Grace, Mercy and Peace to you from God the Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our texts today are all three readings, focusing on our God, the Trinitarian God. Thus far our texts.
Dear friends in Christ. Before the beginning, there was only God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. One God in three persons, three persons in one God. They exist in perfect harmony, love, and understanding of one another. They have one substance, one will, one desire and always have been and always be the true God of all things.
This God, so full of love and passion and care wished to share it with you. So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. All three persons of our Trinitarian God were present. Moses tells us in Genesis one, that God the Father created the entire universe through the Word, his Son our Lord Jesus. And while creation was happening, the Spirit of God hovered above the newly created waters.
“Let there be Light”, the Father spoke, and instantly his Word and Son brought forth beautiful pure light. For when your Trinitarian God speaks, he speaks things. “Let there be day and night”, and there was. “Let there be sky and sea,” and it appeared. “Let there be dry land. Let there be plants, let there be animals in water and on land, let there be stars and sun and moon. Let there be a safe place for humankind to receive my gifts.” And as God speaks his Word, it happens.
For Six days, your God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit worked, creating all that you know. Writing the laws that govern existence, and in the thousands of years since, we have hardly been able to even begin to understand them. And on that last day, you God – the three in one God – made your first relative. He scooped up the freshly made earth, and he carefully and lovingly with his own “one day to be nail scarred hands”, shaped and formed a man in his own image. He designed your heart and lungs to provide you with breath. He gave you your brain to think and reason. He gave a mouth to smile, and arms and hands to hold on to things. Your God, made you. And having formed the body of that first man, he leaned close, and breathed the breath of his Holy Spirit into that body, the breath of life entered our flesh, and we became alive.
All that God made was good – very good. He himself said so. The world was good, the universe was good. It was a safe place, because your God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit was always close to you, always protecting you, always providing for you. It was good, and in this good world, we would have lived forever in a perfect relationship with our God, just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were in perfect relationship with one another.
But things would not stay good. By our fault, our own fault, our own most grievous fault, we turned our back on God. By telling him that even in the midst of this wonderful created world that he gave us, that we did not have to listen to his rules about how His creation should work. Our first relative, Adam did the only thing God told him not too, and by doing so brought death into God’s good world. In an instant, the perfect relationship between Creator and Created was shattered, with the creation going its own way doing its own thing.
Friends, we still do this same things. We still disobey God. We ignore God’s words “You shall not steal, murder, curse, lie, or hate.” There is war in our world. There is pain in our world. This world, because of your sin and mine, is no longer very good. It no longer runs smoothly. It no longer is a safe place, because we abandoned the One God who brought security to this world.
For thousands of years, in our sin our ancestors have died. For thousands of years, in our sin, we have felt pain and loss. The pages of scripture record it clearly for us, and we can see ourselves in the pages. Adam’s own son murdered his brother. Noah’s word was destroyed, and then he passed out drunk in the tent. Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt and then his daughters commit incest with him. Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. Friends the story of our lives and the story of our world goes on and on in the same fashion even today. Sin is everywhere. You are guilty of it. And with Sin comes its punishment, death to all who turn their back on the God who gave life.
But your God loves you so much, He cares for you so much, that He would not separation from Him be the end of the story. He would not let your life be a meaningless adventure on a doomed rock floating around the Sun. Your God loves you so that he would give up His own perfect relationship for you.
God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit decided to rescue you, and the only way that it could happen was for God to become man, to take on your flesh and pay your punishment. That Trinitarian God will rescue His creation. And so the Father sent His son to be born of the virgin Mary. The Godhead to human flesh into itself, never to let it go. From now until eternity, the Son will be not only God, but man. And that God-man came and went to Golgotha, to the cross, to death so that you might have life and life to the full. He took your sin with Him. All your guilt, all you pain, all your suffering, even your death, Jesus bore to the cross. And there on the cross, a miracle happened. While Jesus, the God-man was dying, the Father turned His back on Jesus. He suffered the separation of Hell. He was alone, “My God my God, why have you forsaken me.” And finally, when it was all complete, He gave up His Spirit.
Do you see what the God who created all does for you? Do you see what gift He has given? He gave up Himself so that He might have you to be His own. He Himself has died on a cross to give you life. And He Himself has overcome sin death and the devil by His resurrection into eternal life.
And today, still, your Trinitarian God comes to you. In Baptism, Matthew writes that you are connected to your God and Creator, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Baptism, you belong to him through the work of the Son on the Cross. Baptism restores that perfect relationship to your God, and you are given forgiveness life and salvation.
Your God is an amazing God. He is three persons in one God and One God in three persons. He came and took on Human flesh in the God Man Jesus, and He now gives to you eternal life, restoring you to the new creation of eternity without pain or suffering or death. Your God gives to you. Amen.
