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You Can Not Know

           As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. (Ecclesiastes 11:5)

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?  (John 3:10-12)

Every so often, someone shares a picture of the earth as seen from Saturn: a tiny dot almost lost amidst the dust of the rings that circle the huge planet, reminding us that we are from a tiny, insignificant nothing of a planet orbiting a relatively insignificant star off at the comparative edge of an arm of a galaxy. We’re nobody, we’re nothing. We think far too much of ourselves, they tell us. And, of course, they don’t go far enough, because the Milky Way is just one of millions (or billions) of galaxies, a tiny speck in the universe, and if you listen to some, our universe is just a speck in the collection of universes.

If we can’t get our minds around that, how are we ever to get our minds around how insignificant the thousands or billions of years (depending on your beliefs) that count as the history of the universe are – a mere eyeblink within eternity. And if we can’t understand these things, how can we ever hope to have the slightest clue about God. Today’s passages and the last couple chapters of Job bring this home: God is beyond our understanding.

Some people seem to think this means it’s silly to even consider what God might be like. If He is, as Scripture and our apparently insignificant place in the universe suggests, that far beyond us, it’s useless to consider. Of course, the same people who suggest this are the people who have no problem with out exploring, examining, and speculating about other planets, other galaxies, time, the laws of physics, and all manner of things that are equally beyond our grasp. In fact, speculation is now being done about the existence of other “universes” and about what happened before the beginning of this one.

Perhaps more importantly… 

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. (John14:26)

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:14-16)

Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

 

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