The Holy Trinity

The Holy Trinity

Opening Activity

During the first hymn, ask one of the children to make (or help you to make) a triangle from 3 straight pieces of meccano and nuts and bolts.

At the end of the hymn, when everyone is seated, ask the child to display the triangle shape they have made.

A triangle is a very strong shape. Even though this one is made out of plastic meccano, it's still pretty strong and stable. Before all three pieces were joined together, the strips wobbled about quite a bit, but in this shape they hold together firmly without any wobbling. And the triangle is such a strong shape in fact, that it's used all over the place in building - you see it in bridges, in towers, in pylons and in roof rafters for example.

So why are we looking at triangles in church today? No, I haven't made a mistake and brought in tomorrow morning's Maths lesson by mistake. But today is Trinity Sunday, and it gives us an opportunity to look at the nature of God. So, by the end of the service, will we know all about God then? Well, no! Human brains just aren't big enough to cope with understanding our great God completely, any more than a hamster can understand completely what it is to be human.

But as your hamster gets to know you and become your friend, little by little he will understand more about you, as much as a hamster can.

So, back to the triangle. Perhaps it can help us understand a little bit more about the great and powerful God of love.

We've seen how strong one three-sided shape can be. Suppose for a minute we look at the threeeness and oneness of God as a bit like this triangle. We know that there is only on true God, and here we have one triangle. We know that God is our Father and Creator, Jesus our Saviour and the Holy Spirit. Whichever aspect of God we focus on, we are always looking at God in all his truth and fullness.

But as well as that, the Son always points us to see the Father and the Spirit, the Father always points us to see the Son and the Spirit; and the Spirit always points us to see the Father and the Son.

Of course, our God is far, far more than just a mathematical shape - the God of love and glory is much more than a triangle! But the way a triangle works can help us understand a little more of how, for God, it's no problem to be one God, who is also Father, Son and Spirit. It's as natural for God to be like that as it is for us humans to be able to be in one place and think about being somewhere else, both at the same time.

Talk

Today is Trinity Sunday, and I want to spend us to spend the next few minutes thinking a bit more about the Holy Trinity.

I heard recently about a Sunday School teacher who was trying to get across the doctrine of the Trinity to her group of 5-7 year-olds. After some prompting she had got them to name two persons of the Trinity as God the Father and God the Son, but they were gettin nowhere with the third person, until one of them suggested a bit uncertainly, "Is it God the Wife?"

I guess that although we might be able to name the third person as God the Holy Spirit, like those children most of us would say that it's an area of Christian teaching that we find hard to understand ourselves, and almost impossible to explain to others! ...And down the centuries there has been much debate, and bitter disagreement, between people who have held different views.

As we shall see, its an area of teaching which is very important, ...but it's also an area in which we must tread with humility, ...for here we come to the very heart of God himself. And as we were reminded in our reading from Isaiah 40, who can fully understand God?

"Who has understood the Spirit of the LORD,

or instructed him as his counsellor?

Surely the nations are like a drop in the bucket;

they are regarded as dust on the scales;

he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.

To whom, then, will you compare God?

What image will you compare him to?"

(Is. 40.13,15,18)

We can't put God in a box, and it would be arrogant of us to think that we can fully understand Him. Nevertheless God has chosen to reveal himself to us through the Bible, and we can build up some sort of picture of what God is like.

Let's begin with the Old Testament.

Judaism developed at a time when most people in the world believed that there were many different gods. Rather like people worship different football teams today, so people then would worship their favourite god. Often they would make statues, or idols, of their god and worship those. ...And when they went to war, they would ask their gods for victory. In fact, many people thought that the outcome of a battle depended upon which side had the most powerful gods.

But gradually, the people of Israel began to realise that there weren't many different gods, ...there was only ONE God who had made heaven and earth. And that all these other so-called gods, didn't really exist. Other nations might have been very sincere about their own gods, but they were sincerely wrong. There was only one God.

This became the most important teaching in Judaism. Several times a day a devout Israelite was required to say the Shema:

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." (Dt. 6.4-5)

And then came Jesus, ...which made things a lot more complicated!

At first people thought that Jesus was just another prophet, ...but after a while his followers began to realise that he was far more than that.

For a start he called God his Father, and claimed to have an exclusive relationship with him. He said:

"...no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him". (Mt. 11.27)

And then he claimed to do things that only God was able to do. ...He forgave people their sins, and claimed to be the judge of all the nations (Mk. 2.1-12 and Mt. 25.31-46)

Then he told parables in which he took various OT expressions of God (such as the Shepherd in Ps. 23) and applied them to himself. He said "I am the good shepherd".

And after his resurrection, many of his followers began to realise that Jesus was none other than God himself.

Now that must have been quite mind-blowing for the first Jewish Christians. They knew that there was only one God, so how could Jesus and his Father both be God?

And then at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came ...which made things even more complicated!

For as people experienced the Holy Spirit coming and living within them, they found that the Holy Spirit helped them to do the same things that Jesus had done. ...Jesus had healed the sick, and the Holy Spirit enabled his followers to heal the sick.

And so people began to realise that if Jesus was really God, then the Holy Spirit must be God too.

Now as you can imagine, it took the Church many years to sort out what it believed about how God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit all related to each other.

Many people put forward different ideas, ...but some of these ideas just couldn't be squared with the teaching in the Bible.

For example, some people put forward the idea that Jesus and the Holy Spirit weren't quite as important as the Father. They acknowledged that Jesus was more important than other people, but claimed he wasn't on the same level as the Father, who alone was God.

Some sects, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, still hold to this idea today, ...but it's not what the Bible teaches. In Philippians chapter 2 we read that Jesus is in very nature God.

Other people put forward the idea that God changed his appearance throughout history. In the Old Testament he appeared as God the Father. Then, he left heaven, changed his appearance, and came to Earth as Jesus. And then at Pentecost, he changed his appearance again, and came as the Holy Spirit.

But once again such an idea doesn't square with evidence of the Bible. In our New Testament reading this morning we heard how at the baptism of Jesus, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were working together at the same time:

"As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven [from the Father]: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." (Mk. 1.10-11)

It took many years for the Church to finally sort out what it believed about this. In the end it found that the only idea which fitted the evidence of the Bible was what we now call the 'Doctrine of the Trinity'.

This said that God is One and God is Three. God is one being, yet three persons.

A crude analogy is that of ice, water, and steam. In some ways ice, water and steam are very distinct, and we use them for different things, ...yet they are all the same substance.

In a similar way, the Church recognised that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three separate persons, ...yet they are all part of the same being which we call God.

Three in one! That's where the word 'Trinity' comes from ...Three in unity, or Tri-unity, ...which got abbreviated to Trinity.

As I said, it took the church many years to sort this out, and one very important date in church history was the year 325. In that year, the Roman Emperor Constantine called the first ever ecumenical church council which was held at the city of Nicea.

One of the main topics of discussion was the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and it was this Council, (together with a council that met some 50 years later at Constantinople), that produced the Nicene Creed.

Today, we still say this Nicene Creed at every Communion service. It was written so as to refute the wrong teaching that was around.

The very first line says:

"We believe in ONE God", (not three Gods as some might have thought).

And then there is a paragraph for each person of the Trinity.

The first paragraph goes on to talk about:

"The Father, the almighty

maker of heaven and earth..."

The second paragraph is about Jesus Christ. ...And it stresses that Jesus is:

"...God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God..."

Jesus is just as much 'God' as his Father is.

And then in the third paragraph it talks about the Holy Spirit. He too is:

"...the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified."

Why? Because he too is fully God.

And today, the Nicene Creed is still accepted as one of the benchmarks of genuine Christian faith. All the main denominations (Church of England, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, etc.) readily accept it. While other sects, which aren't genuinely Christian, (such as Jehovahs Witnesses, and Mormons), refuse to accept it.

But what difference does the teaching about the Trinity make to our Christian faith.

There are two points I want to make. The first concerns the nature of God, ...and the second our attitude to worship.

So first, teaching about the Trinity helps us to understand the nature of God.

At the heart of God we have three persons who are deeply committed to each other in a loving relationship.

The Father loves the Son and the Spirit.

The Son loves the Father and the Spirit.

The Spirit loves the Father and the Son.

It's this love which makes the world go round. As we read in 1Jn.4 "...God IS Love".

And it's this love which over-spills to all that God made. That is why Jesus said "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you" (Jn. 15.9)

And this means that Christianity is first and foremost about relationships rather than rules. It's about our relationship with the God who made us.

And what God wants is for us to love him in return. That's why Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.

So let's this morning ask God to help us to love him more.

We're to love God, because God first loved us, ...and this love over-flows from the three persons of the Trinity who love each other.

And because we love God, we want to worship Him, ...and that brings us to our second point.

Who, exactly, do we worship?

If the three persons of the Trinity are equally God, then they are each worthy of an equal share of our worship. But I guess that all of us have a tendency to neglect one or other person of the Trinity from time to time.

When I was a student I went to a lively evangelical church which put great emphasis on the saving work of Jesus, but which tended to neglect and even sometimes be rather suspicious of the Holy Spirit. Since then, I've come across other churches who stress the importance of the Spirit, but who are in danger of neglecting the Father and the Son.

But we need to keep all three in balance.

We love and worship God the Father, because he made us, ...and cares for us as a loving Father.

We love and worship Jesus, because he died for us, ...and put us right with God.

We love and worship the Spirit, because he comes to live within us, ...and gives us life.

Looking back over my own Christian life, I have been tempted to neglect different persons off the Trinity at different times. It's hard to keep all three in balance, but that's something that we should always be trying to do.

So lets have a few moments of quiet in which we can think about our own focus of worship.

Do you find that you can relate more easily to the Father, Son or Spirit?

Are we tempted to neglect the Father, Son or Spirit?

Perhaps you might like to ask God to help you redress the balance.

And as we remember that the Trinity is a God of love, let us ask God to help us receive his love, and to love him more.

Short period of silence

Finish with the grace.

Prayers

led by Pathfinder group

Today is Trinity Sunday, and I want to spend us to spend the next few minutes thinking a bit more about the Holy Trinity.

I heard recently about a Sunday School teacher who was trying to get across the doctrine of the Trinity to her group of 5-7 year-olds. After some prompting she had got them to name two persons of the Trinity as God the Father and God the Son, but they were getting nowhere with the third person, until one of them suggested a bit uncertainly, "Is it God the Wife?"

I guess that although we might be able to name the third person as God the Holy Spirit, like those children most of us would say that it's an area of Christian teaching that we find hard to understand ourselves, and almost impossible to explain to others! ...And down the centuries there has been much debate, and bitter disagreement, between people who have held different views.

As we shall see, its an area of teaching which is very important, ...but it's also an area in which we must tread with humility, ...for here we come to the very heart of God himself. And as we were reminded in our reading from Isaiah 40, who can fully understand God?

"Who has understood the Spirit of the LORD,

or instructed him as his counsellor?

Surely the nations are like a drop in the bucket;

they are regarded as dust on the scales;

he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.

To whom, then, will you compare God?

What image will you compare him to?"

(Is. 40.13,15,18)

We can't put God in a box, and it would be arrogant of us to think that we can fully understand Him. Nevertheless God has chosen to reveal himself to us through the Bible, and we can build up some sort of picture of what God is like.

Let's begin with the Old Testament.

Judaism developed at a time when most people in the world believed that there were many different gods. Rather like people worship different football teams today, so people then would worship their favourite god. Often they would make statues, or idols, of their god and worship those. ...And when they went to war, they would ask their gods for victory. In fact, many people thought that the outcome of a battle depended upon which side had the most powerful gods.

But gradually, the people of Israel began to realise that there weren't many different gods, ...there was only ONE God who had made heaven and earth. And that all these other so-called gods, didn't really exist. Other nations might have been very sincere about their own gods, but they were sincerely wrong. There was only one God.

This became the most important teaching in Judaism. Several times a day a devout Israelite was required to say the Shema:

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." (Dt. 6.4-5)

And then came Jesus, ...which made things a lot more complicated!

At first people thought that Jesus was just another prophet, ...but after a while his followers began to realise that he was far more than that.

For a start he called God his Father, and claimed to have an exclusive relationship with him. He said:

"...no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him". (Mt. 11.27)

And then he claimed to do things that only God was able to do. ...He forgave people their sins, and claimed to be the judge of all the nations (Mk. 2.1-12 and Mt. 25.31-46)

Then he told parables in which he took various OT expressions of God (such as the Shepherd in Ps. 23) and applied them to himself. He said "I am the good shepherd".

And after his resurrection, many of his followers began to realise that Jesus was none other than God himself.

Now that must have been quite mind-blowing for the first Jewish Christians. They knew that there was only one God, so how could Jesus and his Father both be God?

And then at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came ...which made things even more complicated!

For as people experienced the Holy Spirit coming and living within them, they found that the Holy Spirit helped them to do the same things that Jesus had done. ...Jesus had healed the sick, and the Holy Spirit enabled his followers to heal the sick.

And so people began to realise that if Jesus was really God, then the Holy Spirit must be God too.

Now as you can imagine, it took the Church many years to sort out what it believed about how God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit all related to each other.

Many people put forward different ideas, ...but some of these ideas just couldn't be squared with the teaching in the Bible.

For example, some people put forward the idea that Jesus and the Holy Spirit weren't quite as important as the Father. They acknowledged that Jesus was more important than other people, but claimed he wasn't on the same level as the Father, who alone was God.

Some sects, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, still hold to this idea today, ...but it's not what the Bible teaches. In Philippians chapter 2 we read that Jesus is in very nature God.

Other people put forward the idea that God changed his appearance throughout history. In the Old Testament he appeared as God the Father. Then, he left heaven, changed his appearance, and came to Earth as Jesus. And then at Pentecost, he changed his appearance again, and came as the Holy Spirit.

But once again such an idea doesn't square with evidence of the Bible. In our New Testament reading this morning we heard how at the baptism of Jesus, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were working together at the same time:

"As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven [from the Father]: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." (Mk. 1.10-11)

It took many years for the Church to finally sort out what it believed about this. In the end it found that the only idea which fitted the evidence of the Bible was what we now call the 'Doctrine of the Trinity'.

This said that God is One and God is Three. God is one being, yet three persons.

A crude analogy is that of ice, water, and steam. In some ways ice, water and steam are very distinct, and we use them for different things, ...yet they are all the same substance.

In a similar way, the Church recognised that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three separate persons, ...yet they are all part of the same being which we call God.

Three in one! That's where the word 'Trinity' comes from ...Three in unity, or Tri-unity, ...which got abbreviated to Trinity.

As I said, it took the church many years to sort this out, and one very important date in church history was the year 325. In that year, the Roman Emperor Constantine called the first ever ecumenical church council which was held at the city of Nicea.

One of the main topics of discussion was the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and it was this Council, (together with a council that met some 50 years later at Constantinople), that produced the Nicene Creed.

Today, we still say this Nicene Creed at every Communion service. It was written so as to refute the wrong teaching that was around.

The very first line says:

"We believe in ONE God", (not three Gods as some might have thought).

And then there is a paragraph for each person of the Trinity.

The first paragraph goes on to talk about:

"The Father, the almighty

maker of heaven and earth..."

The second paragraph is about Jesus Christ. ...And it stresses that Jesus is:

"...God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God..."

Jesus is just as much 'God' as his Father is.

And then in the third paragraph it talks about the Holy Spirit. He too is:

"...the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified."

Why? Because he too is fully God.

And today, the Nicene Creed is still accepted as one of the benchmarks of genuine Christian faith. All the main denominations (Church of England, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, etc.) readily accept it. While other sects, which aren't genuinely Christian, (such as Jehovahs Witnesses, and Mormons), refuse to accept it.

But what difference does the teaching about the Trinity make to our Christian faith.

There are two points I want to make. The first concerns the nature of God, ...and the second our attitude to worship.

So first, teaching about the Trinity helps us to understand the nature of God.

At the heart of God we have three persons who are deeply committed to each other in a loving relationship.

The Father loves the Son and the Spirit.

The Son loves the Father and the Spirit.

The Spirit loves the Father and the Son.

It's this love which makes the world go round. As we read in 1Jn.4 "...God IS Love".

And it's this love which over-spills to all that God made. That is why Jesus said "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you" (Jn. 15.9)

And this means that Christianity is first and foremost about relationships rather than rules. It's about our relationship with the God who made us.

And what God wants is for us to love him in return. That's why Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.

So let's this morning ask God to help us to love him more.

We're to love God, because God first loved us, ...and this love over-flows from the three persons of the Trinity who love each other.

And because we love God, we want to worship Him, ...and that brings us to our second point.

Who, exactly, do we worship?

If the three persons of the Trinity are equally God, then they are each worthy of an equal share of our worship. But I guess that all of us have a tendency to neglect one or other person of the Trinity from time to time.

When I was a student I went to a lively evangelical church which put great emphasis on the saving work of Jesus, but which tended to neglect and even sometimes be rather suspicious of the Holy Spirit. Since then, I've come across other churches who stress the importance of the Spirit, but who are in danger of neglecting the Father and the Son.

But we need to keep all three in balance.

We love and worship God the Father, because he made us, ...and cares for us as a loving Father.

We love and worship Jesus, because he died for us, ...and put us right with God.

We love and worship the Spirit, because he comes to live within us, ...and gives us life.

Looking back over my own Christian life, I have been tempted to neglect different persons off the Trinity at different times. It's hard to keep all three in balance, but that's something that we should always be trying to do.

So lets have a few moments of quiet in which we can think about our own focus of worship.

Do you find that you can relate more easily to the Father, Son or Spirit?

Are we tempted to neglect the Father, Son or Spirit?

Perhaps you might like to ask God to help you redress the balance.

And as we remember that the Trinity is a God of love, let us ask God to help us receive his love, and to love him more.

Short period of silence

Finish with the grace.