TRINITY SUNDAY, B, 2009

SCRIPTURES – Isaiah 6:1-8; Acts 2:14, 22-36; John 3:1-17 

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”  Isaiah sees God’s holy angels and hears them sing these words. They are astounding words. They are not just a song of praise, you see. They are a great confession, a statement about who God is and what He does. 

“The whole world is full of the holy God!” the angels proclaim. God is all around you! And, He’s not just here: watching and observing, interested but mostly uninvolved. No, the Triune God is the Holy One whose glory fills the earth! He is greatly interested and actively present. He is constantly acting, working, and doing. 

Why don’t we see this? Why isn’t this more obvious to us? It’s because of the cross. The cross – the death of the Son of God under the judgment of God, as the sacrifice to save sinners – the cross proclaims more clearly than anything else the holiness of God. We lift high the cross because it proclaims the depth of our sin and God’s hatred of it. You know why Jesus died, right? He died because He bore our sins. All the sins of the world – the sins that we were born with and are part of our nature; the sinful things we think about; our every breaking of God’s Law – all of this was laid upon Jesus by God. And then, when His beloved Son became guilty of our sin, God would not even spare Him! That’s how bad our sin is. It is foul and vile and repugnant to God. The whole earth is full of God’s glory, and yet in our sin we live as if it is our glory that is paramount! This disgusting self-seeking glory caused the death of God’s holy and beloved Son. Sin kills. Our sin killed the Son of God. We cannot claim to be innocent of this or make up for this. This is what the cross proclaims. 

But, above all we lift high the cross because it proclaims the heights of God’s great love for sinners. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.” He gave Him into death and hell for you. How greatly God the Father loves you and every single person! No greater price has ever been paid for anything than the price God paid to save you from your sins and make you His children. He gave His Son for you! And, we lift high the cross because it proclaims the complete forgiveness of our sins. The Son of God Himself took your sins; none can now be charged to you. All unholiness has been removed from you that God the Holy Spirit might now fill you! 

As it tears us down and then lifts us to the heights, the cross proclaims how God works. He hurts and then heals. He kills in order to make alive. He sacrifices and suffers to save. He works in ways that are contrary to human wisdom and so are hidden to us. 

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” You know these words well. They are all about the cross, and cannot be understood rightly apart from the cross. So it is with the song of the angels. "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”  This cannot be understood and believed apart from the cross of Christ, for it is where the glory of the Holy Trinity is seen. Only when the cross is lifted high, the death of the Son of God under the judgment of God as the sacrifice to save sinners, will this song of the angels fill hearts and change lives.

Scott Roeder probably heard about and believed in the holiness of God. If he had understood and believed that the holiness and glory of God is seen in the cross, things would be different. Who is Scott Roeder? He’s the man who is charged with last Sunday’s shooting and killing of Dr. George Tiller, the late term abortion doctor, while Tiller was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church in Kansas City. Now, I know very little about Scott Roeder. He is said to be a member of an anti-government group whose members believe that they are exempt from our government’s laws. He has thanked people for praying for him, and so I would bet that he is somewhat familiar with the Bible’s teachings. The problem is, Mr. Roeder does not understand that God has put us all under His Law. “You shall not murder” applies just as much to those who oppose abortion as to those who promote and even provide abortion. We are not to ignore God’s Law, as well as the laws of our land, and take the law into our own hands. To do so is to not only sin against God’s clear commands; it is to sin against the cross. The cross proclaims that justice lies with God. He does not ignore sin, but hates it. He who sacrificed His Son for the world will not fail to punish those who reject Christ’s love for all by, instead of serving and sacrificing to save others, sacrifice them. Scott Roeder also does not believe that “the whole earth is full of [God’s] glory,” that God is constantly acting, working, and doing. Instead of allowing God to change hearts by the Gospel of Christ’s sacrifice, he sinned by taking matters into his own hands. 

Dr. George Tiller undoubtedly heard the words, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” He was a church member, and a Lutheran at that. And, He not only heard these words; as a doctor, he saw evidence of God’s glory on this earth. Day after day he saw God’s glorious handiwork. Psalm 139:13-15 says:

“You [Lord] formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven...”

Dr. Tiller saw this as he saw a beautiful child coming forth from its mother’s womb. God’s wisdom, His goodness, His love, His wonder, His might, His mystery and incom-prehensibleness – all this and more was right before his eyes in the life of a beautiful baby! Sadly and tragically, he closed his eyes to all of this as he shoved a tube into the partially delivered baby’s skull and sucked out its brain. As he murdered child after child, thousands of times, he sinned greatly and continually against God’s glorious presence and work; against His clear command; and against the cross of Christ which declares every person infinitely precious and eternally redeemed.  

How could a man who is regularly in church, hearing the Gospel of God the Creator of all; the Redeemer of all through the death of His Son; and of His Holy Spirit being poured out upon all – how could such a man do such a thing? One of the saddest things of all to consider with regard to last weekend’s shooting is that this man was allowed to remain in his sin, in unrepentance. His church and his pastor allowed him to face God with great and unrepented sin on his soul. May God spare us of this! Beware, lest you, too, fall into great and continual sin. For, you and I are no different. We are just as sinful. We, too, cannot see or serve God unless we are born again! 

This is why we must consider the words we hear and say, and the songs we sing in church, and not be content with their simply sounding good to our ears. What are our ears? What are our interests and desires? They are those of sinners who must be born again! We must proclaim and sing who God is and what He does. Everything we say and sing and do must be a lifting high of the cross of Christ, a confession that the holy God is among us and the whole earth is full of His glory. For, as we lift high the cross God the Holy Trinity, whose work is the cross, is honored and praised. The cross will also continually hold before us His work of saving us from our sins. We will constantly be assured of God’s forgiveness, be made holy, and be turned to live before Him in the righteousness and holiness of sacrificing for others to save them. 

Let us then rejoice to hear; believe; learn; and live the cross, to the praise of our holy God. "Holy, holy, holy [indeed] is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” With the cross of Christ in your hearts and lives, you are His glory. You are not weak, lowly, insignificant and helpless people. You are the glorious people of God the Holy Trinity, the people of the cross in whom He lives and through whom He blesses the world!