Bible Text: St John 3:1–17 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
The seraphim, these bright angelic spirits, cry holy, holy, holy to the Lord of Sabaoth. They cry holy three times, because God is three in one. He’s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. This isn’t an academic point, something for theologians to debate about, but for everyone else to say “I believe in God, it doesn’t have to be any more complicated.” Well, yeah it does. It’s reality first of all. If you have to deal with God, there’s no other God to deal with than the Trinity, the three in one. So I don’t know what could be more practical than to actually know who this God is who made you and gives you breath. But more than this, this is the life of the Christian, what we’ve been baptized into. We don’t pray to some generic God. We pray to the Father. And we have access to the Father because the Son joined our human race and spilt His blood for us, and we know this and have confidence to speak to God because He has sent the Spirit into our hearts to cry out Abba, Father.
Jesus says that he who confesses Him before men, He will confess before the Father in heaven. What Jesus actually says is “he who makes his confession IN ME, before men,” because that is what the Spirit’s work in Baptism and through faith actually accomplishes, that we are joined to Christ, joined to the Son, that we are IN HIM, so that everything we confess, what we say and do and live on this earth, before men, that is, with other human beings, we do it all, confess it all, IN HIM. There is no such thing as a casual Christian. Christian faith is not such a thing that can be hidden under a bushel. To be a Christian is to be joined to the Light of the world, and that light shines. It is not a small thing to have the Holy Spirit indwelling you, not a small thing to be joined to the eternal Son of God, not a small thing to own the Creator of the universe as your own dear Father. It means a new life, a life that daily crucifies the old man with all its sinful desires, takes hold of Christ and His righteousness, calls on the Father to bless you, and strives to live as a child of God with heaven, the resurrection, the glorious sight of the Holy Trinity in your future, whom you will see for yourself and your eyes will behold, and not another.
Isaiah teaches us this. So does Nicodemus.
We’ll start with Isaiah. The seraphim sing holy, holy, holy. They cover their faces and their feet before the thrice holy God. They are, as Jesus says, constantly beholding Him, they are holy themselves, but even they mask their faces and hide their feet in awe of the great God. This teaches us that even if we were not sinners – and we are – even if we weren’t, we would still be in awe of God, unable to fully comprehend His omniscience, His omnipotence, His infinity, His goodness, and above all His Trinity, who He is, three persons and One essence.
But we are sinners. And Isaiah, the sinner, stands before this holy God and says, “Woe is me, for I am undone. For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” What else is a sinner supposed to do or say before God? I had a Jewish atheist professor in college and he told the class that if he dies and it turns out God exists, he’ll tell God sorry, but you didn’t give me enough proof of your existence. That’s on you, God. If you wanted me to believe, you should have satisfied my requirements. And the militant anti-God zealot, Christopher Hitchens, said, when he was asked what he would do if he died and then appeared before God, he said, I will not grovel. I will not be servile.
You notice that both of these guys are atheists, they say there is no god, and yet, they’ve already thought up what they’re going to say to this God who doesn’t exist. Huh. Really? [I don’t think about what I’m going to say to aliens if they come to earth – you know why? I don’t think they exist.] But atheists do think God exists. And they want to argue with Him, teach Him, be His counselor, because the god they have imagined is subject to their reason and therefore their judgment.
That God doesn’t exist. Whatever conception of God sinners have, whatever the human mind can come up with, it’s categorically different from the true God. That’s what we need to understand. Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become His counselor? Who’s going to teach Him and tell Him who He is or how He should have done this or that? A college professor? A president? A king? Where is the scribe, Paul asks, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
No, the only way to know this God is to stand in Isaiah’s place. It’s the only way. You won’t find Him by thinking real hard, by feeling intensely and listening to your heart, by searching the wisest sayings of the wisest men. Only by standing in Isaiah’s place. And that is what every Christian has done. You stand before the holy God and confess who you are – a sinner who would not dare to point a finger at God and blame Him for the problems in your life, or in this world, because the problem is there in your heart. You are the man. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. No knowledge of God can start with my intellect, my figuring out God by logical deductions, that will always end up in an idol, a philosophical god who has no real existence, who’s the product of my mind. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. You begin to know God when you tremble at your unworthiness to stand before the thrice holy Trinity, woe is you, because you are unclean and everything and everyone around you is unclean, and God is holy, holy, holy, and you are a singular sinner.
But that is only the beginning of wisdom. You know God when He does with you what He did with Isaiah. What did He do? He took from the altar a burning coal and placed it on his unclean lips. He speaks to Isaiah, tells him his iniquity has been taken away and his sin atoned for. What is God teaching you here? How do you learn to know Him, to stand before Him, pray to Him, know who He is and listen to His voice and do His will and follow Him? By Him forgiving you. Your iniquity is taken away and your sin is atoned for. You know that, you know it in Christ, you look at the altar of the cross, and see that God’s wrath against your sin burned against the eternal Son of God, who took it, in the human body and the human soul that He assumed into His person to save you and be your Brother, and you don’t just look at the altar of the cross, God takes from it, takes the body that was nailed to it, and the blood that flowed from it, that now lives and reigns over all creation, and He brings it to your mouth. And THEREFORE He speaks forgiveness and love and life. And you know Him. And that’s the only way.
So what does Isaiah do? He goes from crying in despair, woe is me, to perfect confidence. He says to this holy, holy, holy God, Here am I, send me. I cannot commit my life to some nebulous god. I can’t say, “thy will be done” to a god I think is going to throw me into hell, or to a god I think is distant, or to a god I blame for the troubles in my life. But this God, the Holy Trinity, the Son who joins me in my misery, who becomes my Brother and then dies for me, who conquers my death and then gives me His life and so makes His Father my Father, who gives me His Spirit, so that I know the God who loves me, this Holy Trinity, precisely because He is the Trinity, you can devote your life to, you can pray to Him and trust everything to Him, you can look forward to seeing Him when you die, you can obey Him happily, because you know in the Father’s Son by His Spirit, that everything He says and commands and does is for your good. It has to be. The blood of Jesus proves it.
Some 750 years after Isaiah saw God high and lifted up, the same God sat with Nicodemus at night in a garden, and He told Nicodemus that the Son of Man had to be lifted up on a cross, so that whoever looks to Him will know God and have eternal life. When you look at the Lord Jesus in faith and know God, it is because God has given you a new birth. Your reason would be as blind as Nicodemus was that night, sitting with the Creator of the universe and not knowing, with all his smarts and all his study of the Bible, not knowing really anything about God. But you have a new birth. Your Baptism is powerful. It is the reason you know God. Who has known the mind of the Lord? is the question St. Paul asks. And the answer is the Spirit, the Spirit who dwells in us and makes us know the mind of the Lord, That the Father loves us and that love is found in His Son, to whose death and resurrection we have been joined. Praise be forever to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.