A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on May 30, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Acts 2-14a, 22-36. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Acts of the Apostles, the 2nd chapter:
But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them… “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him, “ ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” ’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
It is a wonderful thing to celebrate the Trinity. It is good that we always remember the triune name in which we gather, the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and for a very practical purpose. I'm going to encourage you once again, that when we hear this name of the Trinity, we remember our baptisms. And usually, when we see it in the hymnal, when we see that little sign of the cross, it's good to make the sign of the cross, to remember that you are baptized in this triune name. Don’t forget that this mark belongs to the Church, not to the Roman Catholic church, not to the Anglican church, not to the Lutheran church, but to the Church. It is a good thing for us to remember our baptisms in this way; we are baptized in the name of the triune God, but we make the sign of the cross because it reminds us of who the Trinity is pointing us towards. And that of course is Jesus. Jesus Christ is the way that we see the Trinity.
Now, if you've read your Bibles, and I would encourage you to do so, if you never have made your way through the whole Bible, you'll notice that from Genesis all the way through Malachi, we don't see the entire Trinity as we know it today. And that's not because the Trinity is an invention of the church and it's not because the Trinity is really only there when Jesus comes. The Trinity is involved all throughout the Scriptures. But we don't see the three persons of the Trinity as clearly as we do for the first time when Jesus is baptized in the Jordan river. You remember, Jesus goes down into the waters and the Spirit descends on him, just as a dove descends on him. This doesn’t mean that the Spirit was in the form of a dove, but that he descended on him as a dove would. And you should be reminded here of the dove from Noah's Ark, descending out upon the earth and grasping onto that peaceful olive branch to tell everybody that all is well now in the world. That's how the Spirit descends on Jesus. And then of course, we see the Father in his speaking, and there are only a couple of places in all of scripture that it is the person of the Father who speaks. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased. The next time the Father speaks is at Jesus's transfiguration. This is my beloved Son, listen to him.
So we see the Spirit, descending on Jesus to show us that peace is here. And we see the Father speaking from heaven, pointing us to Jesus. The Trinity is really all about Jesus, but why is it that we don't see it through the Old Testament? We have clues of course, let us make man in our own image. We have plural pronouns and things like this all over the place. We see Jesus in the Gospel lesson, as he says, we came from the Father. That's the Royal We, certainly. Right?. We are not amused? But this is what Jesus means by this, this Royal We referring to really the entirety of God, which is the Trinity. Why don't we see him clearly throughout the Old Testament? Well, that's because the Scriptures are revealed progressively until Christ. The Scriptures come to us slowly until Christ, meaning that, as God interacts with his creation, he reveals a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more about himself until finally Jesus appears on the scene. And even then in Jesus's Ascension into heaven, we find that the Spirit guides us into all truth.
We've talked about this in the past weeks, that since the Reformation, we have an easier time seeing how it is that the Spirit guides us into truth, reclaiming the truth that is in the Scriptures for the church. The Trinity is there from the very beginning, but that we would not be ready to see it or to hear it until Jesus. It's weird to think of the Trinity as an it. The Trinity isn’t really an it; it’s a Him. But, the concept of the Trinity is so far beyond us that any pronoun doesn’t really work. And yet it is that God has revealed himself to be. God has revealed himself to be a plurality. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And yet again, let us make man in our own image. You have to think who's God speaking to? Certainly not to mankind, certainly not to the animals that he's created, but if the Lord is one and the Lord is speaking to himself, there must be something there. And so it is that the church came up with a word, a made up word, the Trinity. This simply means three in one, tri meaning three and unity meaning oneness. It’s how we describe exactly who it is that God has revealed himself to be.
Now God could have revealed himself to be six persons, if he were six persons, in one God or nine persons in one God. If you want to listen to Benny Hinn, the arch heretic, the one who’s all about the name it and claim it theology, each Trinity is a Trinity in and of himself. That's all heresy. Of course, God has revealed himself to be three persons in one God, three persons in terms of the personalities of Himself, but one God in his substance. It’s so confusing, and it doesn’t seem that the Athanasian Creed makes it any easier, although it is what the church has tried to put down so that we could try to make. Personalities we can understand, and substance, we can understand the substance of something, but something that is one substance yet being three personalities is hard to fathom. It’s philosophical, and that’s not something we spend a lot of time on, but even if we did, the Trinity is hard.
It is enough to say that the Trinity is a mystery. Why God didn't reveal it completely from the very beginning, we don't know the answer to that. I would argue that it's possible that the Israelites would have been led to believe that God is three gods somehow, kind of like the gods of all the nations around them, but that would just be speculation on my part. What we do know is that the Trinity always is, always has been, and always shall be revealed in Jesus Christ. That's an amazing thing. Jesus is the one who helps us see the Trinity.
You see, it's not just enough to give it lip service, but the Christian Church has always confessed that you must believe in the Trinity in order to be saved. You can't just believe in Jesus as a good man or as a prophet, or even as God, but you must believe in God the Father, and in God the Son, and in God the Holy Spirit. It is in Jesus that we're able to see the Trinity for the first time because the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit will always point you to Jesus.
You could say that the Old Testament is a way that we see the Father working throughout all of his creation. Although certainly we do know that anytime God interacted with his creation through the Old Testament, whether that'd be the angel of the Lord, whether it be the burning Bush, whether it be the pillar of fire, the pillar of cloud, the angels that appear to Abraham, the angels that appeared even to Lot, we see Jesus interacting with his creation, that is, the Son of God, before he took on human flesh, interacting with his creation. But in a way you could say the Old Testament is certainly about what God the Father did in starting creation and giving us all these wonderful things and being the one who gave us the law that we do not measure up to. Still, the Old Testament is always going to be pointing you to Jesus for Jesus is the Son of God, the Son of God, incarnate in human flesh, the Son of God who came to live, to die, to resurrect, and ascend for you. The Son of God who forgives you your sins, the Son of God who will welcome you into eternal life forever. This Son of God is the one that the whole Old Testament is pointing you to.
The New Testament then, being fully inspired by the Spirit, as He did the Old Testament, points you back to Jesus. We see how the Spirit is working in the Church all through Acts and through all the Epistles, and all of it is to point you back to Jesus. Peter and Paul and John and all the writers are constantly turning your eyes to see Jesus what Jesus did, what he taught, and how he would have us now live.
We see the Trinity in every page of the Scriptures if we only have the eyes of faith to apprehend him. And certainly we do, we do, because the faith that has been given to you in your baptism is a Trinitarian faith. This is to say that faith is not a creation of yours, nor it is of faith that needs to be built up by your own knowledge. The faith that is given to you in your baptism is perfect. It is because it is a gift from God himself, and no gift of God is less than perfect. And so faith is given to you by God, that faith must, by necessity, believe in the Trinity. The faith given to you in baptism is a Trinitarian faith, because it is given to you by a Trinitarian God. And so, in your heart of hearts, now baptized into the faith, you know that God is a Trinity.
But, why does this matter? Now you could say, we look at the creed. We give the first article to God the Father, in terms of his creation. And we give the second article of the Creed to the Son in terms of his redemption. And we give the third article of the creed to the Spirit in terms of his sanctification. But certainly the Son and the Spirit are involved in the creation. And certainly the Father and the Spirit are involved in our redemption. And certainly the Father and the Son are involved in our sanctification. Why is it that we divide these things up? Why does it even matter?
Because God says it does. And that's enough, is it not? If God says that this is who I am, should we not worship him in spirit and in truth? If God says this is who I am, should we not desire to know him fully? If this is who God says that I am should we not believe his word? Trust him, hold fast to him, learn from him, learn of him in every way that we possibly can. You see it is not enough just to believe in God.
People who believe who believe in some God are not going to be saved because people who believe in some God, well, they may have different ideas about God. You could be like the Mormon God, where what man is, God once was, and who God is, man can become, believing that Jesus is a son of God, sons including Lucifer, where Jesus and Lucifer fought over how to redeem creation and the holy heavenly council chose Jesus's plan, and Lucifer got mad, and that's why Jesus and the devil are are fighting at each other, right? Or we could believe in a Hindu god who wants people to bring him offerings. Or a Muslim god who wants people to kill others for his name.
See, it's not enough just to believe in God, right? I mean, we even have a civil god, do we not? God bless America. What God? The Trinitarian God, of course. We know he’s the only God, and yet, that’s not who most people are referring to, I don’t think. We have In God We Trust on our money, on our buildings. We sing it in songs. But, the civil god is not the same as the Trinitarian one, the civil god just wants us to be moral people.
You see, it's not enough just to have God. We must have God as he has revealed himself. And in no way, nowhere in creation is the one true God put out there except as we see him in the Scriptures. No other religion on the face of the earth has a triune God, three persons and one God. There are plenty of religions that have three gods. There are plenty of religions that have one God, but there's no religion out there but Christianity that has the true God, three persons and one God.
This doctrine is a hard thing to swallow for the world, and how could it not be when it’s impossible for us to understand. Muslims accused us of being tritheists, meaning that we have three gods. Modalists, who believe that there is only one person of God who manifests himself in three modes depending on how he feels at any given time, they kind of accuse us of being tritheists. There are plenty of monotheistic religions that would do this to us. And there are plenty of polytheistic religions that would say, well, you can't just have the one god. We even see Paul going into Athens and he looks around and he sees all these other God's and he points out their multiple gods, but he tells them of the one true God. You've got all these gods. You're very spiritual. You've got all these gods around you, but I see you have a statue here to the unknown God. Let me make it clear to you who this unknown God is. This unknown God is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. And in fact he is the only true God, your gods are nothing. Your gods are made up at best, and at worst, your gods are demons. But this God, the unknown God to you, has made himself known through his Son. Paul used that argument. We can use the argument too.
God has made himself known through his Son. And so it is that Peter preaches in Israel, in Jerusalem, that Pentecost day, about this God, the God who welcomes God to sit next to him. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord said to my Lord. If you know anything about how the Hebrew Scriptures were written, the word Lord is often substituted for the name of God, Yahweh. They were afraid to misuse the name of God, so the Jews would, instead of saying the name of God, substitute the word Lord in there. When we see the word Lord throughout the New Testament, you should understand that this is referring back to the name of God. So, Yahweh said to Yahweh sit at my right hand. What is he? Schizophrenic? No, instead there must be something more going on.
And could David be writing about himself in this way? I saw the Lord always before me. He did not abandon me to my soul to Hades, nor did he let his holy one, David, see corruption? No, David is dead. And Peter even points out, we know where his grave is. While that's been lost to history now, Peter is literally pointing to the grave of David right there. You want to see David? Open this up. We'll find his bones. If he’s there, God let his holy one see corruption. Instead of himself, David is writing about something greater. David is not the holy one. Even though it is a descendant of David who would sit on the throne, David is not holy. Not in the way that God is holy. Only God is holy; Jesus is holy.
You see it all ties in. This is all revealed to us. And especially on that Pentecost day, you've got to imagine Peter standing up there, preaching by the Holy Spirit, seeing the Spirit being poured out on all the people. The Holy Spirit is showing up as tongues of fire above their heads. The Holy Spirit is preaching about Jesus. You got to see the Trinity here, because certainly Peter's talking about God, the Trinitarian God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And after he preaches, do you know what the people say? They are cut to the quick, after hearing about the fact that they are the ones who crucified Jesus, and they ask Peter, what now shall we do? Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. And what baptism is it? The baptism that Jesus left to his church before he ascended to the right hand of the Father, the baptism of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
It is all Trinitarian, my friends. If we are to be saved, we must believe in this Trinitarian. God, there's no way around it. And as much as the world doesn't want to believe it, as much as the world will mock us for these beliefs and believe me, they do and they will, we must hold fast to the faith. And still we know there will be days coming when we will be challenged, and we will be tempted not to believe in this God. We know that many of our brothers and sisters of the faith have fallen into the different camps that do not believe in a Trinitarian God. Their religion is not a Christian religion, but we pray they don’t know enough about what their church teaches to be condemned. They fallen for the heresies that are out there in the world, the heresies that teach that God can somehow be manipulated by you, or the heresies that are teach that God is really just one person, or the heresies that teach you that God is three gods. These heresies that are out there are enough to damn someone and we will be tempted to believe something different and we'll be tempted to be damned.
And that is because our flesh is weak. Our flesh wants to take the easy way out. Our flesh wants to make sense of God. After all don't we do this when we try to give an analogy to serve as the Trinity. God is like water, right? Where water is liquid, but it can also be gas and it it can also be solid. Well, that's nothing but modalism, because water can't be solid, liquid, and gas all at the same time. Or God is like a four-leaf clover, where each person is a part of that one clover, but you have three parts making the whole. Well, that's what a friend of mine likes to call partialism, which really isn't a doctrine at all. But, still, God is not divided into three parts, but he is three persons. There are so many analogies out there and all of them fall short. We want to make sense of God. We want to depend on our reason and our knowledge and our understanding. And we can’t, because God doesn't make sense. But he doesn’t need to. God doesn’t make sense but he’s revealed himself to us in this way.
My friends, God always has been and God always shall be. You can’t comprehend this because you always had a beginning and cannot comprehend a God who has always been. You cannot comprehend of anything that is before creation because you are creation itself. And so it is, that if we must be saved, we must be enlightened by the Holy Spirit. And we must trust that God is who he says that he is. And when we can't or when we don't, we turn back to God and we say, Lord, Forgive me for trying to explain the divine mystery of your presence among us. Lord, forgive me for trying to explain the divine mystery of your person. Lord, forgive me for trying to explain the divine mystery of the holy Trinity, forgive me for this and for all my sins.
And you know what? The Father, as he hears you, will point you to his Son and to his cross. And the Spirit, as he hears you, will point you to the Son of God and to his cross. And the Son of God, when he hears you, will open his arms and embrace you and say you are my beloved child. Child, well done, believe in me. And I shall see you on the other side of the resurrection. And so we shall. We shall see Jesus and in Him, we have the fullness of the Trinity, we have all of God in the divine mystery. We shall see him and be with God forever. In the name of God, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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