God is Good God Loves You

Trinity Sunday

May 26, 2002 - Community Chapel, Nashua, New Hampshire

Psalm 8; Matthew 28:18-20 "Baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

When Trinity Sunday rolls around it gives a good occasion for ministers to make fools of themselves. When we get to thinking we can explain the great mystery of the Triune God. I think of the little boy in kindergarten wearing his father's old white shirt for a paint smock, busy daubing paint on a newsprint easel.

"What are you painting?" his teacher asks him.

"I'm painting a picture of God!" is his humble answer.

"But no one knows what God looks like," says the teacher.

"They will when I get done with this picture!" says the confident kindergartner.

Maybe we aren't quite as naive when we tell people about God. Still, it is all too easy to get comfortable with a God who we think we "understand", but any God we could comprehend is absolutely too small.

It is good to have a Sunday when we think about how absolutely unspeakably wonderful is our great God. We shut ourselves off from unspeakable wonder and grace when we think we have arrived at any stage of our journey into the wonder of knowing God.

Make no mistake about it- I believe we know God! But then I remember Reuben. Once I heard him say, "I know Jesus!" But then he went on to say, "But sometimes, I feel like I hardly know Him at all!"

I. A HIGH VIEW OF GOD IS ESSENTIAL TO TRUE SELF DISCOVERY

What we think of God- how we relate to Him- the quality of our heart's worship will determine the measure of our soul here and our soul satisfaction in eternity.

People are lost until they get a glimpse of the glory of God, and then begin to realize that we are made for that glory!

II. THE BIBLE REVEALS A GOD OF MYSTERY, MAJESTY, AND MERCY

Mystery! But mystery which has revealed enough of itself to let us know that at its essence it is GOOD, and that it LOVES us! Mystery that defies comprehensive analysis, and yet is more real than the four dimensions we experience with our five senses. The mystery of God is not irrational or illogical. It simply goes past the highest and the best we can see. Faith is always heuristic. I feel sorry for those who have explained every dimension of their salvation.

• Mystery! I remember sitting in church on a Sunday morning hearing the good pastor say how God told someone (it was Moses) that his name is I AM THAT I AM. Even as a little kid I thought that was strange, a strange name. But in more than sixty years since, I have yet to get to the bottom of that name. Our God is the great I AM!

  Mystery! We begin to discover who WE are as we learn to relate to the true Reality, the great I AM.

• Majesty! Authority to go along with the glory! True dignity and worth! The Risen Savior is the glimpse we have into the life we will share with God; a life that has already begun if we will only begin to recognize it.

  I'm an incurable romantic. I love a parade. I have been deeply moved in some of the great cathedrals people built 1,000 years ago to the glory of God. But most of man's majesty is empty. Most of our parades don't go anywhere, really.

  But our God has a majesty and glory which one day all the world will see. He has the authority to go along with the pomp and circumstance.

• Mercy! I have tried in a few sentences to express how beyond our comprehension God is great. But maybe the most difficult part of thinking of the Trinity is the fact that God is not only great and good, but that this Universe-filling God knows me and loves me. He knows YOU, too. God knows us, and not just how we are here on Sunday, but every good and bad thing we've ever done. And yet I say with deep conviction: GOD, THIS GREAT GOD, LOVES YOU!

Not 'God will love you if you jump through some hoops' or 'God will love you when you get your act together.' God loves YOU just as you are, right now!

He may not love all the ways we come short. He cannot love rebellion and willful sin. But still his mercy is there.

III. HOW DO WE BEST DRAW NEAR TO THIS GREAT GOD?

We don't- at least we don't find God. He already is close to us; He finds US! SOMETIMES WHEN GOD IS TALKING, SO AM I! MAYBE I NEED TO LEARN TO LISTEN! We need to learn to listen. In his great love this Mysterious, Majestic, Merciful God has already made overtures to every one of us. Because he has first loved us, we are enabled by grace to respond to HIM.

CLOSING STORY:

A professor at a great university began a key course with a lecture in which he brought out a large jar and set it on the lab table at the front of the lecture hall. He reached under the desk and pulled out several large rocks that just barely fit through the mouth of the jar and placed them together until they filled the jar.

"Is the jar full?" he asked. "How many think so?"

A few raised their hands. The rest didn't know where he was going, so they waited. The professor then got our a dish of smaller stones and he dropped them in and shook the jar until the empty spaces around the larger rocks were pretty much filled. "Is the jar full now?" he asked. "Do you think so now?"

A couple more raised their hands, but the rest thought there might be a trick so they waited.

Out came a few cans of dry white sand. In a little while with some help from a couple on the front row the professor had filled in every crevice, and the stones were pretty much hidden. "How about now?" asked the prof. "Is it full?"

The students were pretty sure this was it. But before they could answer the prof reached for the hose at the sink and began to fill the jar filled with rocks and sand with water. "Is it full now?"

Now they weren't sure. But the prof said, "I could get some more stuff in chemically, but that will do. It is pretty full now. So- what have you learned from this exercise? "

Thoughts of how to cram the very most facts in the least time into their limited heads passed through their thinking. How to be the most economical of space and time. But the professor surprised them all when he told them:

"You have to put the big rocks in first!" Conclusion

You cannot simply add God in to your ideas and plans. Believe me, He is FOR you! But He has to come in on the ground floor!! We cannot CASUALLY enter into intimate relations with this great I AM THAT I AM.

We CAN know Him! We can become friends with HIM. We can learn to talk with Him and know His loving responses. GOD IS GOOD! GOD LOVES YOU! Prayer: