Children of God PDF Print E-mail
I.    Of Pussycats and Caterpillars
Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?  I’ve been to London to visit the queen.
Pussycat, pussycat, what did you there?  I frightened a wee mouse under her chair.  It is rather surprising the insight that can be gained from the silliest of nursery rhymes.  Take the one I just quoted, for example.  Here we have the story of a house cat who somehow gained an audience with the queen of England.  Since this is an old nursery rhyme, you should think, not of the modern day queen but a queen from an older time, say Queen Victoria.  In other words you should think of a queen at that time in history when being a queen meant you really ruled the world.  That time in history when having an audience with the queen meant that you were in the presence of a powerful head of state, a world ruler who could effect the destiny of men and nations, who could change your life.

So, when this pussycat had the once-in-a-lifetime privilege of being in the presence of such a queen, what did he do?  What was the one thing he most remembered from his visit to the palace?  Was it the glory of her golden throne?  No.  He called that a chair.  Well, was it the splendor of her person or the wisdom of her words?  No.  He didn’t even mention those.  What was it then?  It was the fact that he frightened a wee mouse under her chair.  That’s the way it is with pussycats and queens.

Who or what you are determines what you care about, what you consider important, even what you see.  It is the nature of pussycats to care more about mice than men.  It is the nature of queens to care more about men than mice.  It is the nature of little boys to want to grow up and be like their daddy, little girls to be like their mommy.  So to quote another character from a storybook, only this one a caterpillar, sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah, Whoo aare youu?   Who are you?  Not just in theory, but down deep in the core of your being, that place out of which you live, that place that shapes your life and directs your destiny.  Who are you?  I John chapter 3, verse 1.  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are! 

II.    What We Are
The burden of last week’s sermon was to ask you the question Jesus asked Nicodemus and to ask it in such away that you might hear it addressed to you.  Have you been born again?  Have you been born from above through the work of God’s Spirit in your life?  Because, if you ever hope to see or to enter the kingdom of God, you must be born again.  It is not enough to be forgiven.  It is not enough to have your sins covered by the blood of Christ.  What the Bible calls ‘salvation’ is not just a legal declaration that Jesus has taken your place on the cross and you are now right w/God.  It is also an inward transformation.
   
When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, the Spirit of the living God enters your life and makes you alive to God.  He gives you eyes to see what you could not see before.  Ears to hear what you could not hear and a heart that beats with the love of God and a love for what God loves.  Different biblical authors refer to this change in different ways.  But they all speak of it.  Paul speaks of the old man dying on the cross with Jesus, and a new man coming into being through faith in the resurrected Christ.  The change is so radical, that he can even say, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old man is gone. The new has come.    A new man, with a new heart, and a new identity as a child of God.  Jesus called it being born again, born anew from above.  In this passage, John picks up the language of Jesus and draws out an obvious implication and then invites us to marvel at the wonder of it.  If you have been born from above, John says, you have become a child of God, a brother or sister of Jesus, and an heir with him of the riches to come in eternal life.

Can we stop and think about that?  Not think about it the way we think about so many other things.  You know, rushing by so quickly we stand still and look until we really see.  No, let’s think about being children of God the way we think about the day of our marriage, or the day of our children’s marriage.  Let’s think about it the way we think about the death of a loved one or the birth of a child.  Let’s sit with this truth for a while, that we are children of God, let it soak down deep in our hearts.

I had no idea, when my children were born, how that would affect me.  Did you?      Growing up in my parent’s home I actually thought I understood a parent’s love.  I knew my parents loved me.  I knew that they were devoted to me, that they were proud of me, and committed to my welfare, perhaps above all other things.  But it wasn’t until I held my own dear precious daughters in my arms, it wasn’t until I rocked them to sleep and read them bedtime stories, until I sang to them and played with them and picked them up when they fell; It wasn’t until my heart swelled with pride at their achievements and ached with them in their disappointments.  It wasn’t until I walked with them through all the ups and downs of life, and then said a tearful good bye as they flew from the nest.  It wasn’t until I walked my eldest daughter down the isle and danced with her at her wedding that I really understood what it means to love like a Father.  It is devotion deeper than words, as deep as life itself.
   
A love that would, quite frankly, be willing to die for another.  What amazes me is that is the way I feel about my daughters and now the way I feel about my granddaughter and grandson is the way God feels about me and about you.  And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Father’s love?  Can it be possible that the God of the universe loves me as much as I love my little granddaughter and since he is God, He loves me even more, more completely, more fully, more perfectly?  I can hardly take it in.

But now let me pass from what I can almost understand to what I can’t even imagine.    I John 4:10  This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Father’s Love?  Died he for me who caused His pain? For me who him to death pursued?  You’ve heard the story.  I’ve told it myself on few occasions.

The story of the operator of the railroad drawbridge who one day took his 8 year old son with him to work.  At noon he raised the drawbridge to allow ships to pass, and he sat on the observation deck eating lunch with his son.  Time passed.  Suddenly he heard the shrieking of a train whistle off in the distance.  He rose to return to the control tower to lower the bridge.  But just before throwing the lever he glanced down to make sure the ships below had passed.  A sight caught his eye that made his heart jump from his chest.  His son had slipped down from the observation deck and fallen into the massive gears that control the bridge.  His left leg was caught.  Desperately, this father tried to think of something to do.  But he knew what must be done.  The train whistle was alarmingly close and there were 400 passengers on board.  There was no time to go to his son.      But that was his son down there, his only son.  The father buried his head in his arm and pulled the switch.  I have told that story before to help us feel something of the agony of God as He sacrificed his son on the cross for us.

But you know what I found out this week?  The story is true.  The year was 1937.  The train was the Memphis Express.  The man was John Griffith, and his son was named Greg.      Unless, of course, James Kennedy, the man who told the story, was making it up.  But even if he was, the story is still true.  Only the Father is the creator of the Universe and his son is Jesus Christ our Lord.  In this case the son didn’t accidently slip into the gears.  No. It was planned before the foundation of the world to save us from death and to bring us into eternal life.  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should become the children of God through the earthly sacrifice of his eternal son.  That’s who you are if you have been born again from above.  But there is another verse in this passage in I John.  Verse 2.

III.    What We Will Be
Dear friends, now we are children of God, that’s what we are.  But what we will be has not yet been made know.  But we know that when he, Jesus, appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  CS Lewis once meditated on this idea in an essay called The Weight of Glory.  Toward the end of that essay, he asks his readers to consider what their neighbors may someday be like, if they truly become like the resurrected Christ.  Like the resurrected Christ we glimpse in the book of revelation, with eyes blazing like fire, feet glowing like burning bronze, and his face shining like the sun in all its glory.  CS Lewis says it is a serious thing…to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw him now, you would strongly be tempted to worship.

He would be so beautiful, so dazzling, so perfect and pure that it would take your breath away.  That’s not something I think about very often.  That someday you, and you and you will be more glorious than angels on high.  That someday you will be revealed as the very sons and daughters of God.  No more sinful desires, no more weak and dying flesh no more dullness of heart and brain.  You will actually be like Jesus, bearing in your human being the very likeness and glory of God.

Paul says the same thing in Romans chapter 8.  He has just written, if we have the spirit of God in our hearts, and we are led by God’s Spirit here on earth, then we are, without a doubt, the very sons and daughters of God and we are heirs with Jesus Christ of all the glories to come.  But, as Paul says that, his mind immediately turns to all the pain and problems in this life.  The diseases of the body, the torments of the mind, the trials and tribulations, the bloodshed and persecution.  All the things in life that show us that we are not yet with God in that kingdom to come.  We are not yet those magnificent beings we will someday be.


Then Paul writes, verse 18:  I consider that our present sufferings, as deep and painful as they are, are not even worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  Please note:  Paul says revealed in us, not to us.  Paul is not talking about all the glory we will see in the kingdom to come, the glory of God and his angels.  No.  He is talking about the glory that will be revealed in us.  Then he says, and I quote:  Creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.  In fact, Paul says that since the day sin entered the world and death and decay through sin, that the entire creation has been groaning as if in the pain of childbirth.  What they are groaning for, what they are yearning for, what they are suffering for, is the day when our bodies will be raised and we will become the glorified children of God.  On that day all creation will be redeemed from its bondage to sin.  Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it ever even entered the heart of man, all that God has in store for us on that day.

In his little essay, CS Lewis tries to paint the merest suggestion of a picture.  When he says, See that person next to you, that child of God bound by sin in that dying body, someday he’ll be so beautiful, so dazzling, and so pure, you would be tempted, if you could see it now, to bow down and worship.

IV.    The God of Holy Love
I teach a theology class for Biblical Seminary on Tuesday nights here at church.  Just this past week one of the students said to me:  I am having trouble fitting two ideas together in my head.  On one hand, God is Holy, He dwells in light unapproachable and full of glory.  The only appropriate response is to fall down and tremble.  But, on the other hand, God is my Father.  My Abba.  My Daddy.  How do these two truths fit together?  Indeed, how do they?

When John the Apostle found himself in the presence of the resurrected Jesus Christ, he fell down at his feet as if dead.  When Isaiah saw the Lord, high and lifted, with the train of his robe filling the temple, when he heard the seraphim cry, Holy, holy, holy, he moaned, Woe is me!  Woe is me! 

When Peter caught a glimpse of the glory of Jesus in that boat on the sea, he fell on his knees and said,   Depart from me.  I am a sinful man.  But please consider what happened next.  Jesus said to Peter.  Do not be afraid.  Come, follow me, I will make you a fisherman who catches men.  Jesus said to John, Do not be afraid.  I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.  I was dead, and behold I am alive, forevermore.  To Isaiah, he sent the seraphim, with a coal from the altar to touch his lips and to declare, Behold this fire from the altar has touched your lips, your sin is atoned for.  Indeed, God is holy.  Holy.  Holy.  God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.

But here is the miracle of the gospel.  We can walk in the light, we can live and move and have our being in the light because Jesus is in the light and the blood of his atoning sacrifice cleanses us from all sin.  He causes us to be born again from above.      The Spirit actually brings the life and light of God into our souls.  We become like the burning bush that Moses saw in the wilderness on fire with the holy presence of God but not consumed, not burned up, not destroyed.  We become like Mount Sinai when God came down upon it.  It was enveloped in fire and lightning and thunder and smoke.  But it was not destroyed.   Moses and the elders of Israel walked into the holy fire of that mountain and ate with God.  We are like the Apostle John in the presence of the resurrected Christ.  He lays his hand upon us and says, do not be afraid.  Watch and listen.  I will show you the glories to come.  God does not become any less holy when we are born again from above.  Any less pure, any less powerful, any less awesome in his majesty but we become acceptable through the sacrifice of his son; and we are brought into his holy presence.

But not only that, we actually become partakers of the divine nature.  The light is not only outside of us now, it is actually within us.  We begin to be transformed by the light.  We become like Jesus.  We cry, Abba, Father.  Someday, we will be aflame with the glory of God.  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us today that we should be called children of God and that is what we are!  Now we are children of God, dear friends, and what we will be has not yet been revealed.  But we know that when Jesus appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

And everyone who has this hope in Jesus purifies himself, just as Jesus is pure.  Oh Lord, give us eyes to see the glory of your salvation.  That we have become your children and your Holy Spirit dwells within.  Someday, someday, every darkness will be dispelled.  We will become like Jesus, shining like the son in all its glory.  Make us more pure today.