Text: Zephaniah 3:14-20
The
Trinity's gracious presence in our lives can indeed be problematic for us. Problematic in that when God the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit bring us to partake of their loving communion of Persons
relating to one another in the utmost of mutual, self-giving, and indeed
sacrificial love to the extent that they are One; when the Trinity brings us to
participate in their Self, the Trinity will also inevitably strip us of our
false gods. It sounds strange in this
day and age to say it, but we are idolatrous.
Human beings are inherently spiritual beings which means we are created
to be in a relationship with the Trinity whose image we bear in the midst of
our relationships. Sin is that we turn
away from that particular relationship and yet still having the need for it, we
turn to something else. Therefore, the
problem with sin is not in the first place morality. It is idolatry. Our problem in the area of morality is
secondary and indeed the result of our idolatry.
So, what
are false gods? Well, unlike our ancient
predecessors we don't keep little figurines in shrines around our houses which
we overtly worship unless of course we haven't yet parted with our Barbie's and
G.I. Joe's. Rather and generally
speaking, we all have false securities to which we are devoted which we serve
in the belief that we need them to live the lives we think we should be living. Moreover, as we are made in the divine image
we all have things in our lives from which we falsely derive our
self-image. These false securities by
which we image ourselves are people, things, thought patterns, feelings,
beliefs and on and on to which we devote our hearts, our minds, our souls, our
strength in a false sort of worship only in the end to find that though they
make us feel a sense of identity whether good or bad and secure in our world,
they ultimately prove to be self-destructive and destructive to our
relationships.
Therefore,
to heal us and to restore his own image in us the Trinity manipulates, yes
manipulates, our lives to bring us to freedom from our false gods and to a
point where we truly experience in the Holy Spirit our heavenly Father’s love
for us as his own dear children, the same love he has for Jesus the incarnate Son. The Trinity brings us to our home in his very
self so that we learn to trust his care and will for us in all matters. Yet, to get us to that point the Trinity will
lead us through a refining process in which we will unfortunately suffer,
suffer because we have enthroned our false loves and securities intimately at
the core of who we are and it is not easy to let go of them. In fact, I would say that it is impossible
for us of our own effort apart from the Trinity's help to rid ourselves f our
false gods. There's an old adage,
"You have to go through Hell before you get to Heaven." So it is that the Triune God of grace brings
us to a point where we know the only way we are going to be happy is to rest in
his love alone. As someone once said,
“If God is all you’ve got, you’ve got more than enough.”
On the
tail-end of and very often in the midst of the Trinity removing our false gods
from us, we begin to sense his presence with us and that the Trinity his very
self is giving us the strength we need to simply love and trust him through it
all. Quite often, there comes the moment
when the desire to serve that false god is literally taken away. Then sets in the joy of being restored
because God truly does begin to restore life to us where previously there was
anxiety, sadness, lost-ness, brokenness, and just plain clueless-ness and even
butt-headedness. This restoration is an
amazing work of the Trinity’s grace that he simply chooses to do for us his
children. We cannot earn it. In this new freedom there is happiness and
praise for God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Happiness in my opinion is being lost in
wonder, love, and praise in the presence of our heavenly Father through the Son
in the Holy Spirit and to be that way rationally.
2
Corinthians 5:17-21 reads, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has past away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to
himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that
is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their
trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”
The
Trinity's delivering us from our false gods is not something simply for our own
personal and individual benefit. He
restores us that we may be integral participants in community that more clearly
reflects his image, a community through which he blesses humanity. The Holy Spirit living in us makes us part of Christ’s body. We
live in him. We move in
him. Our whole being is in him.
In him is where the Trinity is
making us to reflect the image of himself, a loving fellowship of persons who
are being-in-communion.
The
Trinity's reconciling us to himself means more than just Jesus has made it so
that the Father won’t get us because of sin.
It means we are united to The Trinity.
We are in Christ by the Holy
Spirit’s presence in us. Ephesians 2:17 says this means we have
access in one Spirit to the Father. 2
Peter 1:4 says this means we are becoming participants in the divine nature,
the divine Communion. God is pouring his
very self upon us that we may participate in his life and become more and more
like him. In and through the Holy Spirit
our new being in Christ is that we share in the relationship of God the Father
and God the Son. The Father loves the
Son and the Son loves the Father and all who are in the Son, in him, share in that love. To be reconciled to God is to share with
Christ in the Father’s love through our union with the Son in the Holy Spirit.
Christian
faith is ultimately about God’s love for his children and our partaking
thereof. Throw religion out the
door. God in his staggering love for us,
his children, has been for our whole lives trying to get us to feel,
understand, trust, and live in his love for us.
For too many centuries the church has preached a false, coercive,
powerless gospel that said “Get yourself right with God so things will go well
for you eternally and maybe in this life.
Confess Christ and live faithfully so you can go to Heaven when you
die.” All I can say is that when I’ve
tried to get myself right with God all I’ve wound up doing is feeling like a
miserable failure and I don't think that I am alone in that experience.
There’s
another way, look back on your entire life and dare to presume that God the
Father loves you because that's how Jesus the incarnate Son has revealed him to
be. Presume the Father's love. Presume that he has been doing wonderful
little yet great things to prove it to you and you will, I guarantee, you will
begin to feel and understand how much your heavenly Father loves you. This is where faith is born.
Myself, I
remember my first heartfelt prayer, a prayer other than the “bless Mommy and
Daddy” prayers we teach our children. I
was five and had had my first experience of playing with the older kids up the
street. For several days in a row I came
home in tears because I was the little kid, the identified target for big kid
torment. I remember staring out the
living room window and praying, “God, what’s wrong with me that other kids
won’t play with me.” I never got an
answer so I guess there wasn’t anything wrong with me but within a couple of
weeks a little boy Ronnie showed up at my front door. He had just moved in across the street and we
were best friends until well after high school.
I can look back over my life and find it full of so many things like
that. No matter how bad the
circumstances of my life got, the Trinity has always been working through that
bad to make me better for you. Things
like that are the core of faith, by them the Trinity brings us to experience
his love and know that we can trust him through the worst of things and indeed
through the times when it is he who is refining us.
I like
this passage from Zephaniah for it reflects well how the Trinity works in our
lives to restore us in his love to have faith.
It’s filled with how the Trinity gets personally involved in our
lives. God himself speaks and uses the
pronoun “I” throughout. God says, “I will remove disaster and shame from
you.” “I will deal with those who wrong you.” “I
will save you and make people praise you.”
“I will bring you home.” “I will restore your fortunes right before
your very eyes.” Verse 17 reads, “The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a
warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will
renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of
festival.” The Trinity is in our midst,
in your very lives, and in our fellowship
He always has been and always will be.
A final
thought from Zephaniah, a - if not the - predominant way of thinking about God
in our culture is of this wise old man sitting on a throne, running the world,
and expecting us to dutifully serve him and follow his rules and he is ready to
pour out his wrath if we don't. God as
Trinity, as the loving communion of the persons of God the Father and God the
Son and God the Holy Spirit is typically not the image the word God brings up
for us. Zephaniah adds another monkey
wrench for us to add to having to wrap our minds around the Trinity. Instead of our false image of God being a
rather unpassioned often grumpy rule-maker/judge stoically uninvolved in our
lives because it is up to us to follow the rules he made because that's the
stipulation of the contract (not covenant) he has with us and whose honour we
have perpetually offended, instead of that false image Zephaniah says the
Trinity is shouting for joy over us.
He’s having a party over us. Just
like in the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke when the wayward son came home,
the father was there watching the horizon and when sees his son far off he runs
to him, embraces him, and throws a party.
God is shouting for joy over us his children because he loves us so
much.
It is the
Trinity's love for us that renews us and leads us to repentance. At the heart of our prayer life is a loving
relationship with God, a union with him in our hearts. Oh yeah, you say, what’s it feel like. It feels like rest, peace, joy, gratitude,
trust, respect, and a desire to want to please God. Go and take some time to sit and look over
your life asking God to show you how he’s been working in your life in time you
will begin to know it. God will reveal it to you maybe not at first because we
have to get past that “Prove it, God” mentality to sincerely wanting to
know. In time you will come to know
God’s love for you. It will become your
chief work in life to keep your heart turning back to this loving relationship
with God and it will deepen. You will
find that God will make it so that you can even feel love for this unseen
Three-in-One in your life. That
relationship is reconciliation and it renews you like nothing else. It heals your hurts. It truly does.
Backing up
a bit, if we are in Christ through the Holy Spirit and in him have access to
the Father, access so complete that we participate in his divine nature, what
should our response be to this loving Father who shouts for joy over us. Well, join in the shout. Live in the feast. “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say
rejoice.” Worship. Adore your Father with the Son and feast with
them. That’s the secret to
happiness. Life can be very
miserable. Worries and hurts can and do
weigh us done. Seek your rest in his
love. Let him lift your heart to join in
his shout for joy. Life truly is too
short not to feel the joy. Live in his
love. Let the Trinity work to restore
you and it will blow you away...along with your false gods. Amen.
