SERMON: "The Trinity: Order, Unity, and Mission"

Worship of the Triune God on Trinity Sunday

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church Podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon, and we pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

And may you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

Well greetings again from the Saints of Tri-City Covenant Church in Summersworth, New Hampshire. It is really my honor to bring the Word to you this morning. At Tri-City Covenant Church, we follow the church calendar throughout the year, and we also follow the Reformed lectionary readings.

And so I was preparing, obviously, to preach at my church this Sunday. This Sunday, actually, on the calendar is called Trinity Sunday, where then the Scriptures point us to the Trinity and the different aspects of the Trinity and these things.

So this morning, as I was preparing, this week I should say, I was focusing on those three Scriptures. The passages this morning are Genesis 1, 2 Corinthians 13, and then Matthew 28, the Great Commission we'll end with.

So I'm just going to quickly probably go through all three of these passages this morning. And really, in the Genesis passage, we're really going to just try to draw out really two things from that passage this morning.

We're going to try to draw out the absolute order that we find in the creation, that God, when He created things out of nothing, He brought it about in a matter of order, together, all three pieces, all three parts, I should say, of God.

The God had all three persons, I should say, of the Trinity were there, and how they brought it together in order. And then secondly, I'm going to try to draw out the idea of the unity of the God who flows from that creation.

And then we'll move into the 2 Corinthians. But before we do that, let's look at Genesis 1. I'm not going to read all of Genesis 1 this morning. The lectionary reading actually goes from the beginning of chapter 1 through 2 .4.

But I'm just going to read just this morning to set us there the first five verses. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void. A darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face.

Of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

And the evening and the morning were the first day. Almighty God, our Father, again, we are grateful to gather at your throne. We are grateful, O Lord God, to look into your word this morning. Open our hearts and our minds to your message this day.

Father, I pray that you would watch over my tongue. Father, I pray, O Lord God, that your truth would come forward this morning. Father, we are grateful that you again allow us to come before you in worship.

Open us, O Lord God, to your message. In Jesus' name, amen. So, again, what we see here is, firstly, is this idea of this order of creation. And if we read the whole creation account, we can see there's order upon order upon order.

Everything is brought into order by our God. On day one, he created the light, as Don had said even earlier, that God created the light well before the sun and the moon and the stars. God created the light three days before, I should say.

And then on day two, we see God, he divides the waters and establishes the heaven, the firmament of heaven, and he separates the waters. And then on day three, we see that God divided the waters under the firmament, so the waters under the firmament, to bring forth land.

And on that land, he brought forth herbs and fruit trees and grass. And further, in order as well, he provided a way for those things to produce, to reproduce in their own likeness. Trees bringing forth the type of fruit, apple trees bringing forth apple trees, and fruit tree, all the fruit trees bringing forth after their kind, grass after its kind.

And then on day four, we see that God filled the firmament, sun, moon, stars he created. He created those to rule the day and the night, the scriptures tell us. And of course, the world, the earth, with these moon and stars, would never be without light again.

A great light for the day and a lesser light for the night, a lesser light so that the people could rest, order, again, order. On the fifth day, God created the skies, the sky birds, pardon me, and the waters, pardon me, the fish in the waters, pardon me.

So the birds in the heavens and the fish in the waters. And again, what does he do? He makes a way for them to produce after their own kind, again, order, everything in order. On the sixth day, God created the earth with animals and mankind.

And what do we see here again? Order, that animals and humankind are given a way to produce after their own kind. Order upon order. There's orders in the day. Notice the correlation. On day one, we have God divided the light and the darkness.

On day four, he fills the firmament, pardon me, with lights, sun, moon, and stars. On day two, he divided the waters and made earth. Day five, pardon me, on day two, he divided the waters and on day five, he filled the open firmament with birds and the waters on the earth with fish.

On day three, he divided the waters on the earth to bring forth land. And then on day six, he filled the land with animals and humans, of course, the pinnacle of his creation. We also see order in the rhythms of creation, the evening and the morning of the first day, the evening and the morning of the second day, the evening and the morning of the third.

Day.

We see these rhythms in creation, everything brought in order, everything created in order. God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is God of order as perfectly displayed in his creative.

Work.

And here, the same trinity has great unity. We see this first in creation. Hermann Bovnik wrote this in his book, The Wonderful Works of God, and he pointed to how in the earliest revelations of himself, he says the thing that stands out in the foreground is certainly the unity, the oneness of God.

So in first, again, the unity in creation, one unified God creating all things in perfect order at the beginning. We see in Genesis 1 .26, he then says, let us make man in our image, the unified God image, after our likeness, the unified God likeness.

That same unified God called Abraham or Abram at the time, setting him apart and making him head of God's special people. That same unified God who then identified himself to Moses as the great I Am in the burning bush.

That same unified God then identifying himself as one Lord, one God, as we see in Deuteronomy 6 .4. Now, while we don't find any Old Testament passages that specifically name the three persons Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we see this idea of unity, this idea of oneness, this idea that there is a Godhead, one that is in perfect unity, the same God of Adam and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, one true God in perfect unity.

And again, it's not until the New Testament that we see that God reveals himself as three persons, where he reveals the three persons of the Godhead, 2 Corinthians chapter 13. Paul, this is, Paul is so great at, the letters of Paul are so great at these just absolutely beautiful salutations, these beautiful end greetings, so beautiful.

Finally, brethren, farewell.

Be perfect.

Be of good comfort. Be of one mind. Live in peace and the God of love and peace shall be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints salute you. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all.

Amen.

How does it get any more beautiful than that? How'd you love it if every time you left your friends, they said, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Boy, what a salutation. So Paul, in this second letter to the Corinthians here, ends this here in his normal Trinitarian formula.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, of course, is the Father and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Here, I want to spend a few minutes in his exhortations in verses 11 through 13, and you probably have already figured out again, to repeat myself from last time, I use the King James Version.

And I think you're going to find out in a moment that the, usually primarily the New.

International Standard.

No, no. NASB. Yeah, you're going to find out in a moment, it's a little more clear. This Greek word used here that the King James translates farewell, means to rejoice. And I think that's what you'll see in your Bibles, is that Paul says rejoice here, in this final thing of rejoice.

The exhortation to rejoice is found, of course, we know that throughout all of Paul's letters. One of his common themes is rejoice, everything. You have everything.

Rejoice.

Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice.

He was grateful, of course, that his life had been renewed in Christ. And no matter the circumstances, wherever Paul was, he was a man of rejoicing. God saved his life. That gratefulness flowed from his veins with rejoicing.

I think if you were to cut Paul open, you'd get these words. Rejoice would just flow out of him, and it clearly did in the Scriptures. For example, when he was bound in chains, no problem for Paul. Me, I'd be like a little wimp.

Not for Paul. What's Paul do? He writes letters. He encourages the saints on the outside. He brings in visitors. He welcomes all sorts of visitors in the name of Jesus, and sent them away better than when they came in.

He witnessed to the guards, we know. He kept building the kingdom of Jesus, no matter where he was. Paul was rejoicing and loving the Lord God. Rejoicing all the while, no matter, again, the circumstances.

This was Paul's attitude. We know this. Because he loved God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength. He could recite those Scriptures. I love the Lord with all of my heart, all of my mind, all of my soul, and all of my strength.

Brothers and sisters, we need to be the same.

We need to rejoice.

And then when we're done rejoicing, we need to rejoice more. We need to rejoice in everything. We have life. Rejoice because we have the love of the Father. We have the grace of the Son, and we have the communion of the Holy Spirit.

Be perfect, meaning be prepared, Paul goes on. Be prepared here, this idea of completeness, this idea of wholeness. In other words, work out your salvation. Do something about the fact that you have been saved from the death penalty you deserve.

Work it out.

Live in Christ. Work to image Him more and more every day. Dying daily to your sin, bear your cross. Mortify your sin. Also because the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity dwells within you, and He needs a holy place to dwell, completeness.

Mortify your sin. Paul continues, be a good comfort. Live in the comfort of the Trinitarian God. And here we have this state of being, this state of comfort. He's saying, let your soul be settled. Let your soul be rested, comforted.

Find that comfort in the God who created you. Find that comfort in the God who redeemed you. And find that in the God who is making you new. Rejoice, be comforted. Again, we can draw on Paul's witness.

It ought to speak to us loud and clearly. He wrote about comfort.

Why?

Because he experienced it firsthand. I can't imagine being in prison, being chained to a guard 24 hours a day. But Paul was comforted by that, knowing that he was there because he was Jesus Christ. And he was there because he was serving the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul was at rest wherever he was. He always had a place of rest. And he calls us to that same place, that same rest and comfort in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul calls us here, exhorting us to be of one mind.

This here speaks of unity. I can't help it. I was convicted in about three ways, minimally this morning. I had flashbacks of when I was a younger father and I would be in my den in the morning, early in the morning, doing my devotions to God.

And one of my sons would walk in who loved to get up early and that always disturbed.

Me.

Believe it or not. It always disturbed me. He'd come walking in, good morning, dad, and he'd try to give me a hug and I'd go, you know, it's awful. And then you want to talk about silent treatment, two weeks.

Is that my record when we were younger?

Two weeks.

I could go two weeks without talking to my wife, right?

Remember?

She's forgotten all that stuff.

Praise the Lord. But I got, I was convicted in those two ways. That's not, that's not life. That's death, those things. That's killing my spirit of my wife, the spirit of my son. Just amazing. But anyway, be of one mind.

This speaks to unity. Our model of unity, of course, is the perfect unity of the triune God. And I think that today, especially in our age, with the advent of social media amongst the church, we're like really infants in this right now.

It's granted this ability for any one of us to stand on any soapbox we want. We want to stand on Christian nationalism or we want to stand on these lower doctrines on a soapbox and we want to tell everybody how great we are in our knowledge.

I think it's hurting the church. It certainly is hurting the unity of the church. Because we're out there right before all the world fighting about these minuscule things. Let's fight about the Trinity.

Let's fight about the Messiah. Let's leave those lower doctrines maybe to our conference rooms and these kind of things. We don't want to be arguing out there. It's scary in my, from my perspective, I'm going, why do we do this to each other in front of the whole world?

And we do it in a matter of that it just seems to be very little interest in this being of the same mind. There's very little interest in the unity that Jesus prayed for on the night that he was betrayed.

Now, of course, we do not have to agree on everything. I use the King James, you use the NSAB. We don't have to agree. But when it comes to, except for, comes to these higher doctrines, those things we need to be of one mind.

Again, the Trinity, the Messiah, Jesus was both Son and God, was both man and God, pardon.

Me.

But there are a whole bunch of lower level doctrines that we often treat as if they're first level doctrines and we want to fight to the death over those. That isn't the way that Jesus taught us. Jesus taught, teaches us that we should give one another grace and that if we have these disagreements, again, we shouldn't be out there in the world and from my perspective.

Jesus prayed for our unity. Remember that intimate prayer on the night that he was betrayed, the high priestly prayer where he's in the upper room. I think he was in the upper room with his disciples.

It was either that or on their way into Gethsemane. But I think it was there at that table. And he's got that intimate prayer with his father. And he says, Father, unify them like you and I are unified.

That's what Jesus wants from us. So again, we have to be of one mind. That's what Jesus, I mean, that's what Paul's teaching us here. Be of one mind. We're supposed to live at peace. We heard about this a little bit ago as well.

Another state of being, be at peace.

We have so much in this life that brings anxiety, that causes us unrest, so much that causes us to live in this high tension time frame. But here, the consistent message of the scriptures, the consistent message of the triune God throughout scripture is live in peace.

What did Jesus say? I give you my peace. Not like the world gives you, but I give you my peace. That peace that he went and hung on the cross for. That's the peace that he gives. Now, of course, we're not called to a peace that tries to escape reality.

You know, we're not called to take on drugs and these things to try to escape from reality. But yet, we're called to this peace that is only offered by the triune God. A peace that truly rests on God the Father as your Father.

The Son as the one who made things right with the Father for us. We're to rest and have peace in the Holy Spirit who resides with us. The only real peace is found in God and God alone. As I said before, remember Jesus saying, this is what I'm giving you, I'm giving you peace.

This is the peace, brothers and sisters, that we must draw near to. We must draw near to the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what happens when we do all of those exhortations? Paul now includes this beautiful, beautiful promise.

And the God of love and peace shall be with you.

Amen?

When we hear these exhortations, notice the confidence of Paul here. Shall be with you. There was no other possibility in Paul's mind. It's not, he might be with you. It's, he shall be with you. We are to live in that same confidence, brothers and sisters.

As Jesus promised the disciples in his final words that we'll talk about in a few moments, God is with his people. Paul presents these exhortations as necessary for the presence of God, for the presence of the God of love and peace in our lives.

And of course, these things were not new to the Corinthians, nor the Ephesians, nor the Philippians, nor to us. The exhortations that were previous to this are part of the Christian life. They're part of the built character of the Christian person.

The promises of God are for you and for me. Am I doing something wrong? Okay, very good. I'm trying to stay as calm as I can. The more we answer the exhortations that we found in Scripture, that we find in Scripture, the more that we turn our lives over to Jesus, the more that we search for his peace, we search for his unity, the more he will draw near to us.

The more that we'll experience the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father and the presence of the Holy Spirit, the more we'll receive that and feel that in our fullness. And then, of course, in this we have his final salutation and benediction.

The salutation in the name of the Trinity, the perfectly unified Godhead. Paul's desire is that the Corinthians and Christians of all ages is to experience in these things. His desire is for us to experience the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

His wanting us to experience the love of God the Father and to experience the fellowship of the Holy Spirit in all its fullness. Certainly, Paul was a man that could say that. Paul lived in that. He lived, I think, in all of the fullness of that.

His desire for us in the salutation is the same. The Trinitarian God comes to us in these ways. If you're like me, you often miss these things. I often, throughout my day, I hardly ever even think about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But we should be.

Well, I made it to work. Was that not grace? I woke up this morning. Was that not grace? I made it from Farmington, New Hampshire, which is where we live. Is that not grace? Sometimes we really, brothers and sisters, ought to stop and just reflect upon that grace, upon that love, and upon that fellowship that we have with our God.

Experiencing those things from God will bring a greater fulfillment of Paul's earlier exhortations. Herman Bovnik again.

He says,.

And the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is contained in the whole salvation of men. Our whole salvation is in the hands of the Trinitarian God, who was from the beginning, is now, and forever shall be.

The Great Commission and the Mission of the Church

Matthew, chapter 28. The beautiful Great Commission. Then the eleven disciples went into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

Amen.

Again, what a beautiful commission by the Lord Jesus Christ. Given, obviously, after he was raised from the dead, but before he ascended to heaven. At Tri-City Covenant Church, every week we leave with this, with this Great Commission.

And we actually, we're weirdos up there, by the way, but we actually, we bow on one knee. And we receive the commission as if God is knighting us for the week ahead. I don't know how we thought of it, but that's what we do.

So every week at the end of our service, or just prior to the benediction, we say, I say, please rise, if you're able, go to your right knee, and receive the commission of King Jesus. Jesus says, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

The Lord, the Father, again, the Trinity, the Father, giving the power in heaven and earth to the Son. Jesus, with his power, has commissioned us, his followers, to carry out his mission on earth. We live our lives in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We should have no doubt about the work we do in the name of Jesus. We have his truth, we have his power, we have his peace. We should never doubt the mission that we have, bringing his kingdom to the whole world.

Now granted, you and I have been given the toughest part of this country in order to reshape in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, New Hampshire and Vermont, they battle for the lowest churched state in this union.

Every year we battle this out.

Bad place.

We have the power. We have the peace. We have the commissioning of the King of Kings. We should have no doubt about the work that we do. We pray, Thy will be done. Thy kingdom come. Brothers and sisters, it's a tough question.

How often are you consciously, consciously advancing the kingdom of Jesus Christ? How often are you consciously doing that? The disciples and us were told to go. They were told to leave the mountain, go into the valleys, into the cities, go to all nations in his power.

Jesus told them what for us to do here. We're supposed to teach all nations. The kingdom of Jesus will be extended to all nations. Because he says it will. All nations must be instructed in his kingdom ways.

Make all nations, make them Christian nations. Nations that serve and advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ. How many nations does Jesus Christ want? All of them. His word says so. He's empowered us to do it.

All we have to do is this area. All we have to do is the tiny states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Let's do it.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Here we see the Trinitarian formula. Baptizing them in the full Trinitarian unity God had. Admit them into the kingdom of Jesus by baptism.

Give them the sign and seal of covenant union with Christ. Make them members of his church. Baptize them again in the name of the one true God, the only God. In the name of the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost.

And once they've entered into the church and union with Christ, they need to be taught how to deal with this new estate. That's partly that wineskin. I think of that every time I see that wineskin. You can't put new wine into old bottles.

You can't do that anymore. We're new creatures. We can't go back to where we were. Otherwise we'd be ripped apart. What we have to do is we have to put the newness of Christ in these new bodies that we have.

We're to teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you in the words of Jesus. The duties of all Christians, of course, is to obey or observe all that Jesus taught them. They must be instructed by those who know, by us elders and deacons and other ministry leaders, but especially parents.

Especially parents. It is the duty of all parents to teach their children the ways of Christ, teaching them at the younger ages. That's why we baptize them when they're younger, that they can be in covenant union with God and that they can receive His instruction.

All things must be taught. We are not to diminish or add to what Jesus taught. Christians do not change what Jesus commanded in any way to conform to our culture. We teach to transform the rotten culture of the world to conform to the Scriptures, not the other way around.

We don't take this book and reword it and everything else and say, well, it's ancient. We really don't need it anymore.

Yeah, we do.

It's the living word of our Lord Jesus Christ. It must be taught. Not diminishing from it, not adding to it. God's law is the law of the Trinitarian God. We conform to His law. His law never conforms to us.

Here's a challenging quote from Charles Spurgeon. Take this in. Let us be careful. Let us be careful to tell the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ to our children and nothing but the truth. Why did Islam, which began in 622, grow from one man to over a billion people today?

Because a man started a lie and then a series of lies. Then a bunch of people believed all those lies and then it took hold. Why does that happen? Somebody lied. Somebody didn't tell the truth. Billions of people today on this earth are led astray from the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must be people of truth and nothing again but the truth. So help us God.

Amen?

Jesus included a great promise in His commission. And lo, I am with you always. This lo is behold.

Wake up.

Hear the promise that follows. It is not that I will be with you as in some future sense, but rather I am with you in a present sense. Jesus promised to the disciples and to us that He will always be with us.

As He prepared for His departure from the earth to His heavenly throne, Jesus assures them that He will be with them. Matthew Henry wrote this, that Jesus essentially said, I am with you. I am not absent from you.

Not at a distance. I am a very present help. Always and forever. You may recall that what Jesus told His disciples before His suffering and crucifixion and resurrection, John 16, 7. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.

It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send Him unto you. It was expedient for Jesus to come to earth in the first place.

Redemption was necessary to our fallen world. The Father's wrath had to be satisfied. Likewise, it was expedient that Jesus went away. That He left the earth that He had saved. Jesus as man could only be in one place at one time.

But when He ascended to heaven, He could be in all places at all times by sending the Holy Spirit. Again, the Trinity at work. How glorious. In the perfect unity of the Trinity, each person fulfills their mission.

Jesus fulfilled His mission. In that prayer, or just before that prayer, He also was able to give that report to His Father. I have saved them all. I used that last time I was here. I've lost not one that You've given to me, except for the son of perdition.

Following His ascension, He and the Father sent the third person of the Trinity to dwell in us and in the Church of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit with us is the very presence of God. For it is by the design of the Trinitarian God that His glory would be found in His redeemed people, freed from the power of sin to freely carry out the Kingdom work.

That's one of the beautiful things that we have, is that in Christ we are freed from the power of sin. Free to go and do His work. Except when we let all that sin get in our way. Jesus' promise says that He'll be there with them until the end of the world.

Forever. Those original disciples were given a great undertaking. He was departing and they must continue the work. Go, teach, baptize. Teach them all to observe all that was commanded. A worldwide conquest.

Go into Jerusalem, but then get out of there and go to Judea and Samaria and then worldwide. By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, His end on earth was just the beginning or a new beginning of His mission on earth.

And by His grace, by His love, we've been brought into that mission. You're brought into this life of purpose. So what are we to do? Well, first, draw nearer to the Triune God. Grow in holiness. Be a true disciple of Jesus and learn to obey all that He commands.

Of course, the teaching begins with you. You must study the Scriptures. You must meditate upon the Scriptures. Brothers and sisters, you are without excuse. Number two, teach all that Jesus commanded to your children, to your grandchildren, to your nieces and nephews.

Tell the truth and nothing but the truth about Jesus and the full Word of God. And that's why you need to know it first because you have the responsibility to also teach it. But in all of that, stand fast on the truth.

I teach the seventh grade Bible class at the church, at our school. I've done it for about four or five years. And it always amazes me throughout the years. They pick up on these little pieces of misinformation, to be kind, that they've been given about the Trinity or about death or about this or about that.

It just amazes me. I don't even know where these people could come up with some of this stuff. But yet it does. It comes out in that class. Well, don't you believe this, Pastor Guptill? I say, this book doesn't say that.

What do you want me to do? And I try to always say something like that because I don't really want to be at odds with their parents or their grandparents or whoever taught them those untruths. So I would say, and every once in a while I'll say, well, if you really believe that, come back Monday or two weeks from now, whatever, with a report.

And show me how it unfolds in the Scriptures.

And they always say, all right, I sure will.

Then I never hear from them again. Maybe they go back and read it and discover for themselves what the truth really is. All right, so, continuing on. Minister the Gospel every place you are.

Speak it.

Glorify Jesus. Explain it to others. Plant the seeds of our Lord Jesus Christ wherever you are. And then leave that growth to God. Brothers and sisters, plant and water. Plant and water. Plant and water.

God will give the growth when He does put that sign and seal of the covenant or the trinity on them. Finally, dear brothers and sisters, the plan of God is restoration of this world. That's His plan. That's His mission.

He gave His only begotten Son for its restoration. Jesus Himself gave His life for that restoration. Jesus turned the kingdom over to work, work over to His disciples, Peter and John and James and Don and Patrick and everybody else here.

So, be all about the work of the kingdom and know, and know for sure that the promises of God are for you. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Amen.