Sermon: The Holy Trinity Pt. 3 - Faith Seeking Understanding

The Holy Trinity Pt. 3 – Faith Seeking Understanding
Sunday, June 15th, 2025
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Deuteronomy 29:29

Prayer

Father, we thank you for the mystery of our salvation, the mystery of who You are as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As we seek now to understand just a small fragment of that mystery by studying the Scriptures, we ask for light to dispel the darkness of ignorance and sin. For we believe what the Lord Jesus taught saying, ‘blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ Grant us such purity and reverence for Your Word now, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

For the last two Sundays, we have been attempting to climb the most difficult mountain in all of Christian doctrine. That is, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. How is God One, and yet Three in One? How are the three divine persons really distinct, and yet each the One Divine Essence. This has been our study and meditation for the last two weeks, and this morning since it is Trinity Sunday we shall have one more attempt at grasping this truth.

• Now whenever you are attempting something difficult and strenuous, it is helpful to remind yourself why you are doing this hard thing in the first place.
  • I remember long ago sitting in my high school calculus class and wondering why am I here? How is calculus going to help me get a job? What do derivatives have to do with my life?
  • And because I did not have Professor O’Dell as my teacher, I dropped out of calculus, only to have to retake it later in college (even then I think I got a C).
    • I imagine most of us in this room have a similar story, perhaps not with math but in some other area of life.
• If we don’t see or understand the reason why, the purpose of doing a hard thing, we are tempted to give up, or we never even try. And sadly, that is how a lot of people approach their relationship with God.
  • They think that God is so high up there, and I am so low down here, the Bible is such a long and big book, and my attention span and memory is so short, therefore it would be either pride or presumption, folly or fruitless to attempt to try to really get to know Him.
    • And indeed, there are many dangers to avoid if you want to know God. God himself warns of approaching Him without fear and reverence and humility.
  • And yet, that high and glorious God has come down to us in Jesus Christ so that we might know him and have a real living personal relationship with him. Moreover, he has come down and sent the Holy Spirit into our very hearts. He has bequeathed to the church the Scriptures through which He invites us, nay commands us, to search him out and know Him.
    • It says in Psalm 105:4, “Seek the Lord, and his strength: Seek his face evermore.”
    • And in Jeremiah 29:13, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”
    • Paul prays for the church in Colossians 1:10, “That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
• Why do people climb mountains? Why do people attempt hard, dangerous, and difficult things? They do it for the glory. For the views from the top. If they are virtuous, for the formation of character.
  • Even those who only do it for the thrill or the excitement or the vanity of social media have made a value judgment, that the risk is worth the reward, the pain is worth the payoff, the sacrifice is worth the investment.
• And so for good and biblical reasons it is most appropriate to liken the hard work of increasing in our knowledge of God (as Paul prays that we do) to the climbing up a mountain.
  • When God created Adam and Eve, he placed them in a garden on a mountain from which four rivers flowed down. And we call the fall into sin a Fall, in part because we fell down that mountain of the knowledge of God and lost our intimate friendship with Him.
  • And so later, when by grace God reveals his name to Moses (see Exodus 3, and Exodus 33), he reveals His name on a mountain. When God reveals His law and will to Israel, He does so from the mountain. When God commands a temple to be built for worship, he commands it to be built on a mountain. Where does Christ go to reveal his glory to Peter, James, and John? The mount of transfiguration. And most importantly, where was Jesus Christ crucified? From where did Jesus commission the apostles to baptize in the Triune Name? On a mountain.
  • So this idea of ascending the mountain of God is a motif that runs from Genesis to Revelation. It acknowledges that we as sinners have fallen from grace, we are way down here in the valley of the shadow of death, and yet God by His grace calls us back to Himself. And therefore, this ascent to God is a most fitting theme to make your own, to explain the journey of your life.
    • What is your autobiography? It is carrying a cross in Jesus’ footsteps, following him from one place to another. From the place that Jesus first loved you and converted you, to the place where you shall behold him on the mountaintop face to face.
• Summary: So returning to that initial question of why do a hard thing? Why climb the mountain of trying to know and understand God? Well, it should be for no other reason than that you love and value the God that came down and rescued you. You believe what Jesus says in John 17:3, that eternal life consists in knowing the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and have no greater desire than that.
• And so this morning I want you to think of this sermon as a kind of group hike to the basecamp of Mount Rainier. I am going to give you two important rules (as your guide) so that you don’t die along the way, and then we’ll apply these two rules to a most important text on the Trinity, John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Rule #1 – Deuteronomy 29:29

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

• First observe that God makes us to distinguish two kinds of things.
  • There are secret things, and there are revealed things.
  • Secret things are for God, revealed things are for us and our children.
    • And so when it comes to knowing God, we need to remember where God Himself has set the boundaries, and then we need to to respect and honor those boundaries and not trespass beyond them.
  • Amongst the many secret things are the particulars of the final judgment, who God predestined for salvation and who God leaves to their just punishment. It is not for you or I to know and judge the unseen thoughts and deeds of men. We refer that decision to the Creator, and with fear and trembling seek mercy for ourselves.
    • Jesus says to Peter when he inquires about John’s destiny, “What is that to you? You follow me.”
    • And then Peter having learned his lesson says in 2 Peter 1:10, “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.”
      • In other words, instead of tying yourself in knots and doubts about whether you are predestined or not, attend to what God has revealed, which is for you to make your calling and election sure by adding virtue to your faith (2 Peter 1:5).
• Remember the whole purpose for which God has made things known. It is for us to do, to obey, to observe, to follow. And part of following Jesus is trusting that if He wanted you to know something, He would have told you in His Word. Moreover, if you are not presently obeying the things He has already revealed, why do you think knowing hidden things is going to help you?
  • Too often we deceive ourselves into thinking that more and new knowledge will help us, when what we actually need is to just do and practice what we already have been told. Confess your sins, forgive one another, love your neighbor as yourself, etc.
• So that’s Rule #1. If God has not revealed it, you ought not to pry, you ought not ask (who are you O man to question God?). But if God has revealed it, then we must make it our own possession, pass it on to our children, and observe it with all our heart.
• Now amongst those things that God has revealed, He has told us that in this life we cannot know what the Divine Essence is (what God is essentially in Himself), we can only know what He is not by some creaturely analogies about Him. And this brings us to Rule #2.

Rule #2 – God is always greater than what your mind can grasp.

• It says in Job 36:26, “Behold, God is great, and we know him not, Neither can the number of his years be searched out.”
• And in Psalm 145:3, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; And his greatness is unsearchable.”
  • You and I cannot grasp eternity, the finite cannot comprehend the infinite.
• God says in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts.”
  • So whatever likeness or similitude there is between us and God, there is always an ever-greater dissimilitude.
• Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:16, “He alone hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see.”
• And in Romans 11:33, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!”
  • God is far greater than you presently think He is. And even when the Bible tells us something like God is love or God is good, even that falls short of the love and goodness that God actually is, because you and I have never met anyone or anything whose very being and essence is love and goodness.
    • What in us is a quality added to our being, that we are good sometimes and loving sometimes, is in God essentially and supereminently.
    • This is why Jesus says in Luke 18:19, “No one is good but One, that is, God.” That is, God has goodness in an infinitely higher mode. What we call good down here is only an analogy to God’s all surpassing goodness up there.
    • Paul says likewise about love in Ephesians 3:19-20, I pray that you may “know the love of Christ, which surpasseth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”
  • Notice, the love of Christ, the love that is God and His power to do, far surpasses our knowledge. And therefore, whenever we say any creaturely perfection of God (like God is love or goodness or unity or power), remember that God’s mode of having those things far exceeds what we can comprehend.
    • Just as a worm in the mud cannot understand human love or romance, or the joys of marriage, or even what a human being is, because a worm has no eyes or ability to reason, just so, the distance between God and us is even greater than that.
    • Compared to God, we are as blind worms in the mud. And yet God speaks to worms in Isaiah 41:14, “Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, And thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.”
    • How has God helped us? He became a man in Christ. And so if you can imagine becoming a worm to help worms, that is less than the distance God crossed to become man. And it is that distance between Creator and creature that makes the incarnation of the Son of God, the Word made flesh, into the most unfathomable act of grace and self-giving. Can you believe God did that!?
    • Would you become a worm for worm’s sake? God became a man for man’s salvation.
  • One of the signs that you are starting to make progress in your knowledge of God is that you start to empty yourself out for others.
    • You think, If God has poured out his life to love and forgive me, when I was still a sinner, then I must certainly give my life for others; even if they don’t appreciate it or ever say thank you. In fact, it is an honor to be poured out like a drink offering upon the altar, to be identified with Christ and his sufferings.
  • And so the truth abouts God’s greatness and the distance He crossed to come and get us, should move us to great acts of devotion towards Him, which then spill over into the lives of others. How can we every repay such abundant grace?
    • The Apostle John says in 1 John 4:20-21, “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.”
    • And so loving each other is part of climbing the mountain with Jesus. Some people are hard to love. But look in the mirror, you are hard to love, and yet Jesus loves you. This is the gospel. That God so loved us, that He sent His only begotten Son. Not because we were lovely, on the contrary we were anything but. And yet He came down to change us and make us worthy of being united to Him.
    • “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”
• And this brings us to our third and final part of the sermon which is, How can you know and love what you cannot see?

Part #3 – Faith Seeking Understanding

The answer to this question is by faith seeking understanding.

• Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
• And in Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”
• Now let’s now apply this principle of faith seeking to understand who God is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
  • According to our first rule, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit a secret thing, or is it a truth He has revealed?
    • Obviously, we must answer that God has revealed this truth to us in Christ, and the Apostles recorded this truth for us in the New Testament. Therefore, we must believe this truth to be saved, and we ought to seek some understanding insofar as God’s Word has made this mystery known.
  • At the same time, we must remember Rule #2, that God is always greater than our minds can comprehend. And therefore, if we want to understand how there are three distinct persons in God and yet all the One God, we are going to need some creaturely analogy to help us see what is similar to God, while also acknowledging that ever-greater dissimilitude. That is the move that keeps us out of heresy while also giving us some imperfect analogical understanding of who it is we love.
  • This brings us to John 1:1, a verse that all of us believe and most are familiar with but is hard to understand. So let’s try by faith.

John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

• First observe that there is both a distinction and an identity between the Word and God. Two distinct subjects, and yet both identified with each other. How can this be?
  • John has given us a clue by using this word Word (in Greek logos). He wants us to think about what a Word is because that is the analogy He is going to develop in his Gospel to describe three distinct persons who are all the One God.
  • So what is a word?
    • There is the external word that is spoken by our mouth and heard with the ears. But what do our external words reflect within us?
    • Our external words reflect some idea or concept or definition in our mind which we then communicate to others. And so before any external word comes out of our mouth, there is first some interior word that proceeds from our mind, and which we say is conceived/begotten by our intellect.
      • For example, if you are walking down the street and see a dog, and you look closely and identify that this dog is a Golden Retriever, what you have just done is conceived a definition in your mind by an act of understanding. And we call that definition that proceeds from an act of understanding an interior word, or the word of the heart.
      • Put another way, this is you talking to yourself in your head.
    • And it is that internal word conceived in your mind that is the beginning for John’s analogy about the Trinity.
  • So let’s develop this analogy further and see how it is both similar and dissimilar to the Word in God.
    • 1. Both our word and God’s Word are invisible and immaterial. You cannot see God, and I cannot see your thoughts. You cannot touch God, I cannot touch your thoughts.
    • 2. Both our word and God’s Word proceed from some principle. For us it is our intellect from which an interior word is generated, and in God the principle is the Father from whom this Word proceeds.
      • BTW: The name of that internal procession from the Father is called Generation, or as John 3:16 calls Jesus, “the only begotten Son.” That begetting of the Son internal to God is like your intellect begetting an interior word.
    • 3. Both our word and God’s Word are really distinct from their principle.
      • The definition you conceive in your mind is a concept really distinct from yourself, and yet it is also inside of yourself.
      • And likewise, the Word conceived in the mind of God is really distinct and yet also internal to God.
    • So thus far we have an analogy for a Word that is internal, invisible, immaterial, proceeds from a principle, and is really distinct from that principle. What is left then is to find an analogy for how that Word is also of the same nature as that Principle, because John says, “the Word was God.”
  • Here is where we start to notice some major dissimilarities between the word in us, and the Word in God.
• So to understand this, start by thinking in your mind about yourself. Who are you? What are you? Do you fully understand yourself? Can you comprehend your own essence and being, your body and soul, your unique personality such that in one word you can define and explain who you are? Can you generate an exhaustive concept of yourself (a definition) that fully expresses to others your entire being? No. But God can.
• Whereas we need many words to express who we are because our knowledge of ourselves is so imperfect and fragmented, God on the other hand understands Himself perfectlyand all in one single and eternal act of understanding.
  • And from that perfect comprehension of His own essence, proceeds a Word that perfectly expresses that essence, so much so that it is the Divine Essence.
  • This is what John means when he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There is a real distinction of persons, and a real identify of essence.
    • One of the most fundamental rules of theology is the maxim whatever is in God is God. So perfections that are distinct powers and accidental qualities in us, like knowing, willing, wisdom and beauty, are in God all the one divine essence. There are no real distinction in God, only a real distinction between the three persons.
    • So if there is anything internal to God, like a Word in the Beginning with the Father, that Word must necessarily be the Divine Essence itself. This is how we speak of both a real distinction between persons while also affirming a real identify of essence. The relations we call Father, Son, and Spirit just are the Divine Essence, and distinct only from one another (by mutual opposition).

Conclusion

• What makes the truth about this Word in God that is God even more amazing, is what John tells us about this Word in the verses that follow.
• He goes on to say in verses 9-14, that this Word is also a Light, “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
• The more you know and understand the greatness of God, the more you will be amazed and humbled and moved to worship by the Incarnation of that God.
• So will you receive this grace and truth from the Eternal Word made flesh? For he invites you to follow him all the way up the mountain, and He promises that the views are worth it. You shall see the glory of God, and live.
• In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.