Holy Trinity A
That’s Who He is and What He Does
Gen 1:1-2:4
11 June 2017 – Redeemer
In the beginning was the Holy Trinity. Moses says it simply, “In the beginning God.” If I were to ask you to tell me about yourself you would not begin where Moses begins. You would start talking to me about where you were born (Glendive, Montana), where you grew up (Wadena, Minnesota) and what you do (husband to Valerie, father to Katie, Leah, Andrea, and Jared, shepherd to the flock at Redeemer). These words of Moses change everything about how we look on ourselves, our lives, and this world. According to God’s own Word it isn’t about you. The story doesn’t begin with you. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
As I already mentioned that God of Genesis 1:1 is not a generic little “g” god like we worship in America – we all worship the same god. God bless America. No, the God Moses declares in Genesis 1:1 is the Holy Trinity – all three persons of the Godhead are there.
Saint John tells us that the only begotten Son of God was there. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. Later, Saint John tells us “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (1:14). Who is that Word of God who is God? Who is that Word who became flesh? It is the Son of God. The Spirit of God was also there “hovering over the face of the waters.”
The Trinity is also proclaimed in the plurals of Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” You have a singular God speaking in plurals. You have One God, yet three persons.
In the beginning, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, God created the heavens and the earth. The water, the crops, the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, you, your body, your home, your food – He is the source of everything. Everything you have is His. He created it for you and has given it to you – out of His Fatherly divine goodness and mercy.
That reveals the nature of the Holy Trinity. As Saint John tells us “God is love” and the creation of the world is evidence of that love. God certainly did not need to create the world. He doesn’t need the world to complete Him or give Him glory or demonstrate His sovereign power. He is all of that from eternity. So then why does He create? Because God’s nature is love. He did not need humanity, but He creates us so that He can give to us and love us. The Holy Trinity, unlike any other god in all the world, is completely self-less. Love motivates Him to create the world, to sustain the world, even after man sinned and destroyed God’s creation.
So what have we learned from Genesis so far? The God of Scripture is the Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three persons in one God. His nature is love. There is no God apart from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – if you deny one of the persons, then you no longer have the God of Scripture. Now we get to you – the foremost of God’s creation – humanity.
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26–27, ESV)
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. … Male and female He created them. As you cannot have God without the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you cannot have a human without a man and woman. God makes male and female. If you were born a male that is what God made you and it is His good gift. If you were born a female that is what God made you and it is His good gift. Your gender is not yours. God determined your sex – male or female. It’s His gift to you. That goes back to those first words – in the beginning God.
God made male and female in His image – His loving image. Jesus Himself makes it clear that the creation of Adam and Eve was also God’s institution of marriage. The two become one. Do you see God’s image there? The Trinity is Three-in-One. The creation of Adam and Eve, together in marriage – the two are one flesh. Created in God’s image – also means that Adam’s sole purpose, his heart was to love and serve Eve and give good gifts to her. Eve’s sole purpose, her heart was to love Adam and receive his gifts. Their union as husband and wife would create children, which also is a self-less and sacrificial act. Marriage, intended by God, is the selfless and sacrificial giving of a husband to his wife, of a wife to her husband, and of a father and mother to their children. I doubt if you’ll read that on the internet or in your favorite magazine.
In my reading on Genesis 1, one author (Herbert Leupold) said that every time God “saw that it was good” would be better translated, God saw that it was “excellent.” That conveys not only creation’s goodness, but its completion, its perfection. Nothing was wrong in all of creation – it wasn’t merely good. It was excellent. Adam perfectly loved Eve and Eve perfectly loved Adam. They both perfectly loved God. There was no death, no tears, no pain, no sadness, no accidents.
So would you describe your life, this world, your marriage as excellent? Is your love toward your neighbor, your spouse, your children self-less and sacrificial? Do you begin your sentences and thoughts, “In the beginning God” or do you begin them with “I” and “me.”? Is your life without pain and tears and death? What has gone so wrong with the world and with you? You know. Sin. Adam and Eve launched a rebellion and put themselves first. Now everything begins with me instead of God – what I think and feel instead of what He does and says. That’s the nature of sin. When we rebel against God we put ourselves in His place and by our disobedience we corrupted the image of God within us. Now we are certainly not excellent and our lives and world and hearts are most certainly not good.
But while we have lost what God made us to be, the God of Scripture did not cease being the God He is. Our nature is corrupted with sin, but God’s nature does not change – He is love. In love He created us and in love He saved us from ourselves and our sin. As the God of Scripture is a particular God – the Holy Trinity, so is His love for us a particular love. The Father loves us by sending His only begotten Son into the world. The Son was born male, to take Adam’s place, to love His bride with a selfless love. Jesus, being the most excellent husband laid down His life for His bride, for you. Jesus is the most excellent Son and brother. He becomes the rebel son by bearing your sin. He suffers the Father’s anger so you could have the Father’s favor. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8, ESV)
In His Son, the Father now looks at you and He sees that you are very good. Not by yourself, not by your own works, but completely and solely in Christ. In the creation, everything that was good came through and by the Word – which is God’s Son. After our sin destroyed creation, everything that is good still comes through and only through that same Word Jesus. You are forgiven your sins in Jesus. You, who aren’t so lovely, are made lovely by God in Jesus. You, whose own sin brings your own death, now have life eternal in Jesus. You, whose nature is curved in on itself by sin, now in Christ have a new man in you, who can love, who does good works, who serves those around you with compassion and mercy.
In the beginning God, the Holy Trinity, created the heavens and the earth for you. His nature is love for you. That is still who God is for you. In the name of Jesus.
Pr. Bruce Timm
10 June 2017 anno Domini