Pastor Slaughter
Holy Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2025
Theme: The Triune God Must Really Love You!
Text: Romans 5:1-5
I am going to share with you something a little personal. Some advice my friend shared with me, during one of the most stressful times in my life. It was a year after I moved out here. If you remember my father, he had Alzheimer’s. He used to be good about taking his medicine, but I found out he stopped. He started hallucinating, and it was especially bad at nights. He had incontinence issues and pretty much needed full-time care. I wasn’t sleeping at nights. My home life was a reck. Taking care of my dad led to feelings like I was failing in ministry with the balancing act of doing the pastor/principal thing with stuff at home. All this was during advent and Christmas. My friend tried to get me to see the good things in my life but everything he said there was some sort of problem. “You have a roof over your head.” “Yeah, but the roof is leaking.” “You have a dog.” “Yeah, but he is sick.” Just one of those times where everything that could go wrong went wrong. Then he changed his tactic. And he said something I both hated and love him for. He said, “God must really love you.”
“God must really love you.” My shoulders sank. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear but it was what I needed to hear. I wanted to wallow in my suffering. I wanted someone to sympathize with me about how bad it was. But instead, he pointed me to God’s love in the middle of suffering.
Today is Trinity Sunday, where we celebrate the fact that God is Triune. Three in one. Three distinct persons yet one God. How the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Yet the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Yet there is not Three God’s but One God. This is a mystery that goes beyond understanding.
So often on Trinity Sunday, I have focused on explaining that teaching that I missed the very personal aspect of what does the Triune God does for you and me, especially when rubber hits the road and suffering comes into our lives My prayer is that today you will take a bit of my friends advice to heart, and I will change it a little bit, “The Triune God must really love you.” 1) Boast in what he has done for us and 2) Boast in our sufferings (In what he does for us).
Paul has spent the last four chapters making a case for justification through faith. Remember what justification is? To be declared righteous. It is a courtroom term where we are on the defendant’s chair. Where all of our sins are brought before us. There is no way we can escape judgment. But someone steps up to plead our case. His name is Jesus. He walks to the judge. Shows him the holes in his hands and side. And says, “See I paid the price for everyone of his/her sins. He/she is forgiven.” The judge raises the gavel and slams it down. And declares you not guilty.
The Triune God must really love you and me. For Jesus to suffer the agony of hell on the cross, for Jesus to suffer the punishment that you and I deserve for our failings, for our sins. The addictions, the mistakes we make as parents, the anger and hatred we feel towards others. The lies, the lust, the greed, the idolatry. Jesus suffered and died for every single sin, in thought word and deed. The Triune God must really love us.
This forgiveness that Jesus won for us is ours through faith. This faith is not a work that we do for God. This faith is not something that we earned or deserved. But this faith is a gift given by the Holy the Spirit working through his word. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” The Triune God must really love us to give us saving faith.
Because the Triune God has justified us (The work of Jesus) Because the Triune God has given to us faith (the work of the Holy Spirit) we have peace with God Father. Our sin can’t separate us from God anymore. Through Jesus Paul says in verse 2, “We also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we send.” The Triune God must really love us, to listen to every petition and prayer. To listen to every struggle and pain. To allow us to stand in his undeserved love (his grace).
Because of all of this Paul says, “And we rejoice confidently on the basis of our hope for the glory of God.” Rejoice confidently could be translated as boast. Because of all that the Triune God has done for us, we boast in what he has done for us, which results in hope for the glory of God, heaven. The Triune God must really love you and me to do EVERYTHING for our salvation, forgiven us, given us saving faith, listens to all of our prayers, and gives us eternal life!
The Triune God must really love us. Paul boasts about what that love has done for us. And we do too. When is it most difficult for us to see that love, to boast in that love? Isn’t it when we experience suffering in our lives? When we feel the pain, the hardships, the toil, the loss, the guilt, the consequences of something we did. When we have those Job like experiences where we can’t explain the reason why bad things happen to us.
It’s almost like we are taught this or indoctrinated with this concept that if we experience pain or suffering, it is automatically bad for us, because of how it makes us feel. Anxious… worried, depressed, sorrow, grief. These are feelings we like to avoid, and so if we experience situations that lead to sufferings in our lives and we feel the things that hurt us, what is the conclusion we are tempted to draw? That God must not love me. Or that I have done something to anger God. Or that God must not be good to allow this to happen to me
Notice what Paul says in verse 3, “Not only this, but we also rejoice confidently (boast) in our sufferings…” How? Because of what it produces, “…because we know that suffering produces patient endurance, and patient endurance produces tested character, and tested character produces hope.”
I am not here today to diminish the things, the sufferings that you have endured, but I am here to elevate the love of God in the middle of your suffering. God has a plan for you and his plan is for your good. You may not understand fully why God is doing what he is doing. It may hurt. Just like going to a dentist as he fixes your tooth. Though it hurts he is not harming you. You may not feel like thanking him but you can thank him because you know he is siding it for your good.
God works in the same way. Your pains and problems are actually blessings in disguise. Because they teach us something and bring us closer to the Triune God who must really love us. Because the Triune God uses our sufferings to bring about future blessings we cannot see or comprehend at the time. “…tested character produces hope… (5) and hope will not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who was given to us.”
What makes this hard is that God never promises that he will let us see or understand exactly why he is doing what he is doing. We might never know why someone got cancer, that God took our spouse or child away from this earth. We may never understand why our health faded or that break up happened.
But what I can be sure of is that good will come from it, because the Triune God promises it. I can be sure because God’s plan ends you in heaven. That is the sure and certain hope that Paul speaks of in our lesson. That is why we can boast in our sufferings and thank God when we are in the middle of the storm or when your car broke down or you have to work with that insufferable boss. Or when you father has Alzheimer’s. Because God is going to use these sufferings to mold and shape you, to rely on him more and more. The more and more you rely on him the more and more certain that hope becomes.
Is this easy? Absolutely not. You will struggle (I know I do) to see and accept this at times, especially when we are hurting the most. Our hearts will ache, tears will flow as we struggle to join Paul and saying, “We also rejoice confidently (boast) in our sufferings.” It isn’t easy when God let’s us hurt on earth but never forget Paul’s words, “because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who was given to us.”
“God must really love you.” Those were not the words I wanted to hear but I need to hear. They have since been my silent prayer as I have gone through suffering or adversity. Sometime prayed with a smile, other times with tears. Boast (rejoice confidently) in what the Triune God has done for you and boast (rejoice confidently) in what your Triune God does among your sufferings. Amen.