Trinity Sunday

The Holy Trinity
May 30, 2010

What Is God Like?
Romans 11:33-36

Have you ever trapped a grasshopper in your hands? You peer at the green bug with his alien face and maybe you wonder if he knows anything about you. He's just an insect, but it seems like he knows at least one thing about you—that you could smush him at anytime. So the minute you open your hand, he zooms away.

Grasshoppers know that we can smush them. So they stay away from us. They'll never understand that we are so much more than grasshopper smashers. They'll never understand how we think or how we do things.

In the Old Testament Isaiah wrote this: “[God] sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers” (Isaiah 40:22). We are grasshoppers. We are in God's hands, but we know so little about Him. But we do know that He is powerful.

“Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” (Isaiah 40:26)

Type in “scale of the universe” on Google or YouTube and you can watch any number of videos that detail the massive scale of the universe and its stars. The best wild guesses that we currently have put the number of stars in the universe at about 70 sextillion or 7 with 22 zeros.

Humans can't understand who God is or what He is like, unless He comes down to us and tells us. If you wanted to tell grasshoppers about your name and the things that you like, you would have to become a grasshopper so that you could explain who you are in ways that they could understand.

This is what God did when He sent Jesus into the world. The God who created trillions and and trillions and trillions of stars became a man. He did this so that He could explain who He is and what He does for us. So when someone asks what God is like, Jesus is a great answer.

In Jesus we see the Trinity at work. God the Father sends the Son on His holy mission. God the Son is punished for our sinfulness. God the Holy Spirit communicates Jesus' rescue mission through the Gospel.

Think of it this way: what has caused you to be saved? There are three good answers to this question and they are all from the Bible and they are all correct.

1.You are saved by God's love for you, which set the Gospel into motion.
2.You are saved by Jesus' death for you, which is the climax of the Gospel.
3.You are saved by Baptism, which is the Gospel in visible form.

All three answers are different, but they are all correct. The Father's love set our salvation into motion. God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Jesus' death paid for our salvation. We know this from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Spirit proclaims salvation through the Gospel. We know this because Jesus said, “When the Counselor [Holy Spirit] comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about Me” (John 15:26).

What is God like? He loves you. He died for you. He forgives you. This is probably the best way to understand the Trinity, our God who is three Persons in one God. Our language can't properly express how the Trinity works and our minds can't grasp the inner working of the Trinity, but because of our faith in Jesus, we know that our Triune God works for us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.