Sermon Illustrations for Trinity Sunday (2024)
Illustration
Isaiah 6:1-8
I came across this story and thought it fit this passage very well. A young lady who was trying to explain her going to a questionable place of amusement told her friend that she thought a Christian could go anywhere. Her friend answered, “She can, but I am reminded of a little incident which happened last summer when I went with a party of friends to explore a coal mine. One of the girls came in a white gown. When her friends questioned her, she appealed to the old miner who was the group guide, ‘Can’t I wear a white dress down into the mine?’ Yes,’ replied the old man, ‘there is nothing to keep you from wearing a white dress down there, but there will be considerable things to keep you from wearing one back.’”
Holiness and purity matter. When Isaiah witnessed the holiness and purity of the Lord, he was struck with his own sinfulness. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” The holiness of the Lord highlighted his sinfulness even more than a dirty coal mine dirties a white dress.
God is holy. Left to our own devices, we are not. It is only through God’s act of sending Jesus that we are cleansed and made worthy. When we witness the awesome holiness of God, how can we not want to be holy? C.S. Lewis once wrote, “How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.”
Bill T.
* * *
Isaiah 6:1-8
I want this scene to be portrayed, at least in our mind’s eye, bright, vivid, loud, and startling to the point of knock-kneed fear. I want our innards shaken until we can barely control ourselves, and our calves turned to jelly so that we can hardly stand. I don’t want us to say, “Awesome!” I want us so awe-struck we want to run away, but can’t, because we’re frozen in place, unable to say a word.
If you need help feeling helpless, just remember, Seraphs seem to be winged snakes breathing fiery, burning venom. Probably not dragons but you’re going to be too frightened to know the difference. Unworthy to stand there in the presence of such glory. Yeah. Unfortunately also too frightened to run, and trust me, it’s going to sound as if someone else is speaking when we hear ourselves say, “Here am I. Send me!”
Frank R.
* * *
Romans 8:12-17
Martin Luther summarized this text in one of his sermons on it. He proclaimed that everything of this [sinful] nature must be shunned by Christians (who have the Holy Spirit and are hence able to judge what is carnal)... (Complete Sermons, Vol.4/2, p.171)
One of Billy Graham’s comments is right in line with the first reformer. He is reported to have said that “Many people have come to Christ as a result of my participation in presenting the Gospel to them. [But] It was all the work of the Holy Spirit.”
For those wondering what such a focus on the Spirit has to do with the Trinity theme, one of Augustine’s concrete ways of depicting the Trinity is most relevant and could communicate well with laity. He claimed that God is three in one, like persons are three in unity — possessing understanding, memory, and will (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.3, pp.140-141). The Father is understanding, the Son is God’s memory (of understanding) and the Spirit is God’s Will (acting on what God knows). It follows, then, that to have the Spirit is to participate in God’s will, to have power to overcome the world’s ways. If the preacher has a preference for focusing more on the Trinity, other Trinitarian images used by Augustine can illuminate the doctrine for laity. These include the Trinity as akin to a tree comprised of root, trunk, and branches or the Trinity construed as water in three forms — a fountain, a river, or contained in a drinking vessel (Ibid., p.328).
Mark E.
* * *
John 3:1-17
Dr. Paul Chappell shared this story in Our Daily Bread. A young girl who accepted Christ as her Savior was sharing her story with a few people at her church. “Were you a sinner before you received the Lord Jesus into your life?” an old man asked. “Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Well, are you still a sinner?” he continued.
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I feel I’m a greater sinner than I ever was.”
“Then what real change have you experienced?”
“I don’t quite know how to explain it,” she said, “except I used to be a sinner running after sin, but now that I am saved. I’m a sinner running from sin!”
Salvation is found in Jesus Christ alone. In one of the most popular verses in the Bible, Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (vs. 16). Andrew Murray once said, “Salvation comes through a cross and a crucified Christ.”
Bill T.
* * *
John 3:1-17
The trouble with a verse like John 3:16, one that’s so iconic many people have it memorized (and occasionally mis-memorized, but that’s another issue), is that people think they already know this so well that they don’t listen. They’re not alone. Sometimes we preachers don’t listen to scripture, either. We think we can recite a verse and it speaks for itself and our job is done.
Say it slowly, stretch it out, especially the word “loved” and the words “have — eternal — life.” What else is there to say.
But John has been layering several layers of meaning in every sentence of his gospel, and it might help if you were to lay out the commentaries and begin all over again, as if you were about to preach from Haggai or Zephaniah.
At the very least, consider. God’s actions are not only revealed in this verse, but also in the verses that follow. Our possible responses are laid out, and these words are a reminder that despite God’s glorious intentions, God is allowing us to make a choice. Our response is just as crucial, and laden with as much power, as God’s choices — not because we matter all that much, but because God gives us this power. Jesus said that some “people loved darkness rather than light….” (3:19). We can accept or reject this wonderful gift. That says something very important about the audacious plan of God to save all — and yet give all a choice.
Frank R.
* * *
John 3:1-17
John Calvin spoke of the wonderful security and boldness we have as born-again Christians. He wrote:
True indeed, we must hold by this principle that our faith be founded on God. But when we have God as our security, we ought, like persons elevated above the heavens, boldly to tread the whole world under our feet, or regard it with lofty disdain. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol.XVII/2, p.118)
Martin Luther echoes similar confidence:
This teaching produces hearts that are stout, courageous in affliction and the temptation to sin, confident and fearless hearts that declare: Even though I have been stung by the devil and his hellish point... nevertheless I believe and am convinced that my Lord Jesus Christ bore my sins on the Cross... (Complete Sermons, Vol.6, p.221)
The text has implications for the Trinity in the first reformer’s view:
Christ wants to prevent us from thinking of Him as separate from the Father. Therefore He again directs our mind from Himself to the Father and says that the Father’s love for us is just as strong as profound as His own... (Luther’s Works, Vol.22, 355)
Augustine offers another version of the Trinity which helps us further understand the certainty in God’s love that the born-again Christian has. Born again in the Spirit, Christians receive the love of God Who binds together Father and Son. As the African Father put it:
Therefore the Holy Spirit, whatever It is, is something common to both Father and Son. But the communion itself in consubstantial and co-eternal; and it may fitly be Friendship, let it be so called; but it is more aptly called love. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.3, p.100)
The Sprit which is the love making Father and Son One cannot but make us loving and steadfast when the Spirit is poured out on us.
Mark E.
I came across this story and thought it fit this passage very well. A young lady who was trying to explain her going to a questionable place of amusement told her friend that she thought a Christian could go anywhere. Her friend answered, “She can, but I am reminded of a little incident which happened last summer when I went with a party of friends to explore a coal mine. One of the girls came in a white gown. When her friends questioned her, she appealed to the old miner who was the group guide, ‘Can’t I wear a white dress down into the mine?’ Yes,’ replied the old man, ‘there is nothing to keep you from wearing a white dress down there, but there will be considerable things to keep you from wearing one back.’”
Holiness and purity matter. When Isaiah witnessed the holiness and purity of the Lord, he was struck with his own sinfulness. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” The holiness of the Lord highlighted his sinfulness even more than a dirty coal mine dirties a white dress.
God is holy. Left to our own devices, we are not. It is only through God’s act of sending Jesus that we are cleansed and made worthy. When we witness the awesome holiness of God, how can we not want to be holy? C.S. Lewis once wrote, “How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.”
Bill T.
* * *
Isaiah 6:1-8
I want this scene to be portrayed, at least in our mind’s eye, bright, vivid, loud, and startling to the point of knock-kneed fear. I want our innards shaken until we can barely control ourselves, and our calves turned to jelly so that we can hardly stand. I don’t want us to say, “Awesome!” I want us so awe-struck we want to run away, but can’t, because we’re frozen in place, unable to say a word.
If you need help feeling helpless, just remember, Seraphs seem to be winged snakes breathing fiery, burning venom. Probably not dragons but you’re going to be too frightened to know the difference. Unworthy to stand there in the presence of such glory. Yeah. Unfortunately also too frightened to run, and trust me, it’s going to sound as if someone else is speaking when we hear ourselves say, “Here am I. Send me!”
Frank R.
* * *
Romans 8:12-17
Martin Luther summarized this text in one of his sermons on it. He proclaimed that everything of this [sinful] nature must be shunned by Christians (who have the Holy Spirit and are hence able to judge what is carnal)... (Complete Sermons, Vol.4/2, p.171)
One of Billy Graham’s comments is right in line with the first reformer. He is reported to have said that “Many people have come to Christ as a result of my participation in presenting the Gospel to them. [But] It was all the work of the Holy Spirit.”
For those wondering what such a focus on the Spirit has to do with the Trinity theme, one of Augustine’s concrete ways of depicting the Trinity is most relevant and could communicate well with laity. He claimed that God is three in one, like persons are three in unity — possessing understanding, memory, and will (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.3, pp.140-141). The Father is understanding, the Son is God’s memory (of understanding) and the Spirit is God’s Will (acting on what God knows). It follows, then, that to have the Spirit is to participate in God’s will, to have power to overcome the world’s ways. If the preacher has a preference for focusing more on the Trinity, other Trinitarian images used by Augustine can illuminate the doctrine for laity. These include the Trinity as akin to a tree comprised of root, trunk, and branches or the Trinity construed as water in three forms — a fountain, a river, or contained in a drinking vessel (Ibid., p.328).
Mark E.
* * *
John 3:1-17
Dr. Paul Chappell shared this story in Our Daily Bread. A young girl who accepted Christ as her Savior was sharing her story with a few people at her church. “Were you a sinner before you received the Lord Jesus into your life?” an old man asked. “Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Well, are you still a sinner?” he continued.
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I feel I’m a greater sinner than I ever was.”
“Then what real change have you experienced?”
“I don’t quite know how to explain it,” she said, “except I used to be a sinner running after sin, but now that I am saved. I’m a sinner running from sin!”
Salvation is found in Jesus Christ alone. In one of the most popular verses in the Bible, Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (vs. 16). Andrew Murray once said, “Salvation comes through a cross and a crucified Christ.”
Bill T.
* * *
John 3:1-17
The trouble with a verse like John 3:16, one that’s so iconic many people have it memorized (and occasionally mis-memorized, but that’s another issue), is that people think they already know this so well that they don’t listen. They’re not alone. Sometimes we preachers don’t listen to scripture, either. We think we can recite a verse and it speaks for itself and our job is done.
Say it slowly, stretch it out, especially the word “loved” and the words “have — eternal — life.” What else is there to say.
But John has been layering several layers of meaning in every sentence of his gospel, and it might help if you were to lay out the commentaries and begin all over again, as if you were about to preach from Haggai or Zephaniah.
At the very least, consider. God’s actions are not only revealed in this verse, but also in the verses that follow. Our possible responses are laid out, and these words are a reminder that despite God’s glorious intentions, God is allowing us to make a choice. Our response is just as crucial, and laden with as much power, as God’s choices — not because we matter all that much, but because God gives us this power. Jesus said that some “people loved darkness rather than light….” (3:19). We can accept or reject this wonderful gift. That says something very important about the audacious plan of God to save all — and yet give all a choice.
Frank R.
* * *
John 3:1-17
John Calvin spoke of the wonderful security and boldness we have as born-again Christians. He wrote:
True indeed, we must hold by this principle that our faith be founded on God. But when we have God as our security, we ought, like persons elevated above the heavens, boldly to tread the whole world under our feet, or regard it with lofty disdain. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol.XVII/2, p.118)
Martin Luther echoes similar confidence:
This teaching produces hearts that are stout, courageous in affliction and the temptation to sin, confident and fearless hearts that declare: Even though I have been stung by the devil and his hellish point... nevertheless I believe and am convinced that my Lord Jesus Christ bore my sins on the Cross... (Complete Sermons, Vol.6, p.221)
The text has implications for the Trinity in the first reformer’s view:
Christ wants to prevent us from thinking of Him as separate from the Father. Therefore He again directs our mind from Himself to the Father and says that the Father’s love for us is just as strong as profound as His own... (Luther’s Works, Vol.22, 355)
Augustine offers another version of the Trinity which helps us further understand the certainty in God’s love that the born-again Christian has. Born again in the Spirit, Christians receive the love of God Who binds together Father and Son. As the African Father put it:
Therefore the Holy Spirit, whatever It is, is something common to both Father and Son. But the communion itself in consubstantial and co-eternal; and it may fitly be Friendship, let it be so called; but it is more aptly called love. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.3, p.100)
The Sprit which is the love making Father and Son One cannot but make us loving and steadfast when the Spirit is poured out on us.
Mark E.
