Today we celebrate All Saints Sunday. It is a day to remember all of the children of God, the followers of Christ, who have gone before us. We remember the names of the very prominent saints of old like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul. We also remember those men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, John and Charles Wesley, and many more. We even remember our own friends and relatives who are the departed saints that we have personally known. But what about us?
Did you know that we too are “saints”? That’s right. God, who created the universe with but His Word, considers us, you and me, to be saints. See, the minute we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and Lord, we become “called out of the world” and “set apart” for His glory. That is what is meant by the term, “to be a saint”. To be “called out of” and to be “set apart”. Oh yes, according to God, we are saints.
But that is not all that we are. We are also God’s Children. When I was a boy growing up, I sometimes used to do things that were not pleasing to my parents. Yes, I know that’s hard to believe, but even I sometimes misbehaved. My parents would then issue the appropriate punishment or admonishment and I remember saying (or at least thinking) things like, “I’ll never do that, or say that, to my child when I grow up.” That was especially true when they said those dreaded words, “Because I said so!” I hated those words and I swore I would never, ever say that to my child when I grew up and became a parent.
Now, many years later, I have my own son. I asked him to do something (I can’t remember what) and he wanted to know why he had to do it. I tried logical reasoning, which was getting nowhere, when all of a sudden I heard my own mouth proclaiming that the reason he should do what I was asking him to do was, you guessed it, “Because I said so!” It was then I realized, for the first time, that I had become my father!
It is an inevitable, inescapable truth, that even if we struggle against it, there are traits gleaned from our parents that have been indelibly etched into our own persona. Our lineage, our heritage, has a real and distinct impact on who we are. In our Epistle reading this morning, John is describing exactly that sort of connection, except he is describing it on a much more significant and grand scale. He tells us that we, who believe in Christ, have been “given the right to be called Children of God” and as such, we are not to be childish, but rather we are to be childlike. Unfortunately, there are times when we get that confused and we can certainly act childish.
Searching the web, I came across this anonymous list titled, “A Toddler’s Rules of Ownership.” See if you do not see someone, maybe even yourself (your grown-up self) in any, some, or most of these.
Toddler’s Rules Of Ownership
Now, that baby is not going to reason to itself in this manner: “Oh, it’s 3:00 in the morning; my parents are very, very tired, so I am not going to cry and wake them up right now. I think I’ll wait a couple of hours for them to get their rest, then I’ll wake them up and softly cry for food.” Oh, no. That is not the way it goes. Instead, the baby’s reasoning goes something along the lines of: “Hey, I’m hungry and you will feed me right now! I do not care how tired you are. I do not care what else has to be done. I am going to be fed and I will keep screaming until that very thing takes place!”
Make no mistake about it, that “little angel” would kill to get fed if it were big and strong enough. The baby’s entire world revolves around itself and its desires. The concept is, “What I want, I get, and I get it now!” We may be tempted to think, “Well, that’s how babies are. It’s not their fault they are so self-centered.” That is indeed true to a point. Screaming may, in fact, be the only way a baby can get what it wants. It does take time for a baby to grow and to mature.
But there are many adults, who are supposed to be all “grow’d up” and mature, who still act as though they are little babies. They expect to get what they want right now. And when they don’t, they rant and rage, holler and scream, and throw a huge temper tantrum until people give in and give them what they desire. When things don’t go their way, some people gossip and grouse or call on the phone and rant and rave to one person after another. Then occasionally, guilt sets in and they feel childish and ashamed of their behavior. They feel foolish and maybe feel that they have ruined their friendship with others.
Then they get stubborn. Almost every child goes through a stubborn period. There is the story of a man who was walking through the grocery store with a screaming, obnoxious, little boy in his cart. As the man walked up and down the aisles, he kept saying over and over, “Don’t yell, John. Calm down, John. Don’t get excited, John.” Finally, a woman who saw and heard what was going on said to the man, “Sir, you are certainly to be commended for trying so hard to soothe your son, John.” The man looked at her and said, “Lady, I’m John!”
It is hard to deal with the trait of stubbornness in a child. It is even more difficult to deal with a child of God who still retains a stubborn heart and is in rebellion against God the Father. Their attitude says, “I know what the Word of God says, but I am not going to listen to it. I know what God wants me to do, but I am not going to do it.” Or, “I know that God does not want me to do this, but I am going to do it anyway.”
This rebellious attitude is not a new phenomenon. God says to Isaiah 30:9, “This is a rebellious people; lying children, children who will not hear the Law of the Lord.” Christians must admit that, far too often, we are also rebellious and stubborn children of God. Many times we much more closely resemble our earthly parents instead of our Heavenly Father. We need to humbly accept God’s Word that He gives us the right to be called His children.
John was a 90-year-old man when he wrote of his amazement that God would even consider him to be a child of God. John had a brother named James. These were the two disciples that Jesus nicknamed “The Sons of Thunder”. They were arrogant, self-righteous, and zealous. Many times they said and did arrogant and foolish things. Yet John is described in Scripture as “The Disciple whom Jesus loved”. John is amazed and awestruck about that.
How about you? Are you amazed and awestruck that God loves you? He does, you know. He has endured our ignorance, our stubbornness, our selfishness, our self-righteousness and even our cruelty and hate. Yet He loves us, each one of us, still. He sent His own Son, Jesus the Christ, to die for our sins, in our place, and to turn our hearts back toward God the Father and away from sin. That deed was done some 2,000 years ago, once for all people, for all time.
Have you ever seen a diamond in the rough? Let me tell you, it is not the same as the cut and polished final product you see in the jewelry store case. It takes the skilled hands of a professional diamond cutter to take that rough rock and cut and polish it until it reflects light and shines with a beauty like nothing else on earth. So it is with us. We may not be very pretty outside or inside. We may have no special value of service to God until the Master Diamond Cutter, Jesus Christ, works on us, until He cuts and files and smoothes away the rough edges of sin and fashions us to be more like Himself. Then He polishes us with His mercy, grace and love until we reflect His light and shine like the stars in the dark night sky.
He brings out our true value and beauty and we do indeed shine in our Heavenly Father’s eyes. John says, “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him (Jesus). Dear friends, now we are the children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.”
The world did not know Jesus for who He is. They rejected Him, spit on Him, tortured and crucified Him. And He is God the Son. Should we really expect the world to treat us any better? Even we do not always see ourselves as we are, let alone as we will be. Some mornings the reflection staring back at us from the mirror is not a particularly positive reflection at all. But when Jesus returns, we will discover within us the traits of our Heavenly Father, just as we sometimes discover our earthly parents’ traits within us during our lives now.
For now, we may resemble a dirty old lump of coal. We still fall into sin. We still gossip and grouse. We still argue and fight with our Christian brothers and sisters. We still act childish upon occasion. But within us, within me, within you, there is a great treasure just waiting to be brought out. The diamond is in there, inside that lump of coal, waiting for the pressure and heat to be applied, waiting for the hands of the Master Diamond Cutter to set it free from its bondage. And when Jesus returns, that is exactly what will take place. You will be the diamond that God intended you to be from before the beginning of time.
But understand this. The cutting and polishing has already begun. The very moment you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, He, the Master Diamond Cutter, began to work on you. And when He is finished, you will look just like God’s very own Son. At that time, when God the Father looks at you, He will no longer see your sins of the past. God will no longer see that dirty lump of coal that was you. No. Instead, when God looks at you, He will see in you the very brightest, most perfect Diamond of all, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
The truth is inescapable. Your heritage does indeed have a real and distinct impact on who you are. And if Christ is your personal Savior and Lord, you are a saint. You are a child of Almighty God. Amen!