Preparing for Worship - May 31, 2026

Last Sunday was a remembrance of Pentecost and the sending of the Holy Spirit on that day, with His vital work of bringing people to faith and keeping us in faith through the Word of God and the Sacraments. The week following is always Holy Trinity Sunday, a day of remembrance for the true nature of our God, as revealed in Scripture: the only true God, the One True God, yet three Persons or Beings, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The psalm is Psalm 29. David praises the True Lord God and calls upon all heavenly beings to give Him glory for His strength and power, and to worship Him. That majestic power can be seen all over our natural world in thunder and lightning and mighty storms and shaking of the earth. The Lord sits enthroned as King over the waters and the floods, the many waters of this earth, as well. (This psalm is also appointed to be read when we read of the baptism of our Lord Jesus and the Word of God connected with water, by the power of the Holy Spirit, at Jesus’ baptism and at the baptism of thousands at Pentecost and at our own baptism. The Spirit brings faith and new life through water connected with His Word. See Matthew 3:16-17 and Acts 2:38-41 and Acts 22:14-16, etc.) David then closes His song of praise in Psalm 29, asking the Lord to give strength to His people and bless His people with peace - the peace we all need through  Him in our troubled world.

The Old Testament lesson is Isaiah 6:1-7. Isaiah sees a vision of the Lord, with some of His angels, His seraphim. He was sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and yet His robes filled the temple on earth, and He filled it with smoke, too, showing His presence. Isaiah thinks that he will die, as a man with unclean lips, a sinner, with sinners all around him, since he had seen the holy, holy, holy God. Instead, the Lord shows His mercy and sends an angel to touch the lips of Isaiah with a burning coal. And the Lord promises, “This has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sins atoned for.” Isaiah did not atone (pay the price) for his sins. The Lord atoned for Isaiah’s sins, prefiguring the atoning work of His own Son, Jesus, when He came to this earth as a true man to pay the penalty for the sins of all. The fact that the angel said “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord” also gives a glimpse of the Lord being more than one, the Trinity. (See also Psalm 99, which says something similar. “The Lord reigns… Holy is He!… Holy is He!… The Lord our God is holy!”)

The Old Testament often emphasizes that there is only One True God, over against the sinful polytheism and false gods all over the world, the idea that there are many gods and goddesses from which to choose, and which control different parts of the world. Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” And the First Commandment warns us against having any other so-called false gods. See also passages like Isaiah 44:6,8: “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and His Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god… Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.” See also Isaiah 45:21-23: “Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return. To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.”

At the same time, there are many passages and prophecies that point to the Trinity, without explaining it all - One God and yet three Persons, at the same time. We heard last week of God saying “Let us make man in our image” (one image and yet the plural “us” and “our”) and “let us go down” (Genesis 1:26 and 11:7). The Spirit of God appears again and again: Genesis 1:3 and Psalm 51:11 and Joel 2:28 and Ezekiel 36:27 and 37:14 and on and on. There are also prophecies of a “virgin birth” and a Son born (pointing to Jesus) who is Immanuel, which means: “God with us” (Isaiah 7:14). And soon after we hear in prophecy again of that Child being born, and “His Name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Here are references to the three Persons of the Trinity: the Father, the Son (the Prince of Peace), and the Wonderful Counselor, (the Holy Spirit) yet there is only One Mighty God. I could go on and on, with more passages, but that is beyond the scope of this study.

And of course, the Triune God is most clearly seen in the New Testament, in fulfilling the many prophecies of the Old Testament. Even there, though, there is no nice, neat, humanly understandable explanation of the Trinity. Our Epistle lesson for today, Romans 11:33-36, simply speaks of the “depth” and “riches” and “wisdom” and “knowledge” of God. He and His ways are “unsearchable” and “inscrutable.” The Greek word for “unsearchable” means literally that - something that cannot be searched out and explained. The same word is used a few times in the Greek version, the Septuagint, of the Book of Job, where Job speaks of God, “who does great things beyond searching out, and marvelous things without number” (Job 9:10). The word “inscrutable” literally means, “not to be tracked out.” The only other place it is used in the New Testament is in Ephesians 3:8, where Paul speaks of “the unsearchable, unfathomable riches of Christ” - for as Paul also says in Romans 11:36, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.” In contrast, in the Old Testament, the only place in the Greek Septuagint where this word appears is in Jeremiah 17:9, where the Lord speaks of the incomprehensible sinfulness of the human heart left on its own. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” So Paul refers, in Romans 11:34-35, to Isaiah 40:13-14, which says, “Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows Him his counsel? Whom did He consult, and who made Him understand?” No one, of course! So Paul writes, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him, to God, that he might be repaid? God owes us nothing, but He has given us everything we really need, including our salvation, as a gift through His saving work as our Triune God.

Even in the New Testament, then, there is no neat, perfectly understandable definition of the Trinity. We do hear that “there is no God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4), and yet that we are to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19-20). Paul blesses us with the words, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14). The Scriptures simply describe the One Triune God at work for us and our salvation. I wish that the One Year Series of readings included the second half of Acts 2, where Peter preaches, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing… Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus who you crucified… Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself” (Acts 2:30-33, 36, 38-39).

As Christians, we have three creeds that faithfully express key elements of what we believe. The longest of these, the Athanasian Creed, speaks the most about the nature and unity of the Trinity, One God and yet Three Persons. It is long and complicated, though, and we tend to use it only once a year, on this Trinity Sunday. Just keep listening, above all, to the Scriptures themselves and how they reveal to us God’s saving plan.

The Gospel this week is John 3:1-15 (16-17). I will write only briefly about this, as it is familiar to most of us. Nicodemus comes to Jesus, thinking that He is a great teacher, sent from God. Nicodemus is confused, though, by Jesus saying that everyone needs a whole new birth, because of the reality of sin and the sinful hearts we all have, left on our own. Jesus speaks of being born again, from above, through “water and the Spirit” in the gift of baptism and the Word of God, the “testimony” of Christ that He is “the Son of Man” and the true “Son of God who would be lifted up” on the cross, “that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” For God, in His love, even for us sinful people, sent His Son, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through the gift of faith in Him. Jesus, again, simply speaks of the One True Triune God - the saving plan of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at work for us. There is our hope. We can’t fully understand it, but we believe it, and, by the gift of faith, the Triune God works in us through the Word and the power of the Holy Spirit.