The Trinity: Old Testament Foundations – Miles Stepniewski

Introduction

Great! Thanks, Grant. Hey everyone, it is good that you’re here. It’s good if you’re online. My name’s Miles. I’m one of the ministers here at LIFE AC Revo. I’m so glad that you’re able to be here this morning. It was really cold this morning at 8 a.m., but it’s not so bad anymore. It’s preaching time, and so what we’re going to do is spend the next little while thinking through that passage that was just read and a couple of other passages as well.

If you were here last week or watching online last week, you might remember we started this new series in the Trinity. As a church, we’re spending some quality time unpacking what it means that our God is Trinity. If you missed Andrew’s sermon, you can go to YouTube, go watch it. It’ll be well worth your time. In last week’s sermon, there’s one key thing that Andrew said that we want to make sure we remember every time we get up to preach this series, and here it is: us venturing into the complexities of the Trinity isn’t a stale academic exercise to merely increase our knowledge so that we can show up at parties or something. That’s not what we’re doing.

What we are doing, the reason we are doing this, is because knowing God more deeply will bring us into a deeper joy as we live in a relationship with Him. Knowing God more richly will more richly transform our hearts and our minds and our lives. Knowing God more intimately will draw us into more intimate thanksgiving when we sing and pray and live. We will be more thankful as our understanding of God grows. In other words, what we’re doing here is good for us. It’s totally worth it, and so we need to keep that in mind every week.

With that in mind, let’s pray. Heavenly Father, you are glorious and holy and complex beyond human comprehension, and yet you are also approachable and near and available because of your precious Son, Jesus. We can call you Father because you’ve spoken to us through your word. We can know you, and so we pray that today we would leave this place knowing you more deeply, more richly, and more intimately than when we walked in this morning. Amen.

Today, we’re going to spend some time in the Old Testament, the first half of the Bible, and see what it says about our triune God, our God who is Trinity, and we will end up in Isaiah 42 that Grant read out for us. We’ve got to do some other places to look at first.

Why Start in the Old Testament?

You might be thinking, why start in the Old Testament? Why not just start in the New Testament where all the key Trinity passages are? Why not start in John 1 where Jesus is the Word who was with God and was God, or John 8 where Jesus replies and says, “Before Abraham was born, I am,” or in Philippians 2 where Jesus, who is very nature God, takes on human nature? Why not just start there?

All Scripture is God-Breathed

There’s lots of reasons. Here’s two of them. First, 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching and training and correcting, all this good stuff. Notice what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say the New Testament is useful for teaching and training and all this sort of stuff, and the Old Testament is just there for context. No, all scripture is God-breathed and a precious and useful gift from God, and so when we’re trying to understand who God is, it makes sense to consider, to access all of scripture. That’s the first reason.

The Old Testament is the Foundation of the New Testament

The second reason we’re starting the Old Testament is because the Old Testament is the foundation of the New Testament. You might not know this about Morgan and I. It’s a bit of a secret. We have a dog. His name is Smithers. He’s a labradoodle. He’s huge and cuddly, and I talk about him all the time, way too much, and if you want to come meet him, you’re always welcome to come meet him. You know how human parents take their human children to soccer and music lessons? Well, on Tuesday, Morgan and I took Smithers to doggy agility for the first time ever. I see lots of disapproving looks. We took Smithers to doggy agility for the first time ever. I don’t know if you’ve seen the videos, so fun, so cute, so fast. They’re going up ramps and jumping over jumps and going through tunnels and stuff. It’s very exciting.

When we got there on Tuesday, the first lesson wasn’t jumping over bars or weaving through poles or running through tunnels. The first lesson was attention, recall, and walking on a lead, the basics, some of which Smithers really struggled with, but the basics, because if Smithers can’t get the fundamentals right, if he doesn’t know how to pay attention to us while we’re running alongside him, how could he possibly do an agility course? He’ll see a bird, and that’s game over. He’ll be over there, or he’ll smell something interesting, game over, he’ll go over there. In the same way, for us to navigate all the complexities of the New Testament and what it says about the Trinity, we need to have these fundamentals in mind. We need to have a firm foundation in the Old Testament. That’s why we’re starting there.

One God Yahweh

Grab your Bibles out and turn to Deuteronomy chapter six. If you’re new here and you’ve got a Bible on your way in, in this Bible’s page a hundred, but Deuteronomy chapter six, it’s the fifth book of the Bible in the Old Testament, and every week’s a good week to have your Bibles open during preaching time. Today will be especially helpful for you. Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four to five, and here’s the question that you need to answer in your own head as I read this out: how many gods do the Israelites from the Old Testament follow? How many? Here it is, Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 to 5: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

The Lord is One

You’ve got an answer in your head. How many gods do the Israelites follow? One. You can see it. The Lord is one. There is one God to follow, and the command there is to love that God, that only God, with all your heart and soul and strength. Don’t get confused and only give God some of your heart or some of your strength because there isn’t another God to give the rest to. No, one God, everything that we have needs to be given to Him.

God’s Name is Yahweh

Who is this God? Throughout the Old Testament, when you’re reading it, if you ever see the word “Lord” in all caps, all capital letters, like it’s there in Deuteronomy 6, the Hebrew word behind that is Yahweh. It’s God’s name, the God of the Bible, and so if we put all that together, God, Yahweh, is one. There is one God, and He is Yahweh. Christianity is a monotheistic religion. Mono, one. Theos, God. Monotheistic. We follow one God alone, and as we read the rest of the Old Testament, we’ll find that it’s very consistent with that truth.

God Created the Heavens and the Earth

Let’s go see it somewhere else. Grab your Bibles, go to Genesis chapter one, the very first passage in the Bible, Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1. Here’s what it says: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” At some point, there was nothing, and then God comes along and He gets involved, and there’s something. Something isn’t even the right word, is it? It doesn’t quite do it justice because it’s the universe. God creates everything from galaxies to grains of sands to atoms to humans, incredible. Who does it in Genesis 1, verse 1? Who is there? Gods, many gods? No, it’s there. You can see it. In the beginning, God singular created everything. There is one God, and He made everything.

Singular But Plural Moments

We could go on example after example in the Old Testament. There’s one God, Yahweh, but hang on, because in your Bibles, look down just one verse, Genesis chapter one, verse two. Genesis chapter one, verse two: “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.” We’re up to line two in the Bible, and already we’ve got God creating everything, and we’ve got the Spirit of God doing something different perhaps. There’s some kind of distinction in Genesis 1 that it’s making. It could have said, “In the beginning, God made everything, and then God was hovering over the water.” It doesn’t say that. It says, “In the beginning, God created everything, and the Spirit of God was hovering.” Interesting.

Let Us Make Mankind in Our Image

As you scan down to verse 26 in your Bibles, Genesis 1, verse 26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image.’” Pause. Did you notice that? Who is “us?” We’re still on page one of the Bible. We’ve got one true God creating. There was nothing, now there’s something, and God says, “Let us plural make mankind in our plural image.” Does that mean that from now on God is always going to be plural? No. Look at the next verse, verse 27: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them,” not “they,” not “they created them.” God singular created in His own image. Genesis is comfortable using this language. It’s not a translation error. This is God’s word we’re dealing with, that God is “us” in verse 26, but then God is “He” in verse 27. Isn’t that cool?

Here’s the point. It’s true that there is one God. Again, we could see it so many places, but as we read the Old Testament, we discover these little moments, these singular but plural moments, these distinction moments. It’s clear that God is more complicated than we might first have thought, that there’s some kind of distinction within God. There’s some kind of community within God even back in Genesis 1, the start of the Bible. We can find this kind of evidence, and with the help of the New Testament, we can then look back and say with confidence that this is more evidence that God really is Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit. We are made in their image. God really is Trinity, that is, there is one God, that God exists in three persons, Father, Son, Spirit, and each of those persons are each God. This is a fundamental Christian truth. It’s not just from the New Testament. It’s from the whole Bible, and that kind of spanning trinitarian language across all of scripture is so wonderful for us to notice.

God’s Creative Kindness

There’s lots of reasons why that’s true. Here’s just one reason why it’s wonderful for us to see that. It displays God’s creative kindness, the fact that the Trinity can be seen all throughout scripture shows His creative kindness. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Recently, Morgan and I have been getting into Sherlock Holmes over the past few months. We watched the Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jr. and the Sherlock series with Benedict Cumberbatch, and I’m pretty sure that’s right, and then we’ve been playing the solve-it-yourself games. They’re so fun. Come talk about it afterwards, so good, and they’re all brilliantly crafted, all these stories.

As they progress, there’s all these hints and these details that Sherlock picks up on. They help him solve the case. He’s like, “I can tell by your right ear that you’ve been in Berlin recently because the sunburn in your inner canal can only be from Berlin where the sun is in this…” You know what I mean, all that kind of stuff, and then it helps him solve the case, and right at the end, all the clues are fleshed out, and everything makes sense in another case sold for Sherlock Holmes. What would make those stories just super unconvincing and maybe a bit lame if those clues hadn’t been there the whole way along? If suddenly at the end, Sherlock’s like, “Ah, and the last piece of the puzzle was it was the white horse,” and you’re like, “What white horse? What do you mean?” and it just kind of appeared out of nowhere. That would be a shame, wouldn’t it? It would make it so much less convincing, but fortunately, that’s not how Sherlock Holmes is written. The clues are there the whole time.

In God’s creative kindness, that’s also not how He wrote the Bible. Instead, right from the start, He’s revealing clues about who He is and what He’s like so that when we finally get to the New Testament, we can look back and be like, “Ah, it was there all along. God has been Trinity all along,” and that makes all of this so much more convincing because it means that the God who never changes doesn’t change. Our God who is meant to be unchangeable, that’s right, because in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, our God is Trinity. God is a creative author who has kindly given us His word, His truth, in a way that’s convincing and fascinating and leaves you wanting more, and that is seen so clearly in how He gives us all these trinitarian clues throughout the whole Bible.

He’s starting to see now how all this goodness in seeing this in the Old Testament, seeing the foundations of who our unchanging God is so that when we come to the New Testament, all those foundations can be expanded and amplified so that we can know and trust God more clearly. Can you start to see that? It’s right to ask if you can start to see that’s the right question because there’s so much more to say. There is a lifetime of discovering how deep God’s word is, and so let’s just chip away at that lifetime of learning with one more place. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 42. This is where we’ll spend the rest of our time.

Isaiah 42: Trusting Our Trinitarian God

Here in this chapter, not only do we find another one of those little moments, those distinction moments where our one God, Yahweh, is more complicated than maybe we first thought, but also Isaiah 42 paints this beautiful portrait of what life looks like trusting our trinitarian God. The book of Isaiah is split into two halves. First half, chapters 1 to 39, Isaiah is speaking God’s judgment to Israel if they don’t repent, and then Israel don’t repent, and so then Babylon comes along and sends them off to exile, pretty grim. Amongst those chapters, there’s little glimmers everywhere of hope. God’s going to raise up a servant who He will be with, and that servant will restore Israel, and he’ll be empowered by God’s spirit, interesting.

God is Sending His Servant

We fast forward, and the second half of the book, the Babylonian exiles over, chapters 4 to 65, and instead of this emphasis on judgment, there’s this new emphasis on hope, and chapter 40 starts by saying, “Comfort, comfort my people, your sin is forgiven,” and then soon after chapter 40 is chapter 42 where this theme of hope is blooming out, and that’s where we are, chapter 42, verse 1. Here’s what it says: “Here is my servant,” says the Lord, “whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him.” God, you see that? God is sending His servant, and His servant will have God’s spirit. Again, Isaiah is comfortable putting that kind of distinction between God, His servant, and His spirit.

Jesus is the Servant

Who is this servant that we’re talking about? It doesn’t actually say that much about him there in chapter 42. That’s okay because throughout all of Isaiah, he tells us so much more about this servant, about who he is, perhaps most famously in chapter 53. The servant is the one who will take away our sins by his death, and then somehow he’s alive after he’s done that. Sound familiar? That’s Jesus, isn’t it? Of course, Jesus is the one who offers to take away our sins through his death and resurrection. He offers it to anyone, any age, any background, whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, he offers the forgiveness of sins to anyone who would put their trust in him. The more that we read Isaiah and the more we read the New Testament, it becomes more clear that Isaiah is talking about Jesus. Jesus is the servant. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is the servant here in Isaiah 42. That cool, right? Again, God’s giving us all these clues all throughout the Bible that He’s so much more complex than we thought. He’s so kind.

Unstoppable Power and Sweet Gentleness

Here in chapter 42, God starts painting this portrait of what it might look like to live trusting this trinitarian God, and it is a beautiful portrait, one that can refresh you and comfort you and free you and give you hope. You can imagine God, He’s painting this portrait, and here are the first brush strokes. Look at your Bible. Here it is, end of verse 1. This servant will bring justice to all nations. Verse 4, he will not falter or be discouraged until he establishes justice. Verse 6, the Lord is with his servant. Verse 7, the servant will free captives from prison, which I think is captives of sin. You see this portrait that God’s painting? It’s one of unstoppable power bringing justice, freeing captives, God is with him. This is power, and yet that unstoppable power is paired with some of the sweetest words in the whole book of Isaiah, verse 3: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”

Jesus with this unstoppable jailbreaking, sin breaking, justice bringing power is also the one who can draw near to you with such gentleness and precision that even a bruised reed won’t break, even a smoldering candle won’t be blown out. You might even know what it’s like to feel like a bruised reed or a smoldering candle yourself. Any more pressure might threaten to break you or to puff you out. The same Jesus can draw near to you with gentleness and precision. Here’s how one commentator puts it. I love this paragraph. I love the way he writes. Listen to these paragraphs and just let them wash over you. This combination, Jesus’s power and gentleness, is why He is such a good savior to turn to. He is strong and mighty saved. He can take on the strongest of our foes and always be certain to prevail. No spiritual force arrayed against us stands a chance of surviving, and yet He is unspeakably delicate and careful with us. There is no wound or vulnerability He doesn’t understand or handle with the utmost care. He is someone we can trust with our most tender bruises and fragility. He will not be clumsy with us. He won’t steamroll us. He can apply His unimaginable strength to us with affection and sensitivity.

This Jesus, He is powerful, and He is gentle. He’s like that because He loves you. That’s why Jesus is like that. That’s why He’s gentle with you because He loves you with perfect unquestioning love, and why does He love you? It’s because the Father, the Son, and the Spirit love one another in perfect community. In Trinity, God is love, and so this is what it looks like trusting our God who is Trinity. This is what it looks like trusting the Father, the Son, the Spirit who love one another in community. We get to receive and experience that same eternal love, and we see that love the most clearly at the cross, where Jesus gave up His life for those that He loves.

There’s one God, that’s true, the God of the Bible, Yahweh, who is Trinity. That’s a truth that the whole Bible continually teaches us. He is Father, He is Son, He is Spirit who love one another in perfect community, and that love, that trinitarian love, overflows and is now for you. Let’s pray together. God, we prayed at the start that we would leave this place as people who know you more deeply, and so Father, please might that be the case. Help us to understand and remember and process more profoundly who you are and what you’re like and what you’ve done for us, and we pray that all of that might overflow into our lives, that we might draw closer to you in faith and live out that faith in every area of our lives, and we pray this for Jesus’ sake. Amen.