The Beauty Of The Trinity

A few years ago, when I worked a summer job at a construction company, I was told to go take a truck out to a lot for some reason which I don’t remember. I do remember, though, that my company was clearing out this lot for a job nearby. When I arrived, a man ended up climbing into the cab of a bulldozer and clearing the land. Now, obviously I had heard of a bulldozer and what it could do, I probably had seen one on TV once or twice too, but I remember just being amazed at this machine’s power. It moved the earth and everything in its way, including trees, seemingly effortlessly. I had a hard time just grasping the truth that such power was reality.

What would it be like then, if you could travel back in time to an era where there were no machines like this, and everything had to be done by hand or by animals? Do you think that if you traveled to China and began to describe to the people building the Great Wall that such a machine as the bulldozer was possible, that they would have believed you? I’d assume not. Because of their experience and traditions, I don’t think that something like a bulldozer could be something that they could comprehend, and so it would seem to be a figment of imagination for them.

When you and I begin to take a look at the nature of God, we encounter something similar. For instance, when we speak of God’s eternal nature and dig in to the point that we realize he has been around forever, never even having a beginning, the idea becomes something that we just cannot possibly grasp or understand. Our experience and lack of knowledge prohibits us. Yet, because of the power of the Word, we believe such things that appear to be unbelievable.

Another of those seemingly unbelievable characteristics of God is that he is triune. Now what does it mean that God is triune? It means that God is three in one. You can’t divide God, and yet there are clearly three persons of the Godhead. This is the truth which our service is centered around today. And, like with other characteristics of God, the more we study this truth the more questions we’re going to have. This is not a bad thing, though. This is wonderful! After all, would you rather have a God that you can easily understand, or would you rather have a God that is so great that he is beyond all understanding? If there’s going to be someone out there who has control over the world and eternity for our sake, I’m going to want the biggest, strongest, wisest, and greatest one out there. Which is exactly who God is and what he does.

It’s interesting to note, then, that the very first thing we hear of this amazing and incomprehensible God doing in the Scriptures is working for us. Kinda makes you realize just how important you are, doesn’t that? In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. You are the reason why he created this place. On the very first day, God created the heavens and the earth, along with light later that day. Now these things did not look exactly as they do now, God calls them formless and empty, but they were good and perfect. It wasn’t chaotic because God is orderly (a truth that is quite apparent in the creation account). Perhaps the closest thing we can think of is that God created the matter on this first day which he was going to form into the universe throughout the week. And I can’t tell you why God chose to create the world in steps like this and why he didn’t just snap his fingers and create everything right away. Again the more we look at God, the more questions we’re going to have and the more interesting he’s going to be to us.

Another aspect of God we see in these opening verses is his Trinity. Granted, if all we knew about God were these two verses, I don’t think we’d be able to see his Trinity. But, because of the rest of God’s Word, his Trinity jumps off the page at us. We see the Father doing his work of creation, yet we also see the Spirit too. We see him hovering over the face of this brand new creation much like a mother eagle soars protects her young as they’re learning to fly. And if we take into account John 1, where Jesus is revealed as the Word of God, we see that he was present as well. All three persons of the Trinity were active in creating this world for you. It’s not like the Father decided on his own to create and the Spirit followed him, but Jesus didn’t have anything to do with this. When it comes to the external acts and deeds of God, we are never able to split him apart. The only time we can make a differentiation like this is to say that the Father fathers, the Son sons, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. With every other act, like here in creation, we cannot split God apart. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all active in making this world.