Who can know the mind of God?

Sermon for The Holy Trinity, preached on Sunday, May 30, 2021.

    A year ago we were just venturing our of our exile from COVID 19.  The effects still linger.  We are suspicious and untrusting of anyone and anybody.  We are sober minded when it comes to taking risks.  We thought 2020 began well enough but we were not happy where it led us.  We thought we were able to handle just about anything.  We had science and technology and answers to the great questions before us.  Our forefathers had bequeathed to us a positive sense of what man could overcome.  At least until a virus undid all of that trust and optimism.  Some have decided that even faith was not worth it and their place in the pews remains empty.  Who can know the mind of God?

    A part of us is sure that the reason for Bible study and having a pastor is so that we can get answers to all the questions before us.  But what Bible study and pastor can answer the questions raised in a world that came to a standstill in the face of a viral threat or an economy put on hold until it was safe or safety that does not seem safe at all?  A part of us is sure that somebody on the Internet must know something.  But just as government can lie to us and internet news can be fake, so many churches and pastors had nothing to say in the face of COVID.  So whom do we trust and to whom do we turn for answers? Who can know the mind of God?

    Scripture warned us.  All men are liars.  Trust not in princes or earthly rulers or earthly kingdoms.  We did not listen.  We hoped that there would be answers and explanations and smart people who could make sense of it all.  We hoped that the future would rest on certainties that were bigger than our fears.  Now, on Holy Trinity Sunday, we are left with a mystery.  Who is God?  What is His will?  Does He punish us for our wickedness?  Does He allow bad things to happen to us?  Does He send those bad things?  Who can know the mind of God? 

    Any pastor who thinks that his job is to explain God is in deep trouble and those who think explanations are what they need are in the same deep trouble.  We are here today to confess God, not to answer for Him.  He must answer for Himself.  We are here to present the mystery of God.  He will reveal His mystery when and where He pleases.  We are here today to acknowledge that God is at least more clever than we are and to think like Him is make yourself higher than God, to break the First Commandment.  Who can know the mind of God?  No one.  Only God can reveal Himself and we have only His revelation in which to believe.

    Like Nicodemus we come wanting to know how these things can be.  Like Nicodemus, God’s answer is not to explain Himself but to confront us with the limits of our understanding and to call us to faith.  If you cannot believe in the earthly things God tells us, how can you believe in the heavenly things He reveals? And that is the point.  With man faith is impossible.  The Athanasian Creed is not trying to tell us who God is but who He is not.  He is not multiple Gods but one God.  He is the mystery of three equal persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  There is no more that can be said.  What we are left with is what God has chosen to reveal.  And that is the mercy that redeems sinners and forgives them, that saves those marked for death and raises them to everlasting life.  And this we know by faith – the fruit of the Spirit working in us through the means of grace.

    Who can know the mind of God?  Only Jesus and the Spirit who testifies to Him.  And what have Jesus and the testimony of the Spirit to say to us?  For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  That is what we know.  We know this for sure.  It is the revelation of Jesus that fulfills the Law and the Prophets.  It is the legacy of His obedient life and His life-giving death and His triumphant resurrection.  Who can know the mind of God?  No one but God and those to whom God has revealed Himself.  There you have it. 

    God does not have to explain Himself.  God does not explain Himself.  Faith does not rest in reason or understanding or even intellectual consent.  Faith trusts that where the limits of our understanding begin, God is still there.  We apprehend Him solely by faith and not be reason or experience.  Even if sin had not corrupted our image of God and darkened our hearts and minds, we would still not stand before God as equals.  Yet sin has compounded our ignorance and increased our skepticism.  So God has sent His Spirit, working through the means of grace, so we and all the house of the Lord may know Jesus, the crucified and risen Savior.

    Nicodemus came to Jesus by night out of fear of the Jews.  He was cautious. Jesus, you must be somebody special because we see the signs you have done.  Like Nicodemus, we like signs.  We pay attention to signs.  We presume that signs are valuable.  They are certainly comforting to us.  Show us who you are and how your power works and then we will believe in You.  But, if you notice, Jesus turns Nicodemus away from the signs.  He does not deny them but neither does Jesus suggest that signs define Him.  He calls Nicodemus to faith.

    Jesus confronts Nicodemus with the limitations of His mind.  In response to what Jesus has said, Nicodemus has only questions:  How can I be born again when I am old?  Do I enter my mother’s womb a second time?  How can these things be?  It is as if Nicodemus is telling Jesus that if Jesus simply gives him what he wants, he will believe in Him.  But that Jesus will not do.  Who can know the mind of God?  This is what can know – the saving will of God.  How He has purposed in Christ to redeem the unworthy and undeserving, rescue them from their sin and death, raise them to forgiveness and life, and deliver them to His heavenly presence.  If Jesus will not explain Himself to Nicodemus, what makes you think He will explain Himself to you?

    Faith is the only path forward.  We know God only as God has made Himself known.  So we meet God where Nicodemus was directed – in the waters of Holy Baptism.  There God puts His name on us, the Triune Name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  There God enters our minds with the wisdom of faith, our hearts with trust of faith, and our soul with the life of faith.  Our confession of God cannot be more than God has revealed but it dare not be any less.  So in baptism we meet Him who gives us the new birth from above, planting our lost souls into the kingdom of God, bring home again those who rejected God’s house, and discovering the saving will and purpose of God not as some general theory but as the specific call of God to us by name in this water.  And the fruit of this baptismal encounter is faith, a life of faith, trusting in what God has revealed and trusting God for that which remains a mystery.  Who can know the mind of God?  Only the Son who has descended from heaven and who has been lifted up on the cross so that all who believe in Him may have everlasting life.  Only believe.  That is enough.  Amen.