross that taking up our cross daily, and following Jesus to bring that love to the heart of the community. And so we want to center our mission statement on Jesus on on the flesh that we bring to the world, and that is Jesus, we bring his love to the world, because that’s the tangible love of God as we look at the Godhead, and we question what is his love, we say, Jesus.
We’re not taking out God at all. We are clarifying what piece of the Godhead we are showing to the world. And so we bring that love by the authority and power of God the Father,
we bring Jesus’s love to the heart of the community, we live out Jesus’s love in the flesh. And then we do that, we bring that to the heart of the community, by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so all pieces of the Godhead are there. As has been approved by your consistory we are going to tweak our mission statement to say, bringing Jesus’s love to the heart of the community. And we’re going to flesh that out more in the coming weeks and months to, to have identity statements to have to flesh out exactly all that we mean behind the Trinity and the Godhead and what that means for us here at St. Paul’s, but I wanted to, to give you kind of a scriptural basis for why Jesus is the center of the church. Jesus is the head of the church. And Jesus is the love that we are bringing to the world to see God’s Kingdom Come here on Earth, as it is in heaven. Amen.