November 13, 2006
RESOUNDING SYMBOLS - PURPLE: SYMBOL OF POWER
As we have seen in weeks past, there is a chain of resounding symbols that resound throughout the Word which God has spoken, and reverberate throughout the world which He spoke into existence in the beginning. As we have seen and have been seeing over these last few weeks, God is holy, God is true, and God is faithful; He has associated these with the color blue. We have seen in purple how God gives us a position in Himself, and in purple how He prospers us with good for the purpose of doing good.
This morning, we come to the heart of our study of these resounding symbols, to look at the stone thrown into the pond that starts all the ripples rippling: The Trinity of God, the Three-in-Oneness of our Lord. It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I call your attention to the screen, where we have a picture “cubed”, so this should be worth a billion words!
The Unbreakable T. W. I. G. (The Word Is God)
The Unbreakable TWIG is a simple illustration that conveys a complex threefold concept: 1) The Holy Bible is the Word of God, 2) God is One: Father, Son, and Spirit; Three distinct “Persons” or Aspects, One God, and 3) His fingerprint is on all of His creation, and thus the extraordinary is realized within the ordinary. This morning, our focus is on the second fold of this illustration. In order to try to get an idea of how God is, we must be able to handle a paradox.
God is One: Father, Son, and Spirit; three distinct “Persons” or Aspects, One God. When you see the Book, there is a point in the very center of the illustration, where the three lines come together at one point, that appears to be the farthest away. When you bring that point closest to you in your mind, you will embrace a paradox, so in addition to seeing the Book, you will also see a Box. You will be handling this paradox in your mind when you can see them both at the same time, realizing they are both there to be seen simultaneously.
THE HEAVENLY FATHER IS GOD
The lines suggesting a shining light from above is reminiscent of the Scripture, “Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow,” (James 1:15, emphasis added). The Father is the Head of the Godhead. When Jesus gives us the model prayer, He begins with, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name,” (Matthew 6:9).
It often happens that people identify their earthly fathers with the heavenly father, so they see God in their minds they way they see their dads, and they feel toward God often the way they feel toward their fathers. Now you dads pay attention! I personally testify to the truth of this; I was greatly blessed with a patient and caring earthly father, and so I automatically attribute these qualities to the Heavenly Father. The other side of that for me is that my father can tend to be overly permissive, and so it is that I wrongly think sometimes that God will just allow anything to go on. But not so! The Father in Heaven is, as it turns out, patient and caring, and to a very limited degree, permissive, but He is also perfectly just, which is something that all of us have to get used to, because none of us are perfectly just.
On the other hand, I have a dear Christian friend who, like the prophet found in First Kings 13, shall remain nameless, whose earthly father was very critical and verbally abusive. He could never seem to find anything positive to say at all; he always would say the exact thing to cause hurt or discomfort to someone in the room. It’s no surprise to hear when my dear Christian friend is praying, at all times referring to Him only as “Lord”, and never ever as “Father”. Please pay attention, dads.
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST IS GOD
The cross that is seen and unseen between the lines on the last page of the Gospel of John in the illustration is a reminder of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is risen and who lives forevermore. It is written on this page, “This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after He was raised from the dead," (John 21:14) May His Name be praised forever!
But not only does He live forevermore and will never again taste death, but lived forever before He was born! Jesus Christ is God, and He was God; He was with the Father in the beginning. The theologian Ron Rhodes says this, “Only of Christ can it be said that his birth did not signal the beginning of his existence. Prior to his birth, he had existed for all eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus, with the Father and the Spirit, is everlastingly the living one,” (Rhodes, 35)
There are some that will try to say that Jesus Himself never claimed to be God, but He most certainly did, and strongly so! Dr. Norman Geisler put it simply,
Perhaps the strongest claim Jesus made to be Jehovah is in John 8:58, where He says, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” This statement claims not only existence before Abraham, but equality with the “I AM” of Exodus 3:14. The Jews around Him clearly understood His meaning and picked up stones to kill Him for blaspheming (cf. John 10:31-33). The same claim is also made in Mark 14:62 and John 18:5-6. (Geisler, 280).
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GOD
The dove that is suggested in the illustration on the first page of Acts, that is seen and unseen, is a reminder of the Holy Spirit, who was promised to come by the Father, as it is written on that page, “And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now,’ (Acts 1:4, 5). Jesus expounds what this means just a couple of verses later, ‘but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth,’ (Acts 1:8).
The theologian Dr. Robert Morrey says this,
If we take the words of Scripture seriously, we can only come to one conclusion concerning the Holy Spirit. He is not an impersonal force or power but He is a Person. But He is not just a creature, but Almighty God. Thus the multi-personal nature of God includes the Holy Spirit as part of the Godhead. (Morrey, 195).
THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE SPIRIT ARE ONE GOD
We see three Sides, but still one Box. So often people attempt to “put God in a box”. The actuality is that God is the Box. He is not authored, bound, created, defined, or established by anyone or anything; rather, he authors, He sets the boundaries, He creates, He defines, and He establishes. We are in the “Boox”, if we are in Christ. This Box can only be seen when the Book is open and illuminated. Take this as a lesson, if you hear nothing else this morning; if you want to know God more, open the Book and let Him illuminate it for you. If you want to get closer to Him, let yourself get lost in His pages, and let yourself get saved by His Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
The great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon marvelled at God’s compact with Himself to save people. He preached,
When God first made man, he said, “Let us make man,” not let me, but, “Let us make man in our own image.” The covenant Elohim said to each other, “Let us unitedly become the creator of man.” So, when in ages far gone by, in eternity, they said, “Let us save man:” it was not the Father who said, “Let me save man,” but the three persons conjointly said, with one consent, “Let us save man.” It is to me a source of sweet comfort to think that it is not one person of the Trinity that is engaged for my salvation; it is not simply one person of the Godhead who vows that he will redeem me; but it is a glorious trio of Godlike ones, and the three declare, unitedly, “We will save man.” (Spurgeon, 56)
THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE SPIRIT ARE ONE LOVE
The power of God is the power of love, but what is love? The Bible says, “God is love,” (1 John 4:8, 16). But what exactly does that mean? When we look at it in the greek, we find that the words mean to say that God’s way is the way of love. But again, what is love? To this question, C. S. Lewis contributes,
All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that “God is love.” But they seem not to notice that the words “God is love” have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love. (Lewis, 135, 136)
Every love relationship is a trinity; its three parts are the two parties and the love between them itself. Within the Godhead, that love that exists between the Father and the Son is actually a person Himself: The Holy Spirit. Again Lewis writes it better than this preacher can preach it,
The union between the Father and Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at it thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the “spirit” of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about its “spirit” because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God. (Lewis, 136)
It is at this point that most of us usually get tripped up. We all start trying to understand the relationship between the Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, or the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit; but this misses the concept. Trying to understand these two connections is like trying to understand how you spouses relate to the love that you have for your spouse, or like trying to understand, you parents, how you relate to the love that you have for your children. There is a love there, but it is not something we ponder; it just is, and it is a powerful fount from which much good and great action gets accomplished. We love because He loves, because He is love.
Let us now read one of the most fascinating passages in the whole of Scripture. In the Olivet Discourse, we read the beginning of the prayer our Lord Jesus Christ prays to His Father,
These things Jesus spoke; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee, even as Thou gavest Him authority over all mankind, that to all whom Thou hast given him, He may give eternal life. And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do. And now, glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was,” (John 17:1-5)
And Jesus goes on to pray many more things in this chapter that we will be pondering for all of eternity. Let’s pay special attention to what He says a little further down in the chapter, “that they [that “they” means all of us, in context] may all be one; even as Thou, Father, [art] in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.” (John 17:21) (emphasis added). Did you hear that?! “that they also may be in Us…” God is love, and Love resides in us, Christian Brothers and Sisters! All of you who name the name of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are living in love! Love is inside of you and you are inside of Love. If you don’t have that this morning, God help me, I’m telling you, you do not know what you are missing! Don’t leave here this morning without the Love in your soul. Don’t leave without being in the Love.
At this time we need to call to remembrance what we have been studying in weeks past, how God gave Moses the instructions for the means and methods of worshipping Him, the itemized listing of all the instruments needed for worship, and the pattern for all the courts of His Tabernacle. Remember how over and over again the Lord instructs Moses to do thus and so with the blue and purple and scarlet, whether it was in making the wall hangings or the veil itself, the garments for the priests and for the high priest? Or, as we discover in the book of Numbers chapter four, for the cloths that covered the sacred instruments of worship as they travelled?
Now, watch this. Just as blue is in red and red is in blue in the color purple, so also the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father in the Holy Spirit; furthermore, all Christians are in the Father and Christ His Son and They are in all Christians by way of the Holy Spirit.
Remember that our God takes great pains to paint breathtaking masterpieces, His crowning achievement being of thorns… Our God communicates to us directly through the words that we can understand plainly, and through the symbols that we can understand mysteriously.
Keeping in mind what has just been said about the colors, and remembering what purple means symbolically inside God, let us now recall the rainbow. Remember the bow that God set in the cloud, that He gave as a sign of memorial to Himself of the covenant He was making with the earth. Also remember, by the way, that that covenant was a covenant of grace and mercy…
It is notable and not coincidental that the bottom color stripe of every naturally occurring rainbow is purple. Remember our key verse for this whole sermon series about these Resounding Symbols, found in Romans, “For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse,” (Romans 1:20). Just as the bottom line of every rainbow is purple, so also the bottom line of any sign from God, any wonder from God, and any miracle from God is the PURPLE; just remember, it’s the Precious Unblemished RedeemerProvided Life Everlasting. Just as the Spirit working through Bezalel put the Tabernacle together, and wove the blue and purple and scarlet together into individual curtains, and all into an individual structure, the same Spirit is Himself a single woven tapestry of three materials, a single cord of three strands; a single God of three Persons. Each is in the Other as the Other is in Each.
God passes this pattern down to us who will believe in Him and accept Christ as our Savior and Lord. He weaves us into His tapestry; He makes us all together His Tabernacle. His Light is the Light of our place. We can be in Him, and He in us. This is the ultimate love expression. This is the ultimate power. Stand with me now as we pray…
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The New American Standard Bible
Robert Morrey. The Trinity: Evidence and Issues. Grand Rapids: World Publishing, 1996.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Spurgeon's Sermons, Volumes 1-2. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004.
Dr. Norman Geisler. Systematic Theology: Volume Two. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003.
Ron Rhodes. Christ Before the Manger: The Life and Times of the Preincarnate Christ. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995.
C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1960.
John Stott. Basic Christianity. Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1974.
The Southern Baptist Convention. The Baptist Faith and Message. Nashville: LifeWay Christian Resources, 2000.
Baptist World Alliance. We Baptists. Franklin: Providence House Publishers, 1999.
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