How Can We Believe What We Can’t Understand?

1st Sunday after Pentecost, 6/16/19
John 16:12-15


How Can We Believe What We Can’t Understand?


I don’t know what to believe anymore. I hear and read accounts of what someone said or did and I wonder if it’s true and, if that quote is really accurate, what was the intent of the speaker? Did he really mean what he said, or was he just trying to get a reaction out of his audience? Even when it comes to something as unimportant as sports talk radio, I find myself asking, “Why are they telling me this? What do they want me to think or believe?” I don’t know. And because I don’t know, I can’t understand the situation fully. I’m left to believe what I think is true.

Then again, there are things in life that I know are true even though I don’t fully understand them. I know that black holes exist in our universe, but I don’t understand their existence. I know that when I start the engine of my car, shift the transmission into drive and apply pressure to the accelerator, I’m going to cause my car to move, but I don’t understand every component of how that works, not even close. I also know that we have massive aircraft carriers in our US Navy that operate on nuclear power, but I couldn’t tell you the first thing about how that works. I just know that it does.

And then there are spiritual matters, things that our Christian faith assert are true and that we know to be true, but we can’t explain them. And we certainly can’t understand them. For instance, God is eternal, without beginning or end. Explain that to me. And then, knowing that God is eternal, how can Jesus, the eternal Son of God, die and remain dead for three days? How can Jesus raise all our bodies on the Last Day? What is life in heaven exactly and what does it mean that we will live there forever? How can God know everything? I could go on, but you get my point. Our Christian faith knows and believes many truths that we can’t understand. But we still believe them.

And another one of them is the focus of our worship this Sunday—the Holy Trinity. Our God, the only true God, is three persons but only one God. That’s what we know and believe. But we can’t understand it or sufficiently explain it.

But that’s really nothing new. As sinful people with finite minds, we have always struggled to know spiritual truths. Part of that is due to the fact that, as sinful people, we’re prone by our sinful nature to believe Satan’s spiritual lies. And his greatest lie which he has duped billions of people living today into believing is that they have no need for a Savior from sin named Jesus. They have no concept of sin. They convince themselves that they are good people who are doing what God expects. And on that basis, if there is a heaven, they’re sure they’ll enter it. They’re blind to spiritual truth. They can’t understand it on their own.

To a much lesser extent, the disciples of Jesus suffered from the same spiritual malady. Jesus spoke the words of our text on the night before his death. Listen again to his opening sentence, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.” He said that he wanted to share more truths with them but that they wouldn’t be able to bear them. In other words, they would react against them. They would be too much for them. To what was he referring? Most pointedly, to his suffering, death and resurrection. He was about to be handed over to his enemies and brutally beaten. He would be unjustly crucified. The disciples didn’t want to hear one word about that. What would be even harder for them to bear was that Jesus would willingly subject himself to it all and it would all be in keeping with his Father’s will. Those truths blew their Jewish minds. They violated everything they thought to be true. They simply couldn’t understand them. So, at this point, Jesus didn’t share them with them.

This all sounds so unusual to us because we know how Jesus suffered, died and rose again and why he did those things. But struggling with the truths of God is not so foreign to us. We might be more like the disciples than we care to admit. Have you ever been confronted with a situation and wondered what God says about it? Are you unsure of what the Bible states about some modern moral issues? Worse yet, do you know what it says but reject it, at least for the moment? That sounds very close to what the disciples were thinking this night.

And now today we have the opportunity to review what we believe and confess to be true about the Trinity—that God is three persons but only one God. How can three be one? How can 1+1+1=1? How can it be that we only worship one God and not three gods? It’s one of those spiritual truths that our minds cannot bear. I can’t figure it out. I can’t understand it.

So, what’s the solution to this spiritual dilemma? The Holy Spirit. Jesus stated, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Jesus was specifically speaking about the Day of Pentecost, which we celebrated last Sunday. Once the Holy Spirit was poured out on them, they understood many spiritual truths in a much deeper way, especially the truths about God’s plan of salvation and how Jesus fulfilled it perfectly. They understood what the kingdom of God was all about.

They needed that outpouring of the Holy Spirit because just ten days prior to Pentecost, at the ascension of Jesus, they indicated that they still had trouble understanding what Jesus and his work were all about. They asked him right before his ascension, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6). They were slow to believe all that the scriptures had said.

But thanks be to God, our God is not in the business of hiding spiritual truth from us! Jesus continued to tell his disciples, “He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.” Our God doesn’t want to leave you in the dark about who he is and what he’s done for you. Nor does he leave it up to our inner compulsions to determine what is true about him. Instead, he reveals his truth to us.

And that’s truth you can trust. Contrary to our modern sources of information, there are not competing narratives coming out from the three persons of the Trinity. Notice how Jesus clearly stated that the Holy Spirit won’t reveal truth on his own. He will, as we confess in the Nicene Creed, proceed from the Father and the Son. All three persons are in this effort together. They’re all revealing the same truths for the same reasons.

And these are the truths that the triune God wants us to know and believe. First, that the Father loves the entire world full of sinful people, and therefore he planned their salvation from eternity. In fact, he knew you by name before the creation of the world. Think about that. That’s how much he thinks about you. That’s how much he loves you. He loves you so much, he planned to sacrifice his Son for you.

Second, God the Son took on human flesh and came into this sinful world as one of us, yet without sin. He accomplished every detail of the Father’s plan of salvation. He cried, “It is finished!” on the cross and then rose again, ascended into heaven and now rules over all things.

Third, he sends us the Holy Spirit. I can’t know or believe a single spiritual truth on my own. I’m blind in sin and unbelief by nature. But the Holy Spirit brought me to faith in Jesus at my baptism and enlightened me to God’s saving truths, including the truth about the Trinity. What I could never know or believe on my own, the Holy Spirit by grace caused me to believe and know. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to his disciples so they could know and believe his truths. The same Holy Spirit has come to us so that we can know and believe his truths.

And one of those truths is about the Holy Trinity. How can we believe what we can’t understand? Because God the Holy Spirit has revealed to us what the God the Father planned to save us and what God the Son did to save us.

So, with that being the way that God reveals his truths to us, let’s be careful. Let’s be careful about several things. One, don’t think that we can’t know what God wants us to know. A corollary to that lie is the lie that, since I can’t know God’s truth, I’ll believe to be true whatever I want. God’s truth is in his word and the Holy Spirit uses that word to enlighten us. We can’t know everything about God, but we can know what he wants us to know because he reveals it to us.

Two, spiritual truth is not subjective. Spiritual truth for me and spiritual truth for you cannot be two different things. God does not speak out of two sides of his mouth. My sinful nature struggles against God’s truth every day of my life, but that gives me no reason to adjust his truth to fit me. His truth for you is his truth for me. And he reveals it to us. He doesn’t hide it from us or ask us to find his truth within ourselves. It’s right here in his word.

Three, let’s be careful that we don’t ignore it. There’s no such thing as an insignificant truth of God. He has revealed his truth—all of his truth—in order to bless and save us. Ignoring his truth only leads to frustration in this life and possibly worse in the next life. Make his truth your daily focus. Ask yourself in every situation, “What is God’s truth for me to follow here and now?”

And realize that Jesus came to this earth to suffer and die because we daily join our first parents—Adam and Eve—in denying God’s truth. Every one of our sins denies the truth of God. It tells God that he is wrong and that I am right. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Praise God for revealing his saving truth to you—that you are forgiven every day through the life and death of Jesus Christ. Praise the triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—for your salvation! Praise the triune God that you know and believe even what you can’t understand! And then cherish those truths! Live in the confidence those truths give you every day! Amen.