Our Eternal Triune God (Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Trinity: June 15, 2025)

Listen to the sermon here.

Texts:  Psalm 8

Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31

Acts 2:14a, 22–36

John 8:48–59

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,

When we think about God, when we ponder the mysteries of our Triune God, we oftentimes struggle with comprehending how God works for us. We oftentimes struggle with how it is that we have one God, yet three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—all working for us, for our salvation. Certainly we confess that it is true. We confess it in the words of the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creeds. And yet, we struggle sometimes to comprehend how it is, how things work, how God, three persons, one God is working for us. And that is understandable. Because in our logic, 1 equals 1. There is either one God and thus one person or three gods, three persons. Just as there's only of you, not three of you. And some of you are probably thinking, “Well thank God that there's not three of my spouse because as much as I love them, that would probably be way too much.” So how are we able to confess, even when we may not fully understand logically, that our one God is a Triune God. It's only through the working of God that we are able to make this confession. It is only through His working in our lives that we are able to confess one God in three persons. Today in our readings, we learn that our Triune God works so that we may confess who He is and what He has done for us.

Let us pray: Almighty God, our heavenly Father, through your Son, Jesus Christ, through His pouring out of the Holy Spirit, you cause each and every one of us to confess you as one God, three persons. May the words of my mouth and meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer, that we may always have the sure and certain confidence that since you, our Triune God, are working for us, we have the sure and certain hope of everlasting life and the forgiveness of sins. It is through Your Name we pray. Amen.

Our world doesn't even like acknowledging that there is a God, let alone a Triune God. Our world likes putting up the self, the individual, the person as the highest form. Our society likes making the Trinity not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but “me, myself, and I”. That’s who’s most important. Why is our world so focused on the individual? It goes back to the garden. It goes back to the very first sin. When Adam and Eve lost sight of their Triune God, the God whom they knew, the God who walked in the garden with them, the God who had created all things, who had formed this garden for them, they lost sight of Him. They lost faith in him. As there at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—the tree which was to serve for them a reminder that their God was greater than them, that their God was protecting them from this thing called evil, even though they had no concept what that was—there, they disbelieve their God and then put they disobey. They take of the fruit they eat. They sinned. And in so doing, all mankind has, ever since then. than trying to find its own way, not through the Triune God, but through the self, the “me, myself, and I”. And that's been aided by another trinity, an unholy trinity—the devil, the world, and our sinful nature, which neither wants us to praise God nor believe in Him. Those three also work to cause us to disbelieve, to lead us into doubt, to drive us away from our only source of hope and comfort.

We need our God to be active for us. We need our Triune God to be active and thanks be to him that He is. And thanks be to Him that He has revealed Himself to us, not just through words, but through flesh as well. As God, the very Son of God, took on human flesh for us. As there in the incarnation of Jesus Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary, our Triune God worked for our salvation. God the Father sending forth the Spirit to conceive the Son in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The eternal Son which was with the Father from the beginning now taking on human flesh in His mother's womb. As there at Holy Baptism, our Triune God works, as Jesus comes up out of the water and the heavens are opened up and the Father says, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased,” and as the Holy Spirit descends upon him as a dove. Our Triune God working as Christ begins his earthly ministry. Our Triune God working at the cross, as there are Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, hung there suffering and dying for all sins of all mankind, hung their suffering and dying for Adam and Eve's sin, for your and my sins, for all of the sins ever committed. As the Father utterly forsook his Son, turned His back on Him, hid His face from Him, placing on Him the condemnation of all of the sins of all of mankind. As Christ said out, “It is finished” and the Holy Spirit left Him and He died. Our Triune God working for our salvation. Our Triune God working for our salvation as on the third day God the Father raised His Son through the Holy Spirit, brought Him back to life victorious over sin and death, never to die again.

And our Triune God is still at work today. Even as Christ has ascended into the heavens to the right hand of the throne of God, our Triune God is still working, as the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and from the Son continues to be sent to each and every one of us, not as on that first Pentecost as tongues of fire, but through the waters of Holy Baptism, where there each and every one of us are baptized into the name of our Triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Our Triune God working for our salvation through the Word read and proclaimed through the Sacrament administered. Our Triune God showing forth His love for us. Our Triune God working for us. Just as He worked in creation, so now He continues to work for our salvation. And He will continue unto the end, when at the last Christ returns again in glory, and we see our Triune God—we see the Son, we see the Spirit surrounding the throne of the Father, as there we bow down and worship Him, as there we sing praises to Him giving thanks for all that He has done.

The fascinating thing with Trinity Sunday historically is that it's not a Sunday that arose from looking at the Bible and pointing out dates with which biblical events line up. No, it arose out of laity, people of old wanting a Sunday to remember that they're Triune God is at work for their salvation. My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, never forget that. Never forget that your Triune God loves you and is working for you. He has been working for you since before the foundation of the world. He has been working for you since the moment that you were conceived, the moment that you were baptized. And He will continue working for you today and every day. So continue in the midst of this sinful world which neither wants us to praise God nor acknowledge Him as Father, Son, and Spirit, continue to sing forth the praises of your Triune God today and every day, until at last we get to sing forth that praise seeing Him face to face. Amen.

Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.