2026 05 31 - Dream Team? Redeem Team? The GOAT? It's GOD! - Popp

Grace, peace and mercy from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You may be seated. Leave it to Mrs. Limer to give us a good trinity. Ending there, fourth verse, we get to stand. And on Trinity Sunday, that's exactly what we're going to talk about over and over here, what the Trinity is.

I thought about this idea of the three and one. We talk about. A lot of it's in our catechism. I thought about good teams, thought about music. I thought about some other things.

Certainly we've gone through this list the last couple Sundays, Ascension Day, Pentecost, and it leads us to what we know about the Trinity. I put Dream Team. Yep. Greatest team of all time. That's not from Chicago, of course.

Or the redeemed team that came after them. Right. You know, good teams. Well, okay, they weren't a great team, but got me thinking about the greatest of all time, the goat. Right.

We always have these arguments. I looked at movie directors because, you know, I love movies. There's obviously a lot of debate who's really the best. Are there movies you like? I did movie franchises.

There's definitely some debate here. The fact they left some good ones off of there, we could probably argue which. That's another time, another Bible class. The Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, Mount Rushmore of our leaders in our church body. I thought that was an interesting one.

Of course, Walder, Luther, no brainers, anybody that's read Christian Dogmatics. You might not want people up there, I don't know. But certainly important people in our church body.

But of course, we're here to talk about the Trinity, the real Mount Rushmore. Problem is people get confused. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we'll jump in here. He is risen. He is risen.

Trinity Sunday. We are going to focus on the three Alls in today's gospel reading, known as the Great Commission. So it's going to look at this great mystery in the absolutes of the text. And it really is one of those. As we focus on those, it's amazing the clarity we see in what God has called us to do.

But before we get to the three alls, let's start with how many gods we worship. One of the things I looked at doing before I got to the Mount Rushmore was this idea of who's the best. And of course, because I had the Olympic team, I was thinking in terms of the Olympics. And so I started with one of those where I put the Trinity at the top. The gold, the Dream Team, the silver.

I put Mount Rushmore and bronze. And then I Thought, no, it really is about Chicago sports. I got the Super Bowl, Bears 85 and the Bulls 90 teams. And I even went as silly as trying to remember my wife comes next after God, my children third.

And then good old Mr. Timmerman walks in my office and says, There are three gold medals on God. Don't get into partialism. Trying to understand the Holy Spirit, our Father, Son, Holy Spirit and the Trinity. He's right. We don't want to confuse anybody.

How many gods do we worship? One God. One God, right. It's that. That basic explanation, the one that we see throughout in our catechisms and in our books, this understanding and of course, you know, trying to understand how each one works partly is what they did.

God created, Jesus redeemed, Holy Spirit sanctifies. We hear that over and over. We know that. We believe that Scripture makes it very clear, but doesn't help us understand that that is one God. Right?

They call it the greatest mystery of the Christian faith. In fact, I brought my catechism and it says right there, question 110. What does the word Trinity mean? It means three in one. The church has used the word Trinity to maintain the Bible's witness that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons and yet one God.

It is the greatest mystery of the Christian faith. The greatest mystery.

Things that we must take by faith and belief in our scripture and know. So I brought the Athanasian Creed, right? It is Trinity Sunday. I'm sure once we read this, it will all make perfect sense, right?

We've done that many years and there's a lot of great parts in there, but we're not going to read that today. Let's focus on it. This idea of this Trinity, what makes us Trinitarian? I did a chapel a couple years ago. I probably didn't do it once a year with our kids because we have a lot of kids coming from different church bodies.

And I did it that year. I said, how many of you are Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, non denominational? We went through and I said, how many are Trinitarian? About 20 hands went up. I said, no, no, no, no.

Anybody that's had their hand up so far, let's put it up. We believing in that triune God, that creed, that belief that Jesus died and rose again, what makes us Trinitarian?

Now that that's all cleared up, right? The Trinity. Let's look at these three alls, and I think you're going to see again what the Lord meant as he called on us through the great commission, all authority, verse 18 said. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. So the first of all, this idea of authority, right, the focus is on heaven, not on earth.

I put Augsburg Confession 38 is the final part before the closing concerning the power of the church. It's 13 pages. Again, another fun read for you guys if you want to jump into it. But again, the idea is not about power on earth, but power in heaven. When he says all authority in heaven and earth, again the Father, the Creator has the authority.

I went into my chatgpt, I said, give me a picture of God showing all the greatest things he created. It's really kind of a neat picture, right? This idea of all the earth, all the stars, the atmosphere, the planets, everything that God has created. The person with the most power is in charge right now. I'm not talking about strength, I'm not talking about any of you.

Grow up in the north with the snow. You couldn't wait for the plows, push all the snow up and then you play king of the hill with your friends. The dumbest game I've ever seen, right? Whoever stands on the top the longest is the king of the hill. And you're pushing everybody else off and they're trying to knock you down to the bottom and there's no winner.

I guess you get done when you're all bloody and dead. But that's not the strength I'm talking about here, am I? This is the strength of the person who has invented all things, the person who created everything. We know the divine designer of all things has the authority. He's the one that created.

I think it's safe to say when Jesus had all authority on heaven and earth. Again, we have lots of scripture showing why God is truly the authority. And next, as we look at all authority, we look at all nations. Another fun one, you know, show me a picture. Matthew 28:19, Jesus to all nations, the things that we know, right?

And here again the focus is on heaven, not on earth.

Excuse me, all nations being. He is in charge of all, both sides. I think when it comes to everyone and everything, all of it, all nations, we struggle with this. If you drive a car, you probably feel there are people that don't deserve to be in heaven. All right, it's kind of nasty, but it's true.

There are some people out there. I'm like, oh my goodness, if you go to Walmart, no, I'll stop this, okay?

As a loving, God fearing child, of his who was spending eternity. The idea that every single person on earth is God's and is supposed to go to heaven, we struggle with certainly not them, right? He created them. When he says baptize all nations, you know, it is one of those things that we have to admit. We are created in his image.

One of my favorite songs on my playlist is a song by we are Messengers called Image of God. It says seven billion voices separate us, but only one can show us who we are. We're made in the image of God. It's that reminder, regardless of what we see in the mirror, created his image. Granted, what we're seeing is a sinful side, because we live in sin.

Thank you, Adam and Eve. We always will. But does not change the fact that we are created by God. And of course, the whole point is God wants everyone to be baptized. This is one of the most recent baptisms on Easter.

A lot of you didn't get to see the wolves bringing Austin waters of baptism. But he desires all to be baptized in the name of this triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It is that trinitarian belief of what we know of our God that puts us all in one. And of course, knowing that he has all authority, heaven and earth, that he wants all nations, every single one of his people that he has created to be in heaven, to spend eternity with Him. It takes us to all commands, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.

Another tough one. You know, this one in our Bible says observe. Some say to obey, some say to instruct. But regardless, we're to treasure. Now that seems backwards, doesn't it?

We don't always look at this idea. I have never heard her cry, that Miriam. She's never cried. I'll take the blame on that one. I'm sorry.

We are to treasure it. It is one of those things where to look at laws. I mean, I talked about the Ten Commandments here. All that he commanded, like more than ten, right? Because we struggle with Ten Commandments.

We can walk through the Ten Commandments every time we kneel and think. Broke it, broke it, broke it. Oh yeah, that one. Right.

How do we handle all the commands that we're to follow? Here's the blessed part that we always forget. And we do it when we go through Ten Commandments and our catechism. We do it when we start thinking about what God has done. It's not about following the law.

It's about the Gospel, trusting faith in Him. It's about what he did for us.

We are not being judged by our day to day sins. We're being judged by our faithfulness to the one who paid the price. And that is a hard thing for us to remember because it goes against everything we do in our day to day life, right? If you screw up over and over at work and your boss comes and says, hey, why do you keep doing all these things wrong? And you say, well, it really doesn't matter what I've done wrong.

You know, the fact is God created me and you. Not going to work, right? We're trained to look at what we do, what we have, what we have accomplished and it doesn't work for God, contrary to everything he has taught us and does for us.

The law is important, right? This idea of us pushing back against rules all the time, thinking, oh no, rules, rules, and yet we love the rules. You're going to get in your car after church and you're going to be fine because you're going to expect everybody. Well, we're going to try to hope everybody follows the rules as we're driving out, right? We go into a store and we don't worry about somebody just coming up and grabbing things because we're hoping everybody is going to abide by that.

We love the law. Rules certainly give us a certain level of safety. But for us, again, focus on what God has done for us. Now here's a bonus, quick bonus. Because we got communion coming.

Always at the end of the age. I know it's not an all, but it's kind of an always, right? Just this idea. Always at the very end of the age, Christ will come back the way he left two weeks ago. We talked about Ascension Day, right?

It was actually a little over two weeks ago, but we celebrated it on that seventh Sunday of Easter. And we remember this is what he commanded.

It's that remembrance that regardless of what happens in this life, my faith in Jesus Christ means when he chooses to come back or bring me home, I'm going to spend eternity with him. We complicate it all the time.

He loves you. He created you. He desires for you to spend eternity with him. Believe I have so many people that come. Like, I just want to know.

I just want to be sure.

Don't deny it. There you go. It works really well. Jesus has done the work Christ did and does. All works will stop overthinking it is that blessing.

We have let go and let God too many times we try to tell God how to do things or what we want and we find that doesn't always go real well. If we're going to go out into the world and help share Jesus Christ, we do need to have a level of confidence that says, I know who my Redeemer is. I know what he has done for me. I'm going to love every minute of the life he gives me until he comes back and brings me home. And I want you to join me.

And it starts with that baptism. This idea again. God wants everyone baptized the next time somebody questions you. Why should I be baptized? It's a real simple answer.

You heard it your whole life and you hated it because dad said so. That's what God commanded. And as his loving children, we are faithful and we will do it. Understanding our Trinitarian God on Trinity Sunday is pretty important, but so is understanding what Jesus has called us to do before he ascended to heaven. May we all be prepared daily to step out in love and faith, prepared to share Christ with the lost and the hurting.

May we be prepared to share who Jesus is and why he desires all people to be baptized. And may we help those who are struggling with finding their purpose, with their identity, with their value by sharing what it means to be a child of God, made in his image, and to live eternity with our Creator. That is my prayer for you this day, whether you're in the grocery store, at the swimming pool, or out helping the lost. To God be the glory. Amen.