Grace Mercy and Peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today is from the book of Romans, chapter 11:33-36 “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”
Thus far our text.
Friends in Christ, today is Trinity Sunday. We sometimes dread this day of the year, because we know that church will be 10 minutes longer than normal. No not because of my sermon. On this day every year, we take the time to say the longest of all our creeds, the Athanasian Creed, and it is long, two pages in our hymnal. We say this creed to try and get an idea of what God is like. We always have the question, what is God like? People paint pictures of what they think the trinity looks like or even what God the father looks like. We can think of some of paintings. Perhaps we get an idea of God being like His depiction on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Maybe we even have another way of thinking about God. There are all sorts of books that attempt to describe what God is like. But does any human depiction really make sense? Can our limited understandings actually understand what God is truly like? Who is God?
When we think about God, often times we think that He rather mysterious. We have a difficult time understanding him, and there is good reason for that. If we were to glance at the words of the Athanasian Creed, we would see that it does make God out to be rather mysterious. With all the discussion there in about equal and coequal and begotten and infinite, it is difficult to understand what it is really telling us about God.
And we do struggle to understand God. As I said earlier, our minds are rather limited. When we think about the Trinity, it is impossible for us to understand. We can’t fathom how three persons could be one God. We can’t understand how one of those persons took upon Himself human flesh. It just doesn’t make sense. And it never will.
Our minds are full of sin, and being as such, they cannot understand something that is without sin. God is mysterious to us because He is without sin. He is mysterious to us because our limited sinful minds are unable to understand something that is not like us. It is impossible. God will always seem mysterious because He will always be holy. As our text says today, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!”
God is also powerful. In fact, it is often times God’s power that we are more worried about. God is the almighty all powerful Creator of the universe and all that is in it. He is so powerful; He even did all of this with simply his word. He said “Let there be,” and there was. That is God’s infinite power.
God’s power can be a little nerve-racking for us, because we don’t have the same power, in fact we are completely at God’s mercy. He can do what ever He wishes to us at any time. Have you ever stopped to think what God’s awesome power really means for us? Especially as we are sinners, and He is not. God has almighty power, and we have disobeyed Him in our thoughts words and deed, by what we have done and by what we left undone.
Perhaps this illustration will help. Imagine that you are a cricket, and not just any cricket, but one that has been captured by a person, and is now firmly trapped in that person’s hand. As the cricket there are only two things you really know. First that the person has you completely and totally surrounded, and you can’t escape him. Secondly that with little thought, that hand could squash you completely and totally.
Is that how you feel about God? That He is inescapable no matter what you want or desire. Do you sometimes want to hide things from Him, even though you know you can’t? Are you in fear of Him, in fear that He will squash you without so much as a second thought? At times in our lives this is the way it seems. Our struggles seem so great that we struggle to come to any conclusion other than that God must be planning on squashing us, there is no escape, He is after us and we are doomed. God is powerful.
So God is Mysterious, and God is Powerful, and now, we also know from scripture that God is just. As I mentioned earlier, this also is truly scary thing for us. God is just. He cannot stand sin. He will not allow it to come into his presence. He will deal with it harshly and justly. He will destroy those in sin eternally. They will forever be apart from Him.
That is a scary prospect if we are honest with ourselves. We are sinners, we are not holy. We can tell this by the things we do, by the way we lust after all sorts of wicked things. What’s more, we often times pretend to have the same attributes as our Holy God. We pretend that we are mysterious, like we have some big secret that the world needs to find out about us. We pretend that we are powerful, that we can really make a difference in the world, and we pretend that we are holy. We pretend that we are not sinners and that we are not guilty, even though we are.
When we hear these things about who God is, there is little good news for our ears. But there is one more way in which we can know God: By what He does. And what He does makes those other attributes not bad news, but rather good news.
What God does is rescue. What God does is save. What God does is pour out mercy upon people. He loves His creation. We see that in the way that He sent His Son Jesus Christ for us. He gave His only begotten Son, the second person of the Trinity to die for your sins, and for the sins of the world.
Jesus’ name even means that, in the Hebrew original the name Jesus means “The Lord saves.” And that is what God does. That is truly how we know about God and about the Trinity. It is through Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified. As the Athanasian Creed says, “Jesus Suffered for our salvation.” There do we see the attributes of God clearly.
Yes we are sinners, but Christ dies for them. He washes us in His very own blood. There is not a single sin that cannot be forgiven. Jesus was served our punishment, He suffered in our place. He was killed because we fell short of what God wanted, and then He delivered that forgiveness to us. Christ has died for our sins, and now we are set free.
God is not just some cruel torturer from above, no, He is full of love. Through the death of Jesus, we better understand what this love is all about, and how the Trinity works. When we look at God through the lens of Jesus Christ crucified, we still see a Holy God, but now this Holiness is passed on to you and to me. Not by our own works, but instead by the work of Jesus. Through his death you have been returned to a relationship with God.
Through that same lens, we see God’s powerfulness, and it no longer is something to be afraid of, but instead something used to set us free from sin. God could have left us alone. God could have squashed us like a bug, but instead, He used His almighty power, to save. He did everything necessary, and everything imaginable to rescue you, not to punish you. He did this because of Jesus’ death.
And the mystery of it all is why? Why does God save us sinners? Why does He care about us when we turn away from Him every day? Because He loves us, and because Jesus suffered for us. It isn’t because of our own preconceived notions of God. It isn’t because we did something good, or are really smart. Rather it is the very nature of God, the nature of the Trinity to save sinners from sin. God the Father created you, God the Son rescued you from sin death and the devil, and God the Holy Spirit points you to that faith everyday of your life. God, Three in one, one in Three, loves you and has rescued you from your sin.
So what is God like? As our text says, “"Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! He has rescued us from our sins. That is the important thing to know about God. Amen.
