Trinity: The Son Reveals the Love of the Father
Easter 2023 Trinity • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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On this resurrection Sunday, we continue our series exploring the truth that God is Trinity.
The more I learn and discover the truth that God is trinity is absolutely beautiful.
The word trinity is the best word in our language that we can attribute to the God of the Bible. He is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Last week, we worked to answer this question
What was God doing before the creation of the world
What was God doing before the creation of the world
24 Father, I desire those You have given Me to be with Me where I am. Then they will see My glory, which You have given Me because You loved Me before the world’s foundation.
We set out to make it clear as you begin to discover who God is that you start with the truth that God is Father. We then build off of God as Father that as Father he creates and rules as only a heavenly father could.
I continue to encourage you that you must to some degree it a delete button on the word Father because typically we view God as Father through the lens of our Earthly Father. We must flip the script on this and first see our Heavenly Father first then view our earthly father through the lens of our Heavenly Father.
I brought this with me this morning (the stick of the broom).
What is this?
It’s a stick, it is a broom handle,
(Take the broom and screw it onto the broom handle)
Now what is it?
It’s a broom.
I am sure this illustration has some break downs but if you go to the store and you go to the worker and say can you take me to a broom. They don’t take you to the broom stick. They take you to the actual broom and stick.
So when the broom is placed on the stick then it makes the stick a broom.
We spend much time talking about seeing God as Father last Sunday.
So I ask...
What makes someone a Father?
What makes someone a Father?
In order to be a father, you must have a son or daughter. Before the creation of the world, God is Father loving His Son.
God could not be loving if there was no one to love. God could not be Father if there was not a child.
God not as father and God not as loving is a God who is only fixed upon himself. His only concern is for himself. Perhaps this God creates only to have something to serve him.
God as trinity is a totally different God than any other God. God is loving the Son before the foundation of the world. He is life giving and loving God.
So we exist not because he needs someone to serve Him. We exist because God is life giving and loving so creating life is who He is. Loving us is who He is.
Reeves says,
The Father, then, is the Father of the eternal Son, and he finds his very identity, his Fatherhood, in loving and giving out his life and being into the Son.
Jesus is the Eternal Son. Jesus has always existed. For if there was a time that Jesus did not exist as eternal son, then God would not have always been Father. God would not be eternally loving if the Son did not exist for God to love. You can’t be loving if there is no one to love.
The Father Loves the Son
The Father Loves the Son
17 And there came a voice from heaven: This is My beloved Son. I take delight in Him!
35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hands.
20 For the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything He is doing, and He will show Him greater works than these so that you will be amazed.
Father is the lover and the Son is the one being loved. You see the love of the Son for the Father, but what is often spoken of is the love of the Father for the Son.
The Father’s love is primary
The Father’s love is primary
Father is loving, sending and directing the Son.
Don’t miss this today. Who is loving, sending and directing the Son?
The Father
St. Hilarius
Underneath everything there is not “God,” but the Father, eternally loving his Son. “God,” he said, “can never be anything but love, or anything but Father: Who loves, does not envy; He who is Father, is wholly and entirely Father.
At bottom there is the Father, and that means a lively God of love, a God who is no envious, life-hoarding miser, but who delights to give out his life and being to his Son.
A God who delights to give out his life and being to his Son. Our God is Trinity and what a beauty and delight this is.
We see the love the Father has for the Son and how loving the Father is
Now check this out!
18 No one has ever seen God. The One and Only Son — the One who is at the Father’s side — He has revealed Him.
The Son has revealed the Father.
The apostle says this again in Hebrews.
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature, sustaining all things by His powerful word.
Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature.
Gregory of Nyssa explained it this way
As the light from the lamp is of the nature of that which sheds the brightness, and is united with it (for as soon as the lamp appears the light that comes from it shines out simultaneously), so in this place the Apostle would have us consider both that the Son is of the Father, and that the Father is never without the Son; for it is impossible that the glory should be without radiance, as it is impossible that the lamp should be without brightness.
(Use the Lamp on the table to illustrate this and leave this image in the mind)
The light can’t be turned on without the brightness going out.
Likewise you can’t have the brightness without the lamp being lit.
So it is with the Father and the Son. The Father is never without the Son and the Son is never without the Father.
The Son is the exact expression of the Father’s nature.
Jesus says this in John.
John 17:25–26 (HCSB)
25 Righteous Father! The world has not known You. However, I have known You, and these have known that You sent Me.
26 I made Your name known to them and will make it known, so the love You have loved Me with may be in them and I may be in them.
The Father sent the Son to make himself known. God did not simply write a book about himself to make himself known. God is trinity and because God is Trinity Father wanted to make himself known and so he did way more than just write a book. Father sent the Son to make the Father known.
Michael Reeves writes
…the love the Father eternally had for the Son might be in those who believe in Him, and that we might enjoy the Son as the Father always has.
Here, then, is a salvation no single-person God could offer even if they wanted to: the Father so delights in his eternal love for the Son that he desires to share it with all who will believe.
Ultimately, the Father sent the Son because the Father so loved the Son-and wanted to share that love and fellowship. His love for the world is the overflow of his almighty love for his Son.
The more I study the trinity the more the Love of the Father for you and I overwhelms me.
Think about it for 2 weeks we have talked about the Love the Father has for the Son, and we have barely touched the surface of His love for the Son.
The Son makes the Father known.
How does the Father make the Son known?
In scripture, we get to read about Jesus and all He did to reveal the love of the Father.
It all culminates at the Cross.
What kind of God first of all does not just write a book about himself to read but comes himself through the son in person!
Not only does our God come in person but then this ultimate act of love.
16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
The Father sends the Son to die so that we might have the opportunity to know the Father and His love for us.
In preparation for this morning, I just read back through the event of the cross.
The Son, Jesus, was beaten, they stripped Him, They put crown of thorns on his head, The drove nails into his hands. They divided up his clothes and cast lots for them. They mocked him and ultimately He gave His life.
Why?
The Father loves the Son and wants to make his love known to you and I. Father does this by sending the Son to die so that in His death we might have forgiveness of Sins!
46 He also said to them, “This is what is written: The Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day,
47 and repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
48 You are witnesses of these things.
49 And look, I am sending you what My Father promised. As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered from on high.”
My mind and heart explode as I think about Our Father. I delight in the trinity. I think about the Love of our Father. God as trinity is a beautiful and amazing thing. As I take this all in, I wonder what kind of God does this? What kind of God comes in person? What kind of God takes the penalty of the cross that you and I deserve?
I then conclude only My Father, loving, life giving, God. Jesus our Lord.