Glorious Creator, Beautiful Creation Is. 6:3b; Gen. 1:1-2:4a; Matt. 28:16–20
Grace, mercy and peace be with you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Our message for this Trinity Sunday is about our Glorious Creator and His Beautiful Creation, from our Alleluia Verse, Isaiah 6:3: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!
In these words we see the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and the splendor of His Creation.
Holy, holy, holy, indicates that God is three, but not three gods, one God, three persons.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts… not the Lords of hosts, the Lord of hosts…
… one Lord, one God, in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity.
The Father is El Shaddai, translated as, Lord God Almighty…
… the Son is El Shaddai, Lord God Almighty…
… and the Holy Spirit is Lord God Almighty, El Shaddai.
The whole earth is full of His [El Shaddai’s] glory!
Through His glory, God made the Universe to reflect His glory.
Because of sin, that glory is sometimes covered, or unseen, or not understood, or not appreciated, or ignored, or sometimes falsely attributed to something other than the true, Triune Creator…
… but when we open our eyes and our minds, we can see that the vast Universe is God’s handiwork: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Psalm 19:1
Indeed, when you look into the night sky, and see the sparking stars so far away, you see God’s magnificent work and His grand design.
The beauty of Creation bears witness to the glory of the Creator.
In Genesis 1 and 2, we ‘re given a summary of the creation of the universe, culminating with the creation of humanity in God’s image.
As our sermon text indicates, all that God made was beautiful and glorious like Him... but only humanity, the crown of God’s creation, was endowed with His personal image.
Our Old Testament says, 26 Then God said, “Let us [the Holy Trinity] make man in our image, after our likeness… 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 2 further describes how God made humanity in His holy image.
From the dust of the earth, He fashioned something beautiful… a man named Adam.
But the greatest beauty was what God breathed into Adam.
Verse 7 says, 7 Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
God breathed His Spirit into Adam, and Adam became more than just a higher form of animal or mammal, more than just a body, but a living body with an immortal soul.
Then God finished His Creation by creating another being in His image, a woman from the man.
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman…
Like the man she was made beautiful… beautiful as God sees and makes beauty, which isn’t necessarily as the world sees beauty -- beautiful in the image of God, beautiful with holiness and love.
Adam was amazed at how she turned out, how wonderful she was, so perfect for him.
Verse 22 says, And [God] brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
They were two peas in a pod, you might say, hand in hand... perfectly matched in body and soul, united in holy love…
… but sadly, the nemesis of love, sin, would soon divide them.
Created in the holy image of God, they were made to love God, to love His creation, and to love humanity, each other… and to love perfectly and completely, with no sin and selfishness mixed in.
God also gave Adam and Eve a unique kind of love between a man and a woman, that special, God-given bond between husband and wife.
Adam felt that bond with Eve immediately, as Eve surely did too.
It was a sort of honeymoon in those days of innocence… a honeymoon between them… between them and God… and between them and God’s creation… a honeymoon in paradise.
Sandal’s Resorts advertises these honeymoon or second honeymoon packages in tropical paradises.
Eden was true paradise, not the weather, the life… life in a state of holy love and perfect harmony.
Tragically, that perfect, beautiful life came crashing down when Adam and Eve decided they no longer needed God in their life.
The devil convinced them that God was holding them back. They believed the lie, and paradise was lost.
Something that was entirely good and glorious, now also had a kind darkness and ugliness to it… God’s holy Creation was corrupted by evil.
But God would send the Most Beautiful One, more beautiful than the angels, His Holy Son, to redeem His children who had forsaken Him and made the world dark with their sin.
Isaiah describes Him in chapter 53… and its’ a surprising description.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
His beauty was hidden inside; it wasn’t His physical appearance or charismatic personality, it was His holiness, His perfect love, His sinless soul, all the godly virtues that made Jesus the man He was… capable of saving us.
And His glory was in His Divine nature, very God of very God, as we confess.
But the sinful world couldn’t see that inner beauty and Divine glory, or wouldn’t, and the world hated and rejected Him, beating and crucifying the life out of Him.
Suffering and dying in our place, He took on all the ugliness of our sin for us, to make our souls beautiful again through Holy Baptism, with faith and love reborn in us… God’s image remade in us by His Spirit.
In light of the beautiful, loving things Christ has done for us, and the beautiful things the Holy Spirit is doing in us… let us glorify our glorious God by working to make this fallen world a more beautiful place.
Beautiful people make the world more beautiful again.
Beautiful people aren’t those who look a certain way on the outside, but who are a certain way on the inside…
… who have the peace and power of the Holy Spirit in their soul… and the beauty and benevolence of the Father‘s love in their heart, even though they sometimes sin. As Romans 3:23 tells us, we all sin and fall short of the glory God.
Forgiven by God’s mercy, let us, with His help, work to beautify our world as good stewards and faithful caretakers of the amazing Creation our God has made for us.
Let us make good use of the gifts and resources He’s given us to help our neighbor in need… and in that way, the beauty of Christ’s love glows in us… and shines from us.
And let us share the Gospel of our Savior, that all might repent and believe, and have the joy of His salvation in their hearts and their souls.
Finally, having been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit… with God’s image being remade and restored in us…
… let us live in the majesty of His love, and abide in the beauty of His peace, which passes our understanding and guards our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, our beautiful Savior and glorious Lord. Amen.