Word of Salvation – Vol. 24 No. 48 – August 1978

 

Father, Son And Holy Spirit

 

Sermon by Rev. J. J. Van Wageningen, B.D. on Lord’s Day 8

Scripture reading: Isaiah 53:7-14, Matthew 3:11-17

Psalter Hymnal: 184; 298; 318; 317; 491

 

Congregation,

Lord’s Days 8 to 22 contain the explanation of the 12 articles of the Apostles’ Creed. In other words, we confess our faith, our Christian faith, for the content of the Apostles’ Creed is the gospel, the truth of God’s Word. “That gospel is summarized for us in the Articles of our Christian faith a creed beyond doubt, and confessed throughout the world.” (Lord’s Day 7, Q.22).

Every Sunday we profess the catholic or universal; undoubted, Christian faith with the words of this creed. Do you know why it is called the Apostles’ Creed? This creed or confession is very old and for many centuries people believed that the apostles themselves wrote these articles.

There is a nice story about this. “At the time when persecution broke out in Jerusalem the 12 apostles gathered in the upper-room for their final meeting. They realized that very soon they would be scattered around to different countries. So, standing at the parting of the ways, they decided to draw up a creed as their last will and testament for the churches. There were 12 apostles, so each of them contributed one article of faith. Thus the 12 articles of the Apostles’ Creed were born. A nice story, but only a story! One of the many legends told and believed in the Middle Ages.

Most probably this creed was in its earliest form (in the 2nd century) a very simple confession of faith in the triune God, “I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. And then it grew. The church faced new questions that called for new answers. Heresies, false teachings, arose and they were rejected and positively the truth of the Christian faith was formulated. So these 12 articles gradually developed till, finally in the 5th century, the finishing touches were added.

Since then it has been used by churches everywhere in the form in which we know it today. It is one of the ecumenical creeds. The meaning of the word ‘ecumenical’ is universal, worldwide. It is “a creed beyond doubt, and confessed throughout the world”. (The other ecumenical creeds are the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds, which you can find in the back of your Psalter Hymnal.)

So the name Apostles’ Creed means that these articles contain the teachings of the apostles. They contain our Christian faith which we confess with the church of all ages.

We confess our faith. We must keep this in mind. It is not only a matter of a good, orthodox, biblical content as laid down in these 12 articles. It is not only a matter of knowing these articles. It is more. According to the previous Lord’s Day (7) true faith is not only a true knowledge, but also a firm confidence. These two belong together. And it is good to remind ourselves of this now that we are going to confess the content of our Christian faith: we don’t just talk about what we know from God’s Word with an intellectual knowledge – head-knowledge – but about what we know by faith – that is: what we know with our heart; our heart embraces it with confidence; our heart trusts in it with confidence.

If this confidence is lacking, then we don’t really know, although you may be able to recite all the Lord’s Days of the Catechism by heart. We must emphasize this, because there is the dangerous possibility that we listen to the preaching and talk about the truth of God’s Word in an abstract manner, in a theoretical way. It remains outside our heart. We know it, but our heart is not in it with confidence. Then we don’t truly believe, we don’t truly know.

We must keep this in mind also with respect to the content of Lord’s Day 8 what God has revealed about Himself in His Word. When we speak about God, we do it in the right way, only if we do it believingly, knowing God, trusting in God. Then we see God, we know God, His wisdom, His power, His glory in the works of His hands, in creation. We see God, His love, His mercy, His holiness, His righteousness, His wisdom in His works of deliverance and renewal.

And so we know and we see in a different way! We see the trees, the hills, the rivers, the sun, the moon, the stars, etc. – they are not just objects, things, which we can use, study, admire; they are much less divine powers, gods, as in the pagan way of thinking or in the superstition of astrology. No, we see all things in a different way: “This is my Father’s world”. I see God. All things are from God. His hand made them and they are in His hand. To live by faith means to live before God’s face, in His presence, always and everywhere. Then we know and see all things and the whole of life in relationship to Him.

And now Lord’s Day 8. This is the beginning: God Himself. How are these articles divided? Into 3 parts, God the Father and our creation, God the Son and our deliverance, God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification. We see God in all His works. We must not put ourselves in the centre laying the stress on: our creation, our deliverance, our sanctification. Also pious men can be self- centred: their own piety, their own experiences, their own salvation, their own pious ego become all and everything to them.

We believe in God, the one, true, eternal God, the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we profess our faith in God. God is first and in the centre. “From God and through God and to God are all things!” This does not mean that we will be able to know God as He is in Himself. We believe in God and His works – creation, deliverance, sanctification. So God reveals Himself, as the Creator, the Saviour, the Renewer.

God’s divine being however, is and remains for us an eternal mystery. “God alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light, no one has seen or can see Him” (1Tim.6:16). It is not only so that we do not see Him, but we cannot see Him as He is in Himself. We know God only because and in so far as He reveals Himself through His Word and work. We cannot get beyond that. Therefore, we must humbly listen to what God says about Himself and His works. We must listen as children. We must try to say no more than the Bible says, for then we are guilty of speculation; we must say no less than the Bible says, for then we impoverish spiritual life.

God makes Himself known to us, He comes to us, in and through the Lord Jesus Christ’. “No man has ever seen God, but God the only Son, Who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known” (John 1:18). Therefore, our faith is faith in Christ. By true faith we are ingrafted in Christ. Faith, our Christian faith, is the living relationship with Christ. We know Him, Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, and it is our only comfort in life and in death that we belong to Him, our faithful Saviour, Who fully paid for all our sins with His precious blood.

There is no contrast between faith in Jesus and faith in the triune God. For who comes to you through Jesus? No one else but the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you don’t know the Lord Jesus, then the doctrine of the Trinity is an abstract theory, but through Jesus it is a living reality.

Jesus, the eternal Son of God, reveals the Father and makes known the Holy Spirit and His workings. Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Him. If you really know Him, you know His Father. He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. He and the Father are one. And Jesus, the glorified Lord, is the Spirit. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ is one with Him.. So if you believe in the Lord Jesus, then you believe in the triune God.

Again: then the Trinity is not an abstract theory, but a living reality. God has revealed Himself in His Word that these three distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are the one, true, and eternal God. The one God exists in three persons. God is a three-personal Being. We cannot explain this. We cannot compare this with anything else. We cannot find any analogy or example to illustrate this, to make it clear, transparent. We will never be able to understand the divine mystery of God’s Being, the mystery of God’s divine existence. We must believe, simply believe what God says about Himself in His Word.

In the Old Testament the central emphasis falls on the oneness of God. “Hear, O Israel, the LORD, Yahweh, our God is one LORD” (Deut.6:4). So often Israel yielded to the temptation to serve idols. Over against the heathen worship of many gods, many idols, Israel had to be reminded, time and again, that the God of Israel is the only true God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the King of all the earth.

The Lord God stands all alone, but He is not lonely. There is a fulness in God. From all eternity God is there, living, planning, working as a fellowship of three divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We see how the light of this truth begins to appear already in the Old Testament. E.g. Isaiah 61:1, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me.” Jesus quotes this text, in which the Spirit and the Father stand out clearly, and Jesus says that He Himself is the “Me”. Another example we find in Isaiah 63:9,10, where the prophet speaks about the LORD God of Israel and says, “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His presence saved them, but they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit.” In these 2 verses there is a distinction of the three persons of the triune God: The LORD, Yahweh, the Angel of His presence, the Holy Spirit.

This truth of the Trinity is more clearly revealed in the fuller light of the New Testament. We have read the story of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. (Matt.3:11-17). “As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending on Him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is My Son, Whom I love; with Him I am well pleased’.” At the end of the Gospel of Matthew we read that Jesus gives the great commission to His apostles. They must go out and preach the gospel to all nations, and those who believe they must baptize “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matt.28:19).

And when the apostle Paul finishes the 2nd letter to the Corinthians he gives his apostolic blessing to the church, and we still use that same benediction: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2Cor.13:14).

There are many who deny that God is three-in-one, e.g. Liberals in the churches, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses.

When a Jehovah’s Witness knocks at your door, you can be sure that in a discussion he will try to corner you by introducing this subject. “The word trinity is not even found in the Bible”, he will say. “How can you believe that one is three, and that three is one? It means that there are three gods.” It is true, you will look in vain for the word trinity in the Bible. This word was used by the church later on. But the truth as such is in the Bible. This is how God has revealed Himself in His Word: these three distinct persons are the one, true, eternal God.

The church in the early centuries was confronted with false teachings which denied this truth, and in the face of these heresies the early church confessed the doctrine of the Trinity in clear-cut terms. The church was deeply convinced of the basic importance of this truth. The gospel of salvation stand or falls with it.

This is crystal clear to all who truly believe the gospel.

The gospel of Christmas: God the Father sent His Son – “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The gospel of Good Friday: God the Son, the eternal Word, became flesh, He became one of us, and humbled Himself and became obedient to death on a cross.

The gospel of Easter: Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.

The gospel of Pentecost: God the Holy Spirit was poured out as the Spirit of Christ. He makes us alive, unites us with Christ, renews us to holiness.

If we really live by faith, then we know God, the one God Who exists in three persons. We cannot comprehend His existence, His divine Being. This is a mystery far beyond our understanding. We don’t comprehend, but we worship and adore Him. This is the essence, the real thing of our Christian life: we come to the Father through the work of the Son, and we come to the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit.

We know God the Father – He is God for us – He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all.

We know God the Son – He is God with us – the Immanuel, our Lord Jesus Christ.

We know God the Holy Spirit – He is God in us – He makes our bodies and our souls temples of God.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

AMEN.