Three in One
05/06/2002 - God the Father
We live in a world that's desperate for God. Yet a lot of people live their whole lives as if God were missing, as if God really didn't exist. Which reminds me of the two boys who got in trouble at a religious school and were sent to the principal's office to be disciplined. These two guys had a bad reputation and the principal felt that one reason they were troublemakers was because they didn't have God in their lives.
So when the first boy came into her office the principal asked him, "Where is God?" The boy was so afraid he couldn't answer. So she asked him again, "Where is God?" By now he started to sweat, but he still couldn't answer. So finally she said, "I'm going to send you out of the room to think about that question while I talk to your friend. And when you come back I'm going to ask you again, 'Where is God?'"
Well, when the boy staggered out of the principal's office his face was pure white. His friend looked at him, got real nervous and said, "What happened to you?" The little boy said, "I'm not sure, but I think God's missing and they're trying to pin it on us!"
God's not missing. But a lot of people think he is. I was talking to a couple in our church last week and they told me that they invited a friend to Valley View and the first question the person asked was, "Does God go to your church?" And they weren't kidding. Apparently their friend had been to other churches where God didn't show up, and she's looking for God.
A lot of people think God is missing. A lot of people think God is around, but they don't really know who he is. A Christian author named A. W. Tozer once wrote, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."
Unfortunately, often what comes into most of our minds when we think about God just isn't accurate. For some of us God is like our conscience. He loves to make us feel guilty when we do something wrong. He walks around carrying a big club and can't wait to clubber us when we mess up. He's the eye in the sky that gets his jollies out of making our life miserable, kind of a cosmic killjoy.
For some people God is this tired old man in a flowing robe, with white hair and a long beard that sits on his heavenly rocking chair half-asleep and completely out of touch with our high tech, fast paced world. He's the Ancient of Days, old and feeble. He might have done some neat miracles when he was younger, but that was a long time ago before he had arthritis and lost his hearing. He's way past his prime now and not even a candidate for Viagra!
For some of us God is a huge disappointment. He's allowed way too much hurt to come into our lives to trust him. It's best just to avoid him, because if the truth were known we're ticked at God. There have been way too many let downs, way too many unanswered prayers, way too many undeserved disasters. God can't be trusted.
For some of us God is a father figure. That could be good or bad. It depends on the kind of father we had growing up. If we had a warm, loving, involved, nurturing dad, then God's a kind loving heavenly father. But if we had a distant, detached, abusive father who abandoned us, then God's not such a good father.
What comes into your mind when you think about God? Is your view of God true? J. B. Phillips wrote a book called Your God is Too Small and in it he said, "What are the little gods that infest your mind? We need to exterminate them and enlarge the aperture through which the light of the true God may shine."
Today we begin a brand new series called Three in One . It's a short, three-week series designed to exterminate our false views of God and replace them with the truth about who God really is. Do you want to know who God really is? Do want to know the truth about God? Then this series is for you.
Our source of information is going to be the Bible, God's inspired textbook, God's Holy Word. It's the place where God has revealed himself to us and we're going to look at key passages to understand who he is. Today we want to look at God the Father, next week at God the Son, and then at God the Holy Spirit.
This series is a follow up to the one we just finished called What's the Difference? After taking two months to seriously study the major religions and cults of the world we concluded that the big difference between them and the Christian faith is the identity God. None of them believe in a Trinity. None of them believe in a God who exists as three persons in one. Yet the concept of the Trinity is foundational to understanding who God really is. Not just the Christian version of God, but the true version of the one and only God who exists in the universe. That's the difference.
Let me give you a broadly accepted definition of the Trinity. There is only one God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three eternal and coequal Persons. In other words, God is one being or one essence, but within God are three separate persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, all uncreated, all equal in power and glory, all with different functions and roles and all deeply in love with each other. Not three gods. One God in three persons.
So when you think about God, start by thinking about three persons in one. But don't try too hard to comprehend it, because as someone has said, "a God comprehended is no God." We can't figure it out. It'll blow you're mind to think of God as three persons in one. Dr. Robert South said, "The doctrine of the Trinity is both crucial and complex. He that denies it may lose his soul, but he that strives too much to understand it may lose his wits."
I don't want anybody to lose their soul or their wits during this series. I was talking to a man this week who's really looking forward to understanding the Trinity. And I had to caution him saying, "Don't expect to understand it, because it's incomprehensible. I don't understand it. But that's okay because I don't even understand how my computer works or my cell phone or the Internet, let alone God." Our goal is not to understand God, but to know God, to trust God, to stand in awe of God.
Now some will say, "There's no such thing as the Trinity. The word's not even found in the Bible." And you know what? That's true. The word "Trinity" is not found in the Bible. You can't find the word anywhere, yet the concept of the Trinity is found everywhere. Let's look first at the truth that there is one God, then at the truth that he exists in three persons.
Deuteronomy 6:4 is called the Great Shema. It's the great confession of the Jewish faith. Every Jew knows the Great Shema. "Shema Israel, Adonai Elohanu, Adonai Echad." In English, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. There's only one God. Not three. Not three hundred. One. And the full impact of that revelation can only be understood by a people who were living in the midst of nations that worshiped thousands of gods. The god of the sun, the god of the moon, the god of the rain, the god of the river, the god of the field, the god of war, the god of peace and on and on and on. And God says, "Enough already! There's only one God and that's me!"
Yet as early as the first three verses of the Bible we see that that one God exists in a community of three persons. Turn to Genesis 1. Look at Genesis 1:1-3, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The very first sentence of the Bible assumes the existence of God and introduces him as the grand architect of the universe, the Father of all creation, the first person of the Trinity.
The second verse introduces another person. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The Holy Spirit, a second person in the Trinity, is described as hovering over or protecting God's creation.
And then in verse three, God speaks. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. The Word of God is the agent of creation. Now whom does the Bible call "the Word of God?" Turn to John 1. John 1:1 starts with the very same phrase as Genesis 1:1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made.
And whom is the Word of God John's talking about? Skip down to verse 14, The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. The Word of God is Jesus. Jesus is the one who became flesh and lived among us. So in the first three verses of the Bible you have God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Which explains why God says in Genesis 1:26, Let us (not let me) make human beings in our image (not in my image), in our likeness (not in my likeness), and let them (man and woman together) rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. God is three in one.
Other verses in the Bible specifically refer to our three in one God, perhaps none more clearly than Matthew 28:19-20, a passage often called the Great Commission. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
So there is one God who exists in three co-equal, eternal persons. Not three separate gods. Not one God who appears in three different forms, sometimes as the Father, sometimes as the Son, sometimes as the Holy Spirit. No, one God who exists all the time as three different persons talking to each other, listening to each other, loving each other, enjoying one another, creating things together, having fun together. At the center of the universe, the ultimate reality is a God who is in perfect community with himself all the time. Do you like to be around yourself all the time? God does. He loves to be around himself.
Think of the times in your life, those moments when you've enjoyed deep community, moments of love or friendship, the best times you ever had with your spouse or your family or your friends around the dinner table, or out on a walk, your richest conversations. Times when you really felt listened to and understood, cared about and deeply loved, times of real connection. Those moments you never wanted to end. That's what God enjoys all the time, 24/7, 365 days a year for all eternity. He's got a good thing going and it's only ever been messed up once.
There's only been one time when that perfect community was broken. And it was hell for God to go through it. And that was when Jesus Christ hung on the cross for your sin and mine and cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me! Why have you turned your back on me and left me alone?" It was right then that our sin got in the way and broke up that perfect community. God the Father couldn't stand to look at his Son suffering for it. That's how much we mean to God. That's how much he loves us. So much that he was willing to have his eternal community ripped apart for our sake.
God exists in community. And when he created us in his image he created us with that same need for community. It's part of our DNA. That's why we're relational beings, because God is a relational God within himself. That's why it wasn't good for Adam to be alone. Adam needed community. And so God created Eve and the two of them together became one flesh. Male and female together are created in God's image, not just the man alone. Which explains why we all want to be with somebody. We all long for companionship.
One of the most brutal ways to torture a human being is to deny them community. That's what prisons do. They keep people behind bars to separate them from the community of normal life. But if they really need punishment they put them in "solitary confinement," because being totally alone can destroy a person.
Senator John McCain was a POW during the Vietnam War and in his book Faith of My Fathers he describes the elation he experienced when he emerged from solitary confinement. "I was overwhelmed by the compulsion to talk nonstop, face-to-face with my obliging new cellmate. I ran my mouth ceaselessly for four days .... One of the most amusing spectacles in prison is the sight of two men, both just released from solitary, talking their heads off simultaneously, neither one listening to the other, both absolutely enraptured by the sound of their own voices."
The Trinity explains why we need each other. But God didn't need us. He didn't create human beings because he needed someone to love. God is love and experiences ultimate love within himself. No. God created human beings because he wanted to share his love with us. He wanted to invite us into it. The very same reason most married couples want children. They don't need children, but they do want to share their love with their kids. In fact, psychologists tell us that children care more that their parents love other than that their parents love them. And that's because kids need the assurance that something bigger is going that doesn't involve them, that doesn't rest on their shoulders, but rather invites them into it. Which is what God does with us.
God invites us to enjoy his love forever. Which is why Jesus prayed in John 17:24, "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world." At the center of the universe is a happy, love filled home, that we all long to be a part of and will be a part of some day if we follow the Way home who is Jesus.
Now, in the moments we have left, let's look at God the Father, often called the first person of the Trinity. We've already seen that he's the powerful creator of the universe. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In Genesis 1:1, the Hebrew word for create is the word "bara," it means that God created something out of nothing. He spoke into existence that which didn't exist.
Hebrews 11:3 puts it this way, By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
That's how powerful God is, able to create the universe out of nothing. Do you know how big the universe is? I don't. But I do know that the sun, the star at the center of our universe is 93 million miles away. That's a bit of a commute in rush hour! And it's 865,000 miles in diameter. In fact, the sun is so big that you could fit a million earths inside the sun. One astronomer said if you reduce the size of the sun to a ball about two feet in diameter, then the earth would be about the size of a pea. That's just how big the sun is and that's only one star among hundreds of billions in one galaxy of the universe called the Milky Way. And there are several hundred million galaxies that can be seen by our most sophisticated telescopes.
That tells me that God is one awesomely powerful creator. He's a God who has the power to create the universe out of nothing, a God who has the power to raise Jesus from the dead, a God who has the power to raise a marriage from the dead, a God who has the power to rebuild a messed up life, a God for whom nothing is to difficult. God the Father is a powerful creator.
God the Father is a passionate lover. We've already seen the great love he has for the other members of the Trinity. But he has that same great love for you and me. It's one thing to love the perfect Son of God or to love the perfect Holy Spirit who never do anything wrong. But a God who loves a messed up, inconsistent, self-centered, rebellious jerk like me? That's a passionate lover.
John 3:16, For 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.
1 John 4:8,10, God is love ... This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
One of the great differences between the Christian faith and all the cults and world religions that we've studied is the love of God. No other cult or world religion has a God who is madly in love with us. None of them have a God who at great cost to himself sent us his one and only Son, to die for our sin on a blood stained cross, to break that eternal community he had with Jesus so that we could have community with God.
Douglas John Hall writes in the book The Sacred Romance , "God's problem is not that God is not able to do certain things. God's problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God just like it complicates every life."
Finally, God the Father is a Daddy. And that's the best news I can give you today. The apostle Paul writes to Christians in Romans 8:15 and says, You have received the spirit of adoption. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The word "Abba" is the Hebrew word for Daddy. When you walk down the streets of Jerusalem you hear young kids calling out to their fathers, "Abba. Abba." It's a term of intimacy and affection.
We have a Daddy in heaven! A lot of us didn't grow up with a Dad. We all had fathers, but not many of us had Daddy's. The best lover in the world is not our Mom or Dad, it's our God. Abba, Father. Daddy. That's the God of the Bible.
Martin Luther, the man who ignited the Reformation, said, "I have difficulty praying the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be that name. I have a problem praying that prayer, because whenever I say "our father" I think of my own father who was hard, unyielding and relentless. I cannot help but think of God that way." Some of us struggle with that same thing. But the Father of the Lord's Prayer is different than your Dad or your Mom or the person who disappointed you. He's Daddy. And if God were just this all powerful Creator, we would fear him, but we wouldn't love him. No. He's Daddy. He loves us deeply and sent his Son to prove his love for us.
Sometimes when our kids share some tough things that they're going through at school, I wish so much I could be there with them, but I can't. And if my kids are only counting on Mommy or Daddy being there for them, they're going to be disappointed. But God the Father is with them. He doesn't miss any tear, any confrontation. He's always there. He's the Daddy we've always dreamed of but never had. This is God the Father, the first person of the three in one God. Do you know him? Do you believe in him? Do you love him?