We Are His Workmanship! Ephesians 2:10, Part 1

Ephesians 2:10, “God’s Workmanship”

In our self-obsessed culture, we're all about "self-" words.  Self-esteem, self-image, self-worth, self-empowerment, self-actualization.  We run around for most of our lives trying to decide what we think about ourselves and worrying about what others think of us.  What we need to do is read the word of God and realize who He says we are!  It's a lot better than all the self-talk stupidity out there.  You are His workmanship!   Ephesians 2:10 is talked about, one word at a time.   This is part 1 of 2, given at the "Rise Teen Fellowship" Wednesday night study at Calvary Chapel of Honolulu.

My Notes:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Who are you apart from Christ?

Self- words are all evil.

Part 1: For we are His workmanship, Created in Christ Jesus…

1. For: A transition word. What has come before?
2. We:
1. We, not I.
1. While the individual believer is important and loved of God, He is about building a unified church, not only the one saint.
2. 1Pet 2:5
3. Eph 5:22-32
4. Rev 21:9
5. 1Cor 3:16
2. Not They
1. Don’t get too distant from the goal.  You are a part of it.  It does include you as an individual.
2. Col 2:13
3. John 13:34-35
4. Psalm 139:13-16
5. Matthew 10:30-32
3. You are included, but it’s not ABOUT you.
3. Are:
1. Now, not only in the future.
1. Christians are used to the idea that they will be the workmanship of God (1Jn 3:2; Romans 8:17)
2. Romans 8:29-30.
1. Notice the tenses, though.  They are complete acts.
2. Future for us, present for God.
3. God sees the workmanship as complete now, even if we don’t yet see what He sees in us.
4. Timothy Keller: “Do you know what it means that you are God’s workmanship? What is art? Art is beautiful, art is valuable, and art is an expression of the inner being of the maker, of the artist. Imagine what that means. You’re beautiful, you’re valuable, and you’re an expression of the very inner being of the Artist, the divine Artist, God Himself. You see, when Jesus gave Himself on the Cross, He didn’t say, “I’m going to die just so you know I love you.” He said, “I’m going to die, I’m going to bleed, for your splendor. I’m going to re-create you into something beautiful. I will turn you into something splendid, magnificent. I’m the Artist; you’re the art. I’m the Painter; you’re the canvas. I’m the Sculptor; you’re the marble. You don’t look like much there in the quarry, but I can see. Oh, I can see!” Jesus is an Artist!” And you beloved are His crowning achievement, His masterpiece!
2. Certainly not your past.
1. Phil 3:12-14
2. Eph 2:13
4. His:
1. Not your own.  
2. Not the church’s.
3. God works in your life to make you what He wants you to be.
1. C H Spurgeon : “You have seen a painter with his palette on his finger and he has ugly little daubs of paint on the palette. What can he do with those spots? Go in and see the picture. What splendid painting! In an even wiser way does Jesus act toward us. He takes us, poor smudges of paint, and He makes the blessed pictures of His grace out of us. It is neither the brush nor the paint He uses, but it is the skill of His own hand which does it all.”
2. 2 Cor 5:17
5. Workmanship:
1. G: Poiema, , a thing that is made, work of art, masterwork
1. Poem, Poetry.
2. Only used twice in scripture.  Here and Rev 1:20.  God has two great masterworks.  The cosmos and the church.
3. C H Spurgeon : “You have seen a painter with his palette on his finger and he has ugly little daubs of paint on the palette. What can he do with those spots? Go in and see the picture. What splendid painting! In an even wiser way does Jesus act toward us. He takes us, poor smudges of paint, and He makes the blessed pictures of His grace out of us. It is neither the brush nor the paint He uses, but it is the skill of His own hand which does it all.”
4. Joni Eareckson Tada “(God) has a plan and purpose for my time on earth. He is the Master Artist or Sculptor, and He is the One Who chooses the tools He will use to perfect His workmanship. What of suffering, then? What of illness? What of disability? Am I to tell Him which tools He can use and which tools He can’t use in the lifelong task of perfecting me and molding me into the beautiful image of Jesus? Do I really know better than Him, so that I can state without equivocation that it’s always His will to heal me of every physical affliction? If I am His poem, do I have the right to say, “No, Lord. You need to trim line number two and brighten up lines three and five. They’re just a little bit dark.” Do I, the poem, the thing being written, know more than the poet?”
6. Created
1. 2 Cor 5:17
2. Bara, out of nothing.
3. Asa, molded, sculpted.
4. Both!
5. Psa 51:10
6. Ezek 11:19
7. It isn’t something you have to work at in your own strength.  God is doing this creative work in and through you.  You are the thing made, not the thing making.
7. In Christ Jesus:
1. This is Christ’s power at work in you.
2. Phil 2:13
3. Col 1:29
4. Heb 13:20-21

Who are you in Christ?

Third Saturday of Omer: Already and Not Yet

Third Saturday of Omer: Already and Not Yet

The season of counting the Omer is about taking time to look at what it cost to redeem God's people and the value that the purchase puts on salvation and freedom from bondage and then moving into gratitude for the relationship with God that came about on Mt Sinai in the first Shavuot, 50 days later.  Next Saturday will mark the half-way point of the Omer, so it is appropriate for the transition to begin from looking back to Passover to looking forward to Shavuot.  The account in Exodus of Moses' psalm is a fitting way to begin this transition.

In Exodus 15, the first psalm of scripture is recorded.  In it, Moses declares the wonderful works of God and the mighty way in which God redeemed his people. Throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments, the delivery of the people of God from bondage in slavery is seen as a picture of His salvation. Egypt is a picture of sin and slavery to the flesh and the fallen nature, and Pharaoh is by extension the devil himself.  If Exodus 15:1-18 is read with this analogy in mind, it is a beautiful exaltation of the victory of God's saving love over the assault of the enemy of our souls.

Moses begins by praising God for having triumphed over the enemy in bringing salvation to the Jews. "I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea."

In Moses' case, of course, this is an undisputedly complete task.  The statement is obviously put in the past tense.  When you read this as a picture of our salvation, though, would you have written in that way?  Can you say, with Moses, that "the Lord has triumphed gloriously" in your own salvific story?  It doesn't always feel that way, does it?  I am tempted to say, of myself, that "the Lord WILL triumph gloriously" in my life.  I see the struggles in my heart between my new nature, and my fallen flesh that is still "at war within me" (Jas 4:1). I know that I will fall to a sin, repent of it, pray against the enemy's assault in this area, and invite the Holy Spirit into this area of my heart to heal my wounds and remove my sinful desires.  I still very much feel the war that rages there, and I can think, erroneously, that my salvation is still a matter of contention between the will and work of God and the draw of sin.  This is not the case, however.  When God saves, he saves completely.  There is still a part of our perfection that is "not yet,"  the glorification that can only come after our flesh is literally put to death and we are raised glorious and incorruptible (1 Cor 15:50-58), but the salvation from sin and the destination of my soul is a "fait accompli," a finished work, a "done deal." The "horse and rider" of the enemy has been drowned in the sea of God's judgement for my sin.  The punishment for all of the wickedness in my life has already been poured out on the Lamb of God, and none was reserved for my eternal soul to bear.

This is a wonderful truth that is sometimes hard for me to internalize.  I don't have a long list of besetting sins that I fall to time and time again.  God has graciously been working in my life for many years now, and He has claimed victory in many areas that were once opportunities for the enemy.  Still, I am by no means perfect.  Just this morning, I was convicted by the Holy Spirit of a failure in an area I've been working on giving to the Lord, and I felt the regret and self-reproach that comes with the awareness of sin in my life.   What I have to get better at doing in those moments is realizing that salvation is both a process and a finished work.  It is both an "already" and a "not yet."  I get the "not yet" intuitively.  I am reminded again and again that I have not yet been glorified.  What is less intuitive for me is that the real war over my soul is done.  I am a child of the King, and I have been bought with the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God. I should be able to stand and say, with Moses, that the work of my salvation is a completed work.

Paul says the same thing, albeit in a different immediate context, when he writes that "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Cor 5:17).  The old is gone, and the new has come in the question of who I am.  It is a miraculous work of God in my life that the enemy of my soul is defeated.  The miracle of my salvation is, in fact, a greater one than the miracle that inspires Moses to write the first psalm. Throughout the psalm in Ex 15, Moses again and again lays out the details of the pursuit of the enemy and the conquest of God.   He doesn't tell the story in a chronological way.  Instead, he lists every aspect of Pharaoh's pursuit interrupted by a statement of God's glorious conquest.

"Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea,  and his chosen officers were sunk in the red Sea.  The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.... The enemy said, 'I will pursue, I will overtake'... you blew with your wind; the sea covered them."(Ex 15:4, 9, 10).  Moses can't even list his enemies and the intent of the adversary without interjecting that they are all canceled, in every aspect, by the work of God.

In my life, this psalm might have been written like this: "Satan paraded ill-dressed ladies through my store, but God has freed my from lust.  I was wronged by a friend and saw anger approaching, but Jesus let me see that person through His eyes.  I was tired of waiting for an answer to a prayer and could have given in to discouragement, but I know that God is not done with me yet, and that His timing is better than my own impatience."   Whatever the enemy brings into my life as a snare, whatever sin entices me, God has already won the battle.  The enemy is already defeated.  Fait accompli!

While the enemy has already been defeated in a permanent and sure way, never to ensnare the Israelites again, they are not yet in the promised Land.  They're in Arabia,  not Canaan.  God still has a journey to lead them through, and it still lies before them to know God and His ways at Sinai. Moses is aware of this, and testifies to the "not yet" aspect of their salvation as well, when he declares, "You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for our abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.  The Lord will reign forever and ever" (vs 17-18).   Even though Moses declares the "already" of Israel's freedom, he acknowledges that there is still a "not yet."

And that's where we find ourselves.  God has freed us from the bondage of sin.  He has won the war in a decisive and final way.  For those who have placed the blood of the Lamb on the doorposts of their heart and have had a mikvah as testimony of our cleansing by faith, the Red Sea, the line of demarcation between our current life and the life of sin that we've left behind is clear, broad, and irrevocable. We, the children of God in Christ are free forever from that life, and yet we are not in the "Promised Land" of Glory.  

Paul writes of the reality of salvation that, "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified" (Rom 8:29-30). We, the living church, live in the comma between "justified" and "glorified." We are already right before a Holy God, but we have not yet been glorified in our flesh. So we live on in this tension of already and not yet, wrestling with our old nature, which has been mortified and yet dies slowly. 

How shall we live in this age of tension? And from where is our strength derived to live out the "already" in the midst of all this "not yet?" Moses sets out the answer at the top of his psalm. 

"The Lord is my strength and my song,
    and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
    my father's God, and I will exalt him." Ex 15:2

We are to live in this tension on the strength that God supplies (This is the topic for next week), not leaning on the life we have known before, on the other side of the Sea.  We are to have our life and being in the power of God. He is the one who has brought us into the "already" and will bring us into what is still "not yet."  He supplies what we need for the journey and will show us the way. 

Meanwhile, we are to live in adoration, praise, and worship of God.  Notice the purpose of Moses' heart here.  He acknowledges the fact that his salvation has come only from God, and it drives him to worship.  The "song" flows immediately out of the context of the salvific experience he just had.  How can we live any differently?  We have been saved!  That should light the fires of worship and adoration so brightly that the world will know that we are worshiping, adoring, people of God. Those who do not have a desire to worship have not known salvation. To know who you were, the bondage you were under, and the destiny that awaited you, and then to know the Lamb of God who takes your place in the way of the wrath of God and gives you instead His love and freedom, is to be driven to your knees in adoration. 

So join with me in loving, worshiping, adoring, and laying down your life before the one who has decisively moved you, once-and-for-all out of the slavery and bondage of sin and into the "already" of freedom and who will, one day, move you into the "not yet" of glory.  Praise be unto Him!

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