Trinity Sunday
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Reverend Michael J. Moffitt
May 31, 2026
Sermon: Genesis 1:1-2:3 “Through the Word of God Alone”
The longer I know the Lord the more I am in awe of Him. The
other day as I was walking in our neighborhood I thought about
the things I know about God that are so far out of my ability to
comprehend. I pictured myself asking the Lord, “Explain to me
how you created the heavens and the earth, the entire universe
out of nothing? I suspected that God would say back to me, “Well,
I spoke the word and all things were created.” I would likely reply,
“Yeah, that’s what you did but that doesn’t tell me how you did it.”
God would reply, “Sure it does. I spoke and it was perfectly done
just like I wanted it. The problem you’re having is that you couldn’t
just speak and it would happen. That’s because I’m God- you’re not.”
The truth is that most everything we know about God at some
point will seem more amazing than ever before as the Holy Spirit
opens our eyes and deepens our understanding of Him. God is God alone and there is nothing to compare Him too.
Today is Trinity Sunday which is celebrated as the first Sunday
after Pentecost. It’s one of the few feasts of the Christian year that
is celebrated as a doctrine of the church as opposed to an event.
It is a time to celebrate and remember that God exists in three
persons; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It’s time to
remember and celebrate that God is greater, more wonderful, and
more complex than anything to be found in creation. There is
nothing or no one like God, yet all of creation shows forth his majesty, his power, and his glory.
Psalm 150 that we read antiphonally this morning invites us to lift
up our voices and use musical instruments to be creative in our
worship of God who is worthy of praise, honor, and love! As a
matter of fact it ends by inviting “everything that has breath to praise the Lord!
The doctrine of the Trinity has the same invitation. We should
marvel and celebrate our God who is the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit for he stands alone above all of creation as the object
of our praise and devotion. This doctrine is a foundational
teaching of Christianity that has come under severe scrutiny and criticism since the early church was formed.
Early church father Tertullian (A.D. 160–220) was the first to form
the doctrine of the Trinity into the language of “persons” and
“essence.” He wrote that God exists in “three distinct
persons”—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit but each has
his own essence. The basic idea is that the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal but each being self-aware.
Each one has a distinct role, yet the three persons are eternally
together and cooperating. Each person is involved in everything
the others do. Jesus said in John 10:38 “understand that the
Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”
The Spirit is both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. Listen
to Romans 8:9, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the
Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who
does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”
The 4 th century was a very difficult time for historic Christianity as
the teaching of the Trinity came under attack. There were those
who rejected the divinity of the Son and Holy Spirit and sought to
undermine the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Early church father Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 394) in refuting
those who were teaching heresy explained the unity of the Trinity in a very helpful way.
“But in the case of the Divine nature we do not similarly learn that
the Father does anything by Himself in which the Son does not
work conjointly, or again that the Son has any special operation
apart from the Holy Spirit; but every operation which extends from
God to the Creation … has its origin from the Father, and
proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit …” 1
So we can see that Scripture emphasizes general distinctions
among the works, or functions, of the three Persons: the Father
initiating, the Son complying and the Spirit executing the divine
will of all three. We should always give equal attention, and equal
honor, to all three persons while remembering that we worship
only one God in these three persons. Each week when we recite
the Nicene Creed we are affirming that we believe in the Triune
God who allows us to experience each member of the Trinity.
The word “Trinity” is not used anywhere in the Bible, but it doesn’t
take long before we can see that it is clearly taught in both the Old
and New Testaments. In this morning's Gospel reading
from Matthew 28 we read how Jesus himself assumed the
doctrine of the Trinity when he commanded that baptism was to
be, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
In our Epistle reading from 2 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul
ends the letter with, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and
the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
Last week on the day of Pentecost we read of Jesus’ promise in John 14:15–17,
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will
ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with
you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot
receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You
know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”
Jesus was leaving the disciples to go back to the Father and
would send back, another helper like him, the Holy Spirit. In this
text we see the Father and the Son sending back the Holy Spirit
to indwell the believer. In doing so it would be as if Jesus were
with them in person. The Trinity together were acting to
accomplish the divine will, of which they were in complete agreement and always have been.
In our Old Testament reading from Genesis 1-2 we see the
amazing story of the Divine will being accomplished by the Trinity
from the very beginning of the Creation story. From the beginning
of Genesis to the end of the Book of Revelation we find the Trinity
very much involved in the working out of all that God does.
In the creation account of Genesis we find a written record of the
creative genius and perfection that is still on display today around
the world. God has allowed scientist to discover ways to reveal
the creative works of the God who by his very nature is
incomprehensible. Unlike our first parents we have the privilege of
seeing the mystery and majesty of God seen throughout the
universe. This should cause us to pause and marvel at the
countless ways the God has revealed himself in the grandeur and beauty of all of creation.
From the first book of the Bible to the last we find the reason that
God is worthy of our praise, because he is the sovereign Lord and
creator of the universe. If that is all we knew about him, we should
bow down before him in praise and adoration. The good news is
that this isn’t all that we know about God. He has shared with us
his word and given us his Spirit who never stops revealing himself to us and through all that he has made.
In our scripture reading this morning from Genesis 1, the word of
God begins our focus on the creation account as an event entirely
accomplished by God alone, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.” The first thing we need to see is that it was God who
created and that he did so out of nothing. Therefore, before there
were the heavens and the earth, including the vastness of the
universe, nothing else existed but God.
In Psalm 33, the Psalmist captures the idea beautifully, “By the
word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath
(ruach- spirit) of His mouth all their hosts… For he spoke and
it came to be; he commanded and it stood firm.”
David Guzik in his commentary on Genesis writes, “The ancient
Hebrew word bara (created) is specific. It means to create out of
nothing, showing that God created the world out of nothing, not
even from himself, for God is separate from His creation. Unlike
Eastern and pantheistic perceptions of god, the Bible teaches that
the universe could perish, yet God would remain. Men cannot
create in the same sense the term is used in Genesis 1:1. We can
only fashion or form things out of existing material. The closest we
come to creating is in reproducing ourselves through (procreation
which is a gift given to us by God). Without all that God created
we couldn’t exist. The insistence by some that there is no god is
to ignore all the evidence of the perfection of creation.” 2
For most of us this isn’t “breaking news”. However, there has
never been a more important time for Christians to focus on the
greatness and power of God in order to increase our faith and
trust in him during these days of godlessness and apostacy. We
should find great comfort in the fact that God is far greater than
we can comprehend and is able to do far more than we can even imagine.
Before we move on to Genesis 1 verse 2 consider the claim of
John’s Gospel concerning the role of the Son in creation. John
1:1–3; 14,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All
things were made through him, and without him was not
anything made that was made…. And the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of
the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
One of the first things that John, through the witness of the Holy
Spirit, informs the reader is that the Word has eternally existed
and was the agent that God used to create the heavens and the
earth, and the word’s name was Jesus, the only Son of the Father.
Now we complete the evidence for all the Trinity being involved
together in creation in verse 2, “The earth was without form
and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And
the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” When God began to transform the earth into something beautiful
and compatible with His great plan, he started with the work of the
Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit begins every work of creation or re-
creation. Remember in the Nicene Creed we recite, “We believe
in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from
the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.”
God created the universe, through the work and word of the Son,
and then the Spirit breathes life into creation. The word used for
Spirit is “ruach” which means “breath” or “wind”.
Throughout the Old and New Testaments there are examples of
the breath or wind of God being associated with the creating
power of God. It’s important to remember that the Spirit of God
was there at creation because he was there before creation.
Charles Spurgeon wrote on this, “The first divine act in fitting up
this planet for the habitation of man was for the Spirit of God to
move upon the face of the waters. Till that time, all was formless,
empty, out of order, and in confusion. In a word, it was chaos; and
to make it into that thing of beauty which the world is at the
present moment, even though it is a fallen world, it was needful
that the movement of the Spirit of God should take place upon it.”
That has not changed one bit. If we want revival then we must cry
out to God to pour out his Spirit of power and life. If that doesn’t
happen then we will have nothing more than the “walking dead.”
In Genesis 1:3–25, we read of God speaking all things into
existence by the power of his divine will. There was no struggle
with opposing forces, and all things came together according to
the creative will of God. It’s not my intention today to look at every
aspect of the creation story but to focus on the presence of the
Trinity in creation. However, I will mention this one thing. In every
part of the creation God moved in such a way as to satisfy his
purpose and to prepare for humanity's role in his created world.
From the beginning of verse 1, God distinguishes himself as the
ruler of the universe. In every creative event God showed his
power and authority by overcoming the chaos and darkness and
bringing everything into perfect order and under his dominion. By
his words he brought into existence all things and declared their
meaning and purpose. He created with a level of perfection that
allowed the creation to be able to sustain itself. There is nothing
and no one in the universe like God and that is the primary reason
that Proverbs 1:7 says that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
I never cease to be amazed at the level of arrogance and
blindness of those who suggest that God isn’t just and good
because he doesn’t measure up to their expectations of what God
should be like. Let’s now read the final verses revealing the
presence of the triune God in creation. Genesis 1:26–27,
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and
over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps
on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
For me, one of the most mysterious acts of God in creation is the
creating of man in his image and likeness. It certainly doesn’t
mean that we look like God or that he has two arms, two legs and a body like human beings. Remember Jesus told the Samaritan
women at the well in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” Some have
suggested that bearing God’s image speaks to our being personal, rational, creative, and moral creatures.
The most amazing part of the stories of God acting to redeem his
fallen creatures, is that even though mankind has systematically
disobeyed and turned away from their creator and his desire to
bring them into the family of God, he still pursues us with the offer of the Gospel.
The universe is declaring the glory of the Lord and the reason we
exist is to see the beauty and glory of the God who created it, to
be overwhelmed by the amazing creation that God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit made for our benefit and
our provision. This is to be the source of our joy and fulfillment.
Anything else is a diversion and a lie. Do you for more of God? Do you know him?
