Staying in Rhythm, Part two – You were made for this
“Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with timbrel and harp.” – Psalm 149:3
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In this message, we are going to be looking at the work of the Holy Spirit in creation. To do that, we are going to need to spend a few minutes talking about the Trinity. #creation #chalcedonian
Someone might ask, where can I find the Trinity in the Bible? Well, you won’t find the Chalcedonian definition of the Trinity in the Bible. What you will find is the followers of Jesus proclaiming God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – alongside that, you will find the Old Testament insisting that God is one. The church took several centuries to think about how all that fit together. It took time to develop a coherent way of talking about it. The result of this long think was the Chalcedonian definition of the Trinity. God is one in essence, purpose, eternity, and will. Yet, God is also three distinct persons who have lived in fellowship for eternity.
Recently, some church leaders have been trying to find a better way of talking about the Trinity that does not include the masculine language of Father and Son. I think I understand the intent. I even sympathize to some degree. After all, God is not a boy’s name. However, I am not on board with the new way of speaking about the Trinity. And it is not a new way at all. Without knowing it, these church leaders have stumbled into an old mistake.
There is no perfect language when it comes to talking about God. All language about God is going to have its problems and limitations. Our ancient mothers and fathers in the faith knew that. But they also knew that some ways of speaking about God are better than other ways because they run us into fewer problems. That is why the church spent four centuries clarifying its language for God, choosing very carefully from among many options.
One of the options that the church rejected was a theological error called modalism. Modalism is the idea that God is not three different persons. We only experience God in three different ways. Sometimes we experience God as an other-worldly being who loves our world and is involved in its destiny – while somehow being distinct from anything in creation. When we experience God in this way, we refer to him as the Father. #modalism
For an exciting but brief time, God walked among us as a human being. We refer to this way of experiencing God as the Son. Finally, we can have an intimate, experiential encounter with God that we call the Holy Spirit. God is not three persons. God just relates to us in different roles or modes (a heresy called modalism).
Modalism runs into all kinds of problems when trying to account for all that the Bible says about God. For starters, we have passages in which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to each other as if they were different people. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays to the Father. We do not get the impression from this passage that Jesus is talking to himself.
In the Gospel of Luke, chapter four, and the book of Acts, chapter 10, we find out that the Holy Spirit was the one who empowered Jesus to do his ministry. In Luke, Jesus stands before the synagogue. He reads a text from the book of Isaiah. He says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set free the oppressed.” In Acts, Peter says, “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil; for God was with him.” #messiah
The clearest passage about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relating to each other is in the story of Jesus’ baptism. In Mark 1, we read, “At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming up from out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’ At once, the Spirit sent Jesus into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.”
Some church leaders have tried to come up with more inclusive language about God that avoids the error of modalism. They have a substitute for the words, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” They have changed the words to “In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer.”
These words sound promising, but they take us from one of the errors of modalism into another. This formula reduces God to a set of functions. God is the one who creates. God is the one who redeems. God is the one who sustains.
But God was still God long before he did any of those functions. In eternity, God was not a set of functions but a relationship. God is fundamentally the relationship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Besides, God does a lot more than just create, redeem, and sustain. God also inspires, leads, encourages, corrects, judges, heals, teaches, and much more.
This formula runs into another error. It misses something important. All three persons of the Trinity participate fully in all aspects of God’s work. How do I know? Jesus says so. In John 5:19, Jesus says, “The Son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Jesus says something similar about the Holy Spirit. In John 16:13, Jesus says, “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he has heard.”
The point is that the three persons of the Trinity are not in different corners, all working on some different parts of the plan. For the next examples, I am going to speak only about the Holy Spirit, since this series is about him.
For example, the work of redemption, which is supposed to be referring to Jesus, is not limited to Jesus. In John 3, we learn that it is the Holy Spirit that gives us new birth. In Romans 2:29, we find out that the Holy Spirit is the one who changes our hearts. And, in 1 Corinthians 2:11, it is the Holy Spirit who baptizes us into Jesus. All of this is the work of redemption.
The word creator is supposed to be referring to the Father. Yet, the work of creation is not the work of the Father alone. The Gospel of John and the letter to the Colossians say that God created all things through Jesus and for Jesus. But what about the Holy Spirit? In Genesis 1, the Holy Spirit is there, hovering/fluttering like a dove over the waters of creation. In Psalm 104:30, we read, “When you send your Spirit, living creatures are created, and you renew the face of the earth.” In Psalm 33:5, we read, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and the starry hosts by the breath of God.”
The Word of God, mentioned in this verse, reminds us of Jesus. The Gospel of John calls Jesus the Word of God, who was with God in the beginning and, who by nature, was God. The book of Hebrews tells us that God created everything through Jesus and that nothing exists that came into existence without Jesus. Jesus is the Word through which God spoke creation into existence. #theword
The word breath, in this passage, reminds us of the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew and Greek, the word for breath is the same word as spirit. In Genesis, the Holy Spirit flutters over creation like a dove. In this passage, the breath of God brings life, vibrancy, motion, and energy to God’s creation. #breath
To talk about creation is to talk about grace. I want you to remember our two definitions for grace. One definition is – getting better than what we deserve. The other definition tells us that grace is a way of talking about how God behaves and works in our world and our lives.
So, creation is God’s first act of grace. God did not create the world because he had any intrinsic need. God did not lack in any way. God was not deficient. God was not incomplete without our universe. Neither was God lonely. The Trinity is a perfect, uninterrupted, eternal fellowship of three eternal persons. That means God did not create the world because he needed someone to talk to. God was never lonely. So, why did God create the world?
Let’s Have a Baby
The best analogy I can give is the analogy of a married couple having a baby. Some married couples probably should have never gotten married. The relationship has been broken and dysfunctional from the very beginning. Nevertheless, many couples find themselves stuck in a broken marriage. One day it occurs to them, “I know what will fix this marriage. A baby.” And so, they decide to have a baby. And, from the moment the baby is conceived, that baby has a job. The baby’s job is to fix mom and dad’s marriage. In other words, this couple has a baby because they hope the baby will fill what is missing in their marriage. They have the baby because they need the child to complete something that is lacking in them.
But then, there is another couple. This couple has a very healthy marriage, filled with love and contentment. This couple decides to have a baby, but for an altogether different kind of reason. They choose to have a baby, not because something is wrong with the marriage, but because something is right about the marriage. Having a baby is not about attempting to make an unhappy marriage happy. The baby will bring happiness to the couple, but that isn’t the reason for having a child. A healthy couple has a child because they want to share the love and happiness that is already there.
In our second example, we get a hint about the reason God decided to create the world. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit so perfectly loved each other, that it simply seemed a shame not to create others to share in this abundant love. There was just so much love left-over that God the Trinity decided to create others with whom to share all this love. That is why God created. So God’s act of creation was an expression of God’s generous grace. #generous
And so, we see that whenever God creates, it is an act of love and grace. God gives life as an expression of his extravagant generosity. That means God created you for the very purpose of knowing and enjoying the fellowship of God. You were made for this. God made you so that you could know God, delight in God, and to understand his rhythms and his ways. God made you for dancing the dance of life, faith and hope, and love. You were made for this.
But, for some of you, this seems so very hard to understand. I get that. Even that which is most natural can seem hard at times. Take music, for example. Some people find it hard to stay in rhythm, sing, and dance in the correct timing. But, what scientists are discovering is that all living things have rhythms sewn into the very fabric of their being. Circadian rhythms govern our sleep, and there are rhythms that govern the circulatory and digestive systems. Radio signals, sound, and light follow predictable rhythms. Even sub-atomic particles follow a rhythm. Musical rhythm is hardwired into the brain. And, we are beginning to realize that God has also given many kinds of animals a sense of musical rhythm. Take a look. #circadian
Rhythm Seal Video (video of animals keeping Rhythm) –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a81q4KY3g08
What’s my point? My point is that God created us with a sense of rhythm, and not just musical rhythm or bodily rhythm. God made us in such a way that it is possible and even natural for us to follow the rhythm of the Holy Spirit. God made it possible for us to connect with him. He made it possible for us to be in the groove with him – though that may seem a bit surprising. Some of you may be thinking to yourself, “Pastor, you do not understand. I have no rhythm at all.” Recently, some researchers have shed a little light on this topic. Take a look.
(See)Why Some People Have No Rhythm Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn5-GUzpHk8
Did you hear what that video had to say? The speaker told us that most people do have a sense of rhythm, even if it does not seem to come naturally to them. Only a small percentage of people completely lack a sense of rhythm – and in that small number of cases, scientists have found that these folks actually have other parts of their body that are out of rhythm. For the rest of us, who may have two left feet, it isn’t actually that we have no rhythm, it’s just that it takes more effort for us to figure out how to follow it. Some people, when they are listening to music, don’t know how to follow it. They get distracted by the lyrics or the melody instead of paying attention to the rhythm of a song.
When I first started learning to play music, I did not know how to follow a song’s rhythm. I would get distracted by other aspects of the song, such as the tone, or I would get distracted by other things going on in the room, or even by my own thoughts. Whenever that happened, I would get out of sync with the rhythm. Truthfully, that still happens to me sometimes. And when it does, I have to work extremely hard to get back in rhythm. That’s okay. In fact, for most people, it’s pretty natural.
The same kind of thing can happen to us spiritually. Whenever we get distracted by this world, or even by things going on inside of us, we can lose sight of God and get out of step with the rhythm of the Holy Spirit.
One additional point that I would like to make is, you can learn to follow the rhythm. Now, not everyone can be a great dancer or musician, but nearly anyone can do it at some level.
Dance Lesson Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50YQeugOMOw
In John 16:13, Jesus says that when “He, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” A part of what that means is that the Holy Spirit comes to do for us what Will Smith did for Kevin James. He comes to teach us how to move in rhythm. Will Smith taught Kevin James how to follow the rhythm of a song. The Holy Spirit teaches us how to follow the rhythm of God. Trust me. With his help, you can do this. After all, you were made for this.