Understanding How Far God Will Go To Help You

All Saints Day - November 1, 2009

Heavenly Father, we love because You first loved us and we thank You that You have paid for our sins; You’ve given us faith and You’ve brought us to Yourself. Thank You, Lord, for doing that. And today we celebrate the fact that we are Your people, Your saints. And now, Lord, as we hear you speaking to us we ask that Your Spirit would touch our lives, give us Your wisdom and understanding and give us Your mind, Lord God, that we would act as Your people, united in Christ. And we pray this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Scripture Readings -  

The scripture readings today all revolve around All Saints Day. God called His people saints, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.

Old Testament – Psalm 34:4-9  I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.

One of the great blessings we have as God’s saints is, not only do we pray for each other, but the Holy Spirit actually prays for us. All day long, you have God, the Holy Spirit, praying for you!

Epistle – Romans 8:26,27  In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. 

Our Gospel Lesson for today illustrates a very important point that we will be talking about in the sermon.

Gospel – Matthew 14:25-33  During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost”, they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you”, Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come”, he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith”, he said, “why did you doubt?” And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Sermon –

Today we’re celebrating All Saints Day but we want to be careful about the context in which we tell people that we celebrate All Saints Day because, at times, some Christians have a pretty strange reaction to that. They say, “Aha! You Lutherans! You still have one foot back in the paganism of the Middle Ages! You’re worshiping saints! You’re praying to saints!” That’s what some people think, but are those things true? They certainly are not, we don’t worship saints, we worship God alone; we don’t pray to saints, we pray to God alone as the Bible says. The other reaction people sometimes have when we tell them that we’re celebrating All Saints Day is, “Saints? You Lutherans don’t have saints!” And that’s not true either.

The truth is that the Bible talks about saints all the time. It’s in the Old Testament and sixty times in the New Testament the Bible refers to the believers, or God’s people, as “the saints”. In the original text the Greek word for “saint” is Hagios, and it simply means “the holy ones”. Haggios is translated many times in the Bible as “saints”, “believers”, or “those who have been justified”, declared not guilty through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. “The saints” are the Hagios.

That’s very important to see because we don’t want to happen to Christmas what happened to All Saints Day. All Saints Day, November 1^st, throughout history has been a day for celebrating that God sent a savior, brings people to faith in Jesus as that Savior, causes them to confess their sins, to look to Christ, to be declared not guilty, to be holy and acceptable to Him and makes them “the holy ones”, or saints.

And throughout history All Saints Day was known as All Holy Ones Day, or All Hallowed Day. “Hallowed” means “holy”, we use that word every time we say the Lord’s Prayer - “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name”. The evening before All Hallowed Day then would be called All Hallowed Eve which eventually became known as Hallowed Eve and then merged over time into Halloween.   As Hallowed Eve became Halloween, the pagans stole it from the Christians and it became a time of trying to scare off evil spirits by wearing masks. I think the lesson we should learn from this in regard to Christmas is that we want to keep Christ in Christmas; we don’t want it to become “The Winter Holiday”.   There was a movement in the national management of Bank of America a couple of years ago to have Christmas become known as “The Winter Holiday”; a movement to take what happened to All Hallowed Day and do the same thing with Christmas. So make sure you keep Christ in Christmas, make sure that Christmas Eve is about Christ and nothing else or we will have the whole Halloween fiasco all over again.

Today’s sermon title is “How Far God will Go to Help You” and there is a principle at work here in regard to All Saints Day. God has taken us, who are not saints, and called us as if we were saints. We’re not holy, we sin all the time, but God has called us who are not saints and looks upon us as if we were saints.   God has taken us who are guilty of sin and called us as we were not guilty of sin.

In other words, God takes things that are not and calls them as if they were. Does that sound familiar? It should, because that’s what Romans 4:19 says, “God gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.”   These verses tell us how God called Abraham and Sarah to be a great nation with many descendants, and of that nation the Messiah, who paid for our sins, would be born. Abraham and Sarah had no children, plus they were old and from a physical standpoint couldn’t have children. But God took Abraham and Sarah and called them as if they could have children. God intervened. He made major adjustments to bring that event about in the life of Abraham and Sarah. That’s how far God will go in this whole process to take things that are not and call them as if they were.

So let’s see what that would be like for us in our lives, how far God will go, the major adjustments that He has to make to take something that is not and call it as if it were. Ice is certainly not warm so to understand this concept let’s take something that’s not warm and call it as if it were warm. That means we’re going to have to make some major adjustments in our lives. If I have a cup of coffee I want to keep it warm, I’ll just have to drop some ice cubes in it – right? I do if I call ice warm! We have to make major adjustments to keep our coffee warm.

Is anyone a little chilly this morning? If you were chilly, we could take ice, which is not warm, and we could call it warm and then use the ice to warm up a little bit. We could do that because we have taken something that is not and called it as if it were. That’s the sacrifice we would have to go through because we are taking something that is not and calling it as if it were. Or perhaps after you put your gloves on, your hands are still a little bit cold. So, because you declare ice to be warm, you take an ice cube and put it inside your gloves to warm your hands. You’re going to have to make major adjustments when you do that. And that’s how far God will go with you and me. He’s taken something that is not and called it as if it were. He’s taken us, who are not saints, who sin every day, who are not perfect, who are not holy, and called us as if we were - a major adjustment was necessary on God’s part.

Throughout the Bible, God has taken things that are not and called them as if they were. We want to understand that principle because it shows just how far God will go to help you. God not only called things that were not as though they were in the life of Abraham and Sarah but think about all those battles in the Old Testament. God took Israel, who were not great warriors, and called them as if they were great warriors; He had to make major adjustments so that they would win all those battles. And in our Gospel Lesson for today, God took Peter, who was not able to walk on water, and called him as though he were able to walk on water. He said, “Peter, come, get down out of the boat” and it worked! God, making major, major adjustments. And that’s how far He will go to help you and me.

The Apostle Paul, on missionary trips, was beaten to a pulp. He said many times that he couldn’t go on and that life was more than he could handle. But God took Paul, who had no strength and called him as if he had strength. God intervened and that’s why Paul wrote in 11 Corinthians Chapter 12, “When I am weak, then I am strong because God power rests on me.” God takes things that are not and calls them as if they were.

Or think about the disciples feeding the five thousand. The disciples were not able to feed five thousand plus people with five loaves of bread and two fish. But God called them that were not able as if they were able. He said “Take those five loaves of bread and two fish and give them to the people.” And it worked! The disciples fed all those people with five loaves of bread and two fish because God takes things that are not and calls them as if they were. What a great God!

And that’s what we see on all Saints Day; we, who are not saints, are called as if we are saints. So let’s look at some of the benefits of this. On All Saints Day, we consider that when we die we will, on the last day, be raised with Christ. Ephesians Chapter 2:6 says, “And God raised us up with Christ…”. This was written two thousand years ago and it said God raised us, the believers, up with Christ. How can He say that? We haven’t died yet. He says that because He takes things that are not, we who have not been raised, and call us as though we were already raised. This is just incredible! Our future in guaranteed!

And then verse 6 continues, “…and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”.   He seated us in the heavenly realms. It’s a done deal! God calls us who are not seated in the heavenly realms as though we were seated in the heavenly realms. Your resurrection, your place in heaven, is a done deal according to God and that’s one of the things we celebrate today. God calls us, who have not been raised, who are not seated in the heavenly realms, as though we were and treats us accordingly. That’s just an incredible, incredible concept!

Our Old Testament reading says, “I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.” When you seek the Lord you want him to answer you, you want him to deliver you from your fears, you want the Lord to hear you and pay attention to you. Think of all the things this Psalm says - answers, deliverance, the Lord hearing you, the Lord saving you from your troubles, the Lord encamping around you and you are lacking nothing. But what’s the catch? It’s for the saints and we know from an earthly standpoint we’re not saints. And that’s why this concept is so important because God takes us who are not saints and calls us as though we were saints. That means all the promises in Psalm 34 are true for you because God has taken those things that are not and called them as though they were.

And our Epistle Lesson, Romans 8, tell us that the Holy Spirit intercedes with God the Father and prays for you on a daily basis for whatever is going on in your life. Whatever is happening, God is praying for you, interceding for you, and helping you. And verse 27 tells us that He does it for the saints. It’s so important to understand this concept because then we can say, “I’m not perfect, I’m not holy, I’m not a saint, but through faith in Jesus Christ, God takes us who are not saints and calls us as though we were and the Holy Spirit is praying for me every day!”

Keep that thought in mind as you read your Bible. All those things the Bible says about God’s people and about the saints – that’s you He’s talking about! Because you have confessed your sins, because you look to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, because you are trusting in Christ’s good works for you, not trusting in your own, you are “the saints”. God called you and me who are not saints as if we were saints. That’s God’s basic principle - take things that are not and call them as if they were.     

Prayer -  

Great God, Heavenly Father, thank You for sending us a Savior, thank You for the forgiveness and the new life we have in Him. Thank You, Lord, for taking those things that are not and calling them as if they were. Help us to rejoice, celebrate and spread that Good News to others this day and this week. And we pray this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.