(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) numbers will be given where available)
Welcome to our Sunday Service, today shared on paper across our circuit and with the congregation at St Andrews Methodist Church led by Brian Gamble one of our Circuit Local Preachers.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
The Psalmist wrote,
“Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth.
Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song.”
I love to sing and I hope you do too because I’ve selected more songs than usual today. So let’s follow the psalmist as we sing our first
Song – StF 443 – Come, let us sing of a wonderful love
Now let’s join together in prayer.
May this be a day of hope, of expectation. May we relish each moment as a gift from you.
May this be a day of joy, of breaking free and loosening the shackles that are binding us.
May this be a day of peace, and healing knowing our lives are always in your hand.
May this be a day of love and blessing, living as children of a living God. Amen
Song – StF 78 – Give thanks with a grateful heart
Now our prayer of confession
For our foolishness and our thoughtless use of the gifts of your creation
For our neglect of you and our failure to care for others
For our selfishness in prayer and our carelessness in worship
Lord, have mercy.
We rely on the promise of Jesus who says “Your sins are forgiven”.
Thanks be to God. Amen
Song – StF 424 – God forgave my sin in Jesus’ name
Our first lectionary reading is from Isaiah.
Last week was Pentecost when we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples after Jesus had left them. As promised the Spirit came upon them with power.
This was a momentous, pivotal event which began the institution of the church, and we are inclined to think that was when the Holy Spirit came into the world.
However, this reading from Isaiah reminds us that God’s Spirit was always here. Beginning in the very first verse of our bible we are reminded that Darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Throughout the Old Testament we read of instances when people were called and inspired to serve God through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit has always inspired and moved the people of God to do his will.
Thinking about those words from Isaiah let’s sing
Song – StF 663 – I, the Lord of Sea and Sky
Now let’s look at our second reading
Pentecost is followed by Trinity Sunday and so we are going to try to understand what the Trinity means to us.
Leonard Hodgson was a professor of Theology at Oxford University in the 1950’s and he wrote “How many clergy, as Trinity Sunday draws near, groan within themselves at the thought that it will be their duty to expound this dry and abstract doctrine to congregations for whom they anticipate it will have little interest”.
The theology of the Trinity is a mystery. I think professor Hodgson was correct when he said most believers are not really interested in the theology. Most of us just accept the principle and move on but it has been a difficulty for the Christian Church from it’s very beginning.
Let me give a very simple illustration. Many of you will be familiar with printers which you can use at home. Most of these machines require cartridges of ink. One for black and one for colour. The colour cartridge uses Cyan (blue), Magenta (red) and Yellow which are combined in various ways to produce any picture you want.
I like to think of this as a parable of the Trinity. God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit working in perfect harmony.
We come to this concept first in John’s gospel where he wrote,“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God”. And then “The word became flesh and dwelt among us”
The church has been trying to understand this ever since.
In the year 325 the Roman emperor, Constantine, called a meeting of Christian bishops to meet in Nicea (which is now in Turkey) and they formulated the first acceptable definition of the Trinity which is known as the Nicean creed.
This was later updated and edited to become the Apostles Creed which we still use as well.
When I was a teenager, (yes we’re going back some time here), I remember a Local Preacher, Harold Playford. Some of you may also remember him. He might be described as a man of presence. He was a big man and he took command of the pulpit. He was a business man in Bradford, I think in the wool trade, and he had a really good preacher’s voice.
He also had a great love of the English language which sometimes led to difficulty with his preaching because he loved to introduce obscure words which went over my head. But there are four words which I remember he always used. He would begin to pray with “omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, triune God.”
I think perhaps this developed my interest in Grammar because I had to find out what these words meant.
Omnipotent means “All powerful”. God can do anything he wishes to do in keeping with his character.
Omniscient means “All Knowing”. God knows everything. Past Present and future. He knows facts and he knows the potential of each one of us, his created children.
Omnipresent means “ God is everywhere. He is free of the limits of time and space.
My dictionary defines Triune as, “three in one, a trinity in unity, as the Godhead”. That’s the word we are thinking about today, Trinity Sunday.
God is the creator. He made heaven and earth and all that’s in it. Whether we are Creationist or Darwinist, the result is the same. All creation comes from God, the supreme being. This is what the bible tells us and what all scientific study cannot deny.
God is also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus himself told this to his disciples. He referred to himself as the son of God and to God as his father.
Amazingly, God is also our father. We know this because Jesus told us to pray to God as ‘Our Father who art in heaven’, and he made many other similar references.
Here are just three, Matt 5:9, Mark 3:35,Luke 6:35
There is no doubt that God is our father and we are his children and he loves us like the best possible parent. God in the Old Testament was a jealous God demanding sacrifices and justice. God of the New Covenant, seen in Jesus, is a loving and merciful God. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
It is because of His Grace that we are able to approach him with love instead of fear.
God is our Father. That’s the first part of the Trinity.
Next, Jesus is the Son of God. Again we can find many references when Jesus said this.
Matt. 16:27, John 2:16, John 14:2
Because he is God’s son Jesus is also the Messiah. He is the chosen one sent by God in response to the expectation of the Old testament prophets.
John 4:25 The Samaritan woman said,” I know that the Messiah is coming. When he comes he will explain everything to us”. Then Jesus declared “I who speak to you am he”.
Jesus is also our Saviour. He came to save the whole world from its sinful nature
John 3:17 “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him”.
And Jesus is God. This is where understanding comes to rely on faith. We have already heard the wonderful opening of John’s gospel.
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning”.
Jesus was born a human baby. He was truly human during his time on earth. He breathed and ate and slept. He laughed and cried. He had contact with other men and women.
After his crucifixion he became more spiritual. For a short time he would appear, still eating and drinking, and then disappear. He took back his Godly nature when he finally ascended into heaven.
The third part of the trinity is the Holy Spirit.
Jesus promised that he would come. John 14:26 “The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things”.
The Holy Spirit is an active power in the world. So what does he do?
The Holy Spirit unites. At Pentecost and ever since he has drawn people together. People of different races. Jews and Gentiles. Black and white. Female and male. He has brought us together this morning.
The Holy Spirit inspires. The Holy Spirit came to the Apostles at Pentecost, and He is in the world today. It was the Holy Spirit that inspired Peter to speak to the crowds at Pentecost. It was the Holy Spirit that sent Paul and the other apostles to spread the word all around the world. And he still acts in us today if we listen. Preachers believe that we are inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak his word. But we all need to take time to listen, to feel His presence and then He inspires us to do His will, to act, to speak, to live in his love.
The Holy Spirit comforts. When John recorded the long discourse at the Last Supper during which Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit, he use the Greek word Paraclete. This has been translated in many different ways but the most common way is ‘Comforter’.
When we live with the Holy Spirit he shares our difficulties and our pain. Following Jesus doesn’t make us immune to troubles but the Holy Spirit does help us to deal with them in a positive way.
When we live in Him he also makes us want to share our successes and our joy and to give thanks for his continuing gracious love.
So we have the Triune God, three in one, one in three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Song – StF 391 – O breath of life come sweeping though us
Our gospel reading today is from John’s gospel.
The whole story of Nicodemus is about how a person becomes right with God. As a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court he was very familiar with Jewish teaching, but they were only the traditions which had been handed down to him. He was stuck in a bureaucratic religious system that made the system more important than the cause for which it was founded. The institution became so important that they refused to let any other thing interfere with it.
Nicodemus had heard about this peculiar man who performed miracles and claimed to be the Son of God. He had possibly listened to him from afar. But his preaching gave rise to many questions. How could he account for the miracles? How could he account for this staggering insight into the Scriptures and understanding of the things of God?
So Nicodemus decided to find out more. He came to Jesus in secret at night, possibly to avoid publicity, possibly through fear of the consequences, but possibly just to avoid the crowds so that he could have a meaningful talk with Jesus.
It is in this discussion that we see another glimpse of the Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nicodemus recognises that Jesus has come from God. Jesus tells him that, to enter the kingdom of God he must be born of the Spirit.
Because of his ingrained knowledge of Judaism Nicodemus didn’t understand what Jesus was telling him. Although they were looking for the Messiah to save the nation the Jews thought they were automatically saved because they were descended from Abraham. They thought they didn’t need a personal Saviour, because they were saving themselves by their good deeds. They failed to come to God in humility, admitting their failure and their need of God.
We have to understand that we can’t earn our salvation, we can’t save ourselves by believing the right things or doing the right things. That’s not what it’s all about.
How then does a person become right with God? A right standing with God comes only through an ongoing relationship with him. When Jesus said, “You must be born again” — born from above, born of the Spirit — he was saying that the Christian life is not just a set of beliefs or a moral code, it’s a new experience. An experience which means confessing our sin and our need of God. An experience which feels God’s cleansing of our heart and our life, so that we are filled with his love and Spirit.
God doesn’t want our obedience to rules and regulations. God just wants us. He wants a real relationship, and everything else will follow naturally. If you have missed having this relationship you have missed everything.
The kind of belief that Jesus was after isn’t a belief that accepts a series of facts, but it’s the kind of belief that places your whole trust in Christ. You believe that he is, “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Your whole life is centred in that reality. Your complete trust is in Jesus so that your life is given completely to him. You live in an ongoing relationship with him.
Which is easier, to believe in the right things, or to have a relationship with God? Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”. Which is easier, to follow a moral code of rules and duty, or live each day loving God?
However, it seems that Nicodemus did have a change in his life. He must have reached an understanding because we read about him speaking up for Jesus in the Sanhedrin (John 7:50), and he went with another believing Pharisee, Joseph of Arimathea, to retrieve the body of Jesus after his crucifixion (John 19:39). Something must have got through to move Nicodemus from a religious person to a person who had a living, personal relationship with God. The change in him could only be described as being born again.
When a baby is born it is completely helpless. A new baby depends entirely on its parents for food, for warmth, for love. It can do nothing to care for itself or to earn its parents’ love.
When a baby is born, to its parents, it is the most beautiful thing in creation.
This is what Jesus means by being born again. We must make ourselves vulnerable. We must realise that we are completely dependent on God, our parent.
He will provide everything that we need but the most important point is that he already loves us. To God you are his most beautiful creation and he will care for you in every way.
So here’s a hymn which reminds us that through all the different stages of life our loving God is with us.
Song – StF 469 – I watch the sunrise
You might like to share your prayers for the world and then say the Lord’s prayer.
Finally we sing
Song – StF 693 – Beauty for brokenness, hope for despair
May God’s word feed us and his Spirit lead us into the week and the life to come
