TRINITY, A – May 18, 2008
SCRIPTURES – Genesis 1:1 – 2:4; Acts 2:14, 22-36; Matt. 28:16-20; Ps. 16:8-11
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The Bible’s account of how God created the heavens and the earth is one of my favorite sections of the Bible. It is also very fundamental. Everything else in the Bible comes from and depends upon this account. We should all love this chapter and take it to heart! For:
I.
THE ACCOUNT OF CREATION
REVEALS WHO GOD IS.
Right in the beginning the Bible tells us with certainty who God is, that we might know Him. Of course, not everyone agrees with what it says. Tell people that you know with certainty who God is, and you might get a response like:
“That’s rather arrogant! How can you say you are sure who He (or she!) is? After all, we don’t know everything, and we often discover that the things we thought we knew we were mistaken about after all.”
“Don’t say that you know. Don’t talk about certainty, or true doctrine, or absolutes. Instead, just say that you’re on a journey to discover God.” You’ll hear this in many churches today.
Where does such thinking come from? It’s not from the Bible. It speaks with certainty: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Many consider this a mythological account, unscientific man’s explanation of the world, but there’s no mythological language here, just the laying out of facts and truth. God speaks truth. This is why He expects us to listen to, learn, and accept what He says. Those who are of God do so; those who are not of God do not do so. The idea that there is no certainty is actually an idea that is the result of an evolutionary understanding of the universe. Evolution proclaims that the universe arose from disorder and slowly attained more order. What is now is not what will be. Therefore, what we know now is relative.
God is not relative. He is not progressing, for He is not somehow incomplete. But, this does not mean that He is “static”: unmoving and inactive. Quite the contrary! God is very active. This is His nature and being. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” God created. He rested. The singular verb and pronoun tell us that God is one, that there is one God. And yet, we also are told that this one God is a plurality of persons: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters… God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image.’ ” This is the Trinity, God as one and yet three Persons, revealed already in the first chapter of the Bible! Jesus proclaims God very clearly: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name” – not “names” – “of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” To confess the Trinity is to simply repeat what God says about Himself.
God tells us about Himself in Genesis 1 so that we might know Him. Because He is three-in-one, living in a communion of love within Himself, He issues forth with love and creates what is good. Just consider the wonder and goodness of God’s creation!
q He creates with wisdom and purpose and order. There are no mistakes or accidents in God’s creation. No, “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.”
Ignore Genesis, call it a fable and instead accept the teaching of evolution, that life arose from non-life, the result of random chemical processes, and what do you get? Mere chance and happenstance: no purpose, no plan, no ultimate value apart from the value we decide something has. Great is the evil that springs from such thinking! The end thereof is death, destruction, unbelief, and the condemnation of God.
God is wise and careful in His works. All that He makes is precious because He makes it. It is filled with His wisdom and purpose. This gives us hope and confidence when we suffer and endure trials and hardships. Can we explain them all? No. They are not mere accidents that are apart from God’s control and plan, however. He will work His good for us in them.
q God’s goodness is also revealed in the variety and beauty and abundance of His creation. What joy God gives us as we behold His creation!
For instance, why did God give us taste buds? Are they really necessary? Well, I for one am very thankful to have tasted Skyline chili and Graeter’s ice cream again!
The joys we experience in this world spring
from the joy that is in the Triune God. How good He is! His Word
proclaims this to all who will listen.
The Holy Trinity is a God who is good. He is a
God who lives in communion, and so desires communion. Above all, He
desires communion with us. For, behold what God says about you!
II.
THE ACCOUNT OF CREATION
REVEALS WHO YOU ARE.
Why are you here? What are you to do? Who are
you, and what will you be-come? Our world pretty much answers this
with either a shrug (Who knows?) or with cold indifference (you are
a collection of cells whose main job is to reproduce them-selves
before they die). Such answers are, to say the least, rather
unsatisfying. The devil knows that if you contemplate such things
you might end up on a search that leads to God , and so he tempts us
to fill up our time with other things: work; pleasures; enter-tainments;
etc. Many are the things that distract us in our day from listening
to God.
Who are you?
“God said, ‘Let us make man in
our image, in our likeness.’” God has set us apart
from the rest of creation. You are not animals, merely a higher rung
on the evolutionary ladder. It is a great sin, a denial of God, to
believe that! You are special and unique creations of God. You have
been made by God and for God, not simply for service to Him, nor for
His enjoyment, like puppets, but to be His own dear children. You
have been made in God’s image. Read Genesis 1 carefully; this was
not said of any other creature. We are made to be with God, one with
Him in a way that no other creature is with Him.
Of course, we do not see this now. Now, we
struggle many times with even believing that God is with us and
cares for us, for we don’t feel or perceive His presence and love
and care. Why is this? Well, God has not changed; we have. The sin
which Adam and Eve, our first parents, committed has horribly
changed us all. Sin is now part of us, part of our very nature and
make-up. It changes us so that we do not naturally know God, love
Him, or follow Him. How weak and pitiful and lowly we are now in
comparison to Adam and Eve! Our sin has cursed us.
“Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity. Let us give glory
to Him because He has shown His mercy to us.”
In making us in His image God has bound Himself to us. He therefore came
to us in His Son to bring mercy to us. God the Son, almighty Creator
with the Father and the Holy Spirit, became a man, like us, for us
all. He took our flesh, and what is more, He took within His flesh
our sin and God’s eternal judgment of it that we deserve. He took
sin’s condemnation for us all, and in His death He has destroyed sin
and death. Then, He rose to life again, gaining for us a new life;
not only one to look forward to, but in Him a new life with God
now. That is what we rejoice in and proclaim
today.
We are also receiving this life today. 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 to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with
you always, to the very end of the age."
You have been baptized into the Name of the Triune God, and in that
Baptism the God who is life and is good has bound Himself to you,
even made His home within you by His Spirit. As Christ’s Word is
spoken to you, you are listening to Christ Himself. The Lord of life
is with you, making you new!
I
know, it doesn’t always seem to be so. Let us never doubt, however,
the al-mighty power of God’s Word. God’s strong Word shattered the
silence and the darkness at the beginning, and the beauty and glory
of creation was brought forth. That same strong Word
“bespeaks us righteous, bright with God’s own
holiness,”
as we just sang. Our song was true. Yes, God
“bespeaks
us righteous”: through words of forgiveness spoken in response to our confession of
sin, spoken from the pulpit, spoken over us with water, spoken over
simple bread and wine. No matter how weak they may seem, they are
the words of the Holy Trinity! He is present in them, is Himself
speaking them. They give you a new life, eternal life in Christ.
Listen to them and treasure them as God’s life-giving voice. They
bring God’s eternal life to you now, for when the Holy Trinity
speaks, there is life and health and security and peace forever.
That is what we learn in this account of creation, and that is what we hold onto. By His Word God is with us, is making us new, and will bring us to Him forever. “Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity. Let us give glory to Him because He has shown His mercy to us.”
