Trinity: Spirit
Easter 2023 Trinity • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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As shepherd of Bridge of Faith, I am so proud of you all and how you have served the family of Draco.
Some of you might not know that Draco was a part of our congregation and was 4 months old. Monday morning he left this earth and entered into the presence of Jesus.
Monday Cameron, Amy and myself went to Keith and Breanna’s house to help them through the tragedy.
Back here Kara and the thrift store team was helping with their other children.
Jonathan Chambers was arranging lunch for them.
Later in the day, Jim was meeting with extended family members.
Adam arranged a meeting in the park to meet with students who would be impacted by this news. He met with them in the park after school.
Tuesday I met with the family at the funeral home.
Mealtrain for the family was started and the church started delivering meals
Wednesday I had the honor of helping to pick out a cemetery plot for Draco.
The kitchen team started planning a family meal following the service.
Some observations
We as a community and as a society as a whole struggle with grieving. I am convinced that the enemy does not want us to stop for grieving. The enemy desires that we just push through and we don’t have funerals and we don’t pause.
why
Grieving is a loss of control.
We recognize in moments like this week that we are not in control. It causes us to reflect on the Father and explore the Father more.
If we push through then we don’t press in more to the father. We continue to live the lie that we are in control.
We like control. We hate when we are out of control.
Christianity is not about being in control. It is about leaning in to the Father and allowing the Spirit to lead us. It is a dying to our selves.
Let’s continue some more thoughts on the Trinity in 2 Corinthians 3.
1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, recognized and read by everyone.
3 It is clear that you are Christ’s letter, produced by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God —not on stone tablets but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.
Some were carrying letters of recommendation to their apostleship. Paul says do we need these letters.
Paul planted the church at Corinth.
His question of if they need letters of recommendation bring the response of NO!
You are our letter!
I love this. He says the life that you live in the Spirit are the letters. You are the proof. Your life change is the proof of the Spirit at work in you.
The get to know you church members is so fun because we get to see snippets of the Spirit at work in different lives in our church. You get to see evidence of God working here.
Not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God.
4 We have this kind of confidence toward God through Christ.
5 It is not that we are competent in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our competence is from God.
6 He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit produces life.
Salvation is from God. Our Competence is from God
The Spirit produces life.
14 He is the down payment of our inheritance, for the redemption of the possession, to the praise of His glory.
7 Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the Israelites were not able to look directly at Moses’ face because of the glory from his face—a fading glory—
12 Moses said to the Lord, “Look, You have told me, ‘Lead this people up,’ but You have not let me know whom You will send with me. You said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.’
13 Now if I have indeed found favor in Your sight, please teach me Your ways, and I will know You and find favor in Your sight. Now consider that this nation is Your people.”
14 Then He replied, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
15 “If Your presence does not go,” Moses responded to Him, “don’t make us go up from here.
16 How will it be known that I and Your people have found favor in Your sight unless You go with us? I and Your people will be distinguished by this from all the other people on the face of the earth.”
17 The Lord answered Moses, “I will do this very thing you have asked, for you have found favor in My sight, and I know you by name.”
18 Then Moses said, “Please, let me see Your glory.”
19 He said, “I will cause all My goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name Yahweh before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
20 But He answered, “You cannot see My face, for no one can see Me and live.”
21 The Lord said, “Here is a place near Me. You are to stand on the rock,
22 and when My glory passes by, I will put you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by.
23 Then I will take My hand away, and you will see My back, but My face will not be seen.”
1 The Lord said to Moses, “Cut two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.
2 Be prepared by morning. Come up Mount Sinai in the morning and stand before Me on the mountaintop.
3 No one may go up with you; in fact, no one must be seen anywhere on the mountain. Even the flocks and herds are not to graze in front of that mountain.”
4 Moses cut two stone tablets like the first ones. He got up early in the morning, and taking the two stone tablets in his hand, he climbed Mount Sinai, just as the Lord had commanded him.
5 The Lord came down in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed His name Yahweh.
6 Then the Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: Yahweh—Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love and truth,
7 maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving wrongdoing, rebellion, and sin. But He will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ wrongdoing on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.
8 Moses immediately bowed down to the ground and worshiped.
29 As Moses descended from Mount Sinai—with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands as he descended the mountain—he did not realize that the skin of his face shone as a result of his speaking with the Lord.
30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face shone! They were afraid to come near him.
31 But Moses called out to them, so Aaron and all the leaders of the community returned to him, and Moses spoke to them.
32 Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he commanded them to do everything the Lord had told him on Mount Sinai.
33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.
34 But whenever Moses went before the Lord to speak with Him, he would remove the veil until he came out. After he came out, he would tell the Israelites what he had been commanded,
35 and the Israelites would see that Moses’ face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went to speak with the Lord.
8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?
9 For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness overflows with even more glory.
10 In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison because of the glory that surpasses it.
11 For if what was fading away was glorious, what endures will be even more glorious.
12 Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness.
13 We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the Israelites could not stare at the end of what was fading away,
14 but their minds were closed. For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ.
15 Even to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts,
16 but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
The word translated changed is the same word translated transfigured in the accounts of our Lord’s transfiguration (Matt. 17; Mark 9). It describes a change on the outside that comes from the inside. Our English word metamorphosis is a transliteration of this Greek word. Metamorphosis describes the process that changes an insect from a larva into a pupa and then into a mature insect. The changes come from within.[1]
[1]Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 640). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.