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Good morning.

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You have your Bibles.

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We'll be in Ephesians chapter 2 again.

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This morning we're going to be looking at another familiar verse, one many of you probably already have memorized.

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A verse that usually goes with the verses that we covered last week.

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So hopefully once again I hope that you will use this week to catch up on your memory work for the book of Ephesians.

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After this week we will have three more weeks in Ephesians chapter 2 and then we will take another break to allow you to catch up.

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Now memorizing things can be difficult, but that's okay.

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You can do hard things.

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As you continue to use that memory muscle it will get easier.

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So don't give up.

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If you haven't even tried then don't think, well I'm behind so there's no point in getting started.

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Start this week.

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The goal is to memorize the entire book of Ephesians together as a church.

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But it's not to say that we did it.

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The goal is to memorize, it's to say that we have more of the Lord's word in us.

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Some of us may in fact memorize all 155 verses of Ephesians,

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but the real goal is to memorize more verses this year than you previously had.

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If that's only 10 verses for you then I would say that is a goal complete.

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So start somewhere.

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Alright so you probably have seen those sculptures made of wood that resemble a bear or another such animal.

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One time a man who carved angry bears into logs of wood was asked how he did it.

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He loved when people would ask that.

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His response was always, I cut away everything that doesn't look like an angry bear.

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Now for someone who is an artist, that makes sense to them.

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But for somebody like me who can't see the bear in the wood,

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it's hard for me to wrap my mind around how somebody does that.

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When I was growing up in El Paso, Texas, I would always hear things like,

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El Paso has the most beautiful sunsets.

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So I believed it to be true. As the sun would set over behind the Franklin Mountains,

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I would look and be amazed at all the colors that were created.

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For a while we lived outside Austin, Texas,

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and I would hear things like, we have the most beautiful sunsets here.

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But I didn't believe them because El Paso had the most beautiful sunsets ever.

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But sure enough, I would see the sunset over the lake and I would be amazed again.

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The same is true for when we lived in La Mesa.

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Beautiful colors, longer lasting because it's so flat there so the sun has longer to go down.

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And the same type of arrogance from people that live there,

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thinking that West Texas has the best sunsets.

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I'm sure there are many of you who would say there's nothing more beautiful

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than watching the sunset over tall corn here in Iowa.

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And you would probably be right as well.

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Creator God has made some amazing things.

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The oceans, the Grand Canyon, Mount Everest, the rolling hills of Iowa.

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No, okay.

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No, we're not celebrating that.

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Now all of those things are works of art.

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However, all of those things are complete.

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There isn't going to be another Everest or Grand Canyon.

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We can look at those creations and we can see the good that God has done,

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but we also know that He has finished with them.

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So keep that in mind. Let's look at Ephesians 2 verse 10.

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Paul says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works,

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which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

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The word translated workmanship in this verse is the Greek word poemiah,

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from which we get our English word poem,

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but the word means much more than a poem.

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It is a word that indicates a work of art or a masterpiece.

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So let's take a few minutes to learn a few things about this text.

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The first thing is the preparation of God's masterpiece.

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Now there are several characteristics of a masterpiece that are evident in Paul's description

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of how God prepared us to be his masterpieces.

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Now if you were to think of your favorite work of art,

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whether it be the Mona Lisa, the statue of David, the Sistine Chapel,

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or your kid's art that hangs on the fridge,

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not one of those masterpieces was created by itself or even participated in its creation in any way.

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It is the artist that does all the work,

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from the foundation of the concept to the planning to the actual creation of the work of art.

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As we've seen so far in our study of the book of Ephesians,

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the same thing is true when God creates us as his masterpieces.

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It is God who chose us before the creation of the world to be his masterpieces.

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It is God who created the plan to redeem us and make us his masterpieces through his son.

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And it is God who has done all the work necessary to make us into those masterpieces.

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Perhaps Paul was thinking back to the words of Jesus with which he was certainly familiar.

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In John 15, Jesus said,

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You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit.

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Now I know that I have emphasized that point over and over and over throughout our journey of Ephesians.

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But like Paul, I think that the point can never be emphasized too much.

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In fact, the English translation of this verse cannot adequately capture the extent to which Paul emphasizes,

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once again, that the work of salvation is all God's work, apart from anything that we can do or offer to him.

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So first in the Greek, the sentence begins with the word his.

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Now, since in Greek the words in a sentence can be in almost any order,

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the word his at the beginning of that sentence is added emphasis.

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Literally, we could translate the first phrase of that verse, his meaning God's masterpiece we are.

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His masterpiece we are.

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Secondly, when Paul writes that we were created in Christ Jesus,

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he uses a verb that means to create something new.

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Create something that has never existed before.

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In other words, when God makes us his masterpieces, he doesn't just change us.

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He makes us into something completely new and different.

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He doesn't just remodel or restore some existing work of art.

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He creates us as a completely new masterpiece.

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I think that's what Jesus meant when he told Nicodemus that you must be born again.

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And Paul makes this point even more directly in a second letter to the church in Corinth.

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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

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The old has gone, the new has come.

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The creation of a masterpiece is usually not the result of some brief haphazard effort.

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Now, in my opinion of art, that is true.

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It just seems like they through paint some of these things that are selling for millions of dollars.

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I sit back and I'm like, I could do that, right?

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The Mona Lisa required four years for Da Vinci to complete.

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In fact, X-rays have shown that there are three previous versions of the painting underneath the one that we are familiar with.

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Michelangelo took four years to paint the scenes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

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Rodin made his plaster cast of The Thinker in 1880, but it wasn't complete until 1902.

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In the same way, we don't become a finished work of art all at once.

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Paul writes that we were created past tense.

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But we are present tense God's masterpiece.

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By now, you probably recognize that the present tense in Greek is indicating an action.

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So literally, we are and will continue to be God's masterpieces.

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All of us are painfully aware, hopefully, that we don't immediately become everything that God intends us to be.

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The very moment he enters into our lives, we don't just automatically get there.

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God allows us to go through a process, one that is often painful, so that he can mold us and make us into what he wants us to be.

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Like a skillful artist, God sometimes completes us with a master stroke of his brush.

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And other times, chisels away at our lives to get rid of those things that would detract from our beauty.

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Once again, Paul writes about that process in one of his letters in Philippians.

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He says, he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.

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I think so many times, we get frustrated that we aren't where we want to be.

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We want to know more. We want to do more. We want to be equipped more than we are right now.

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We have to remember that there isn't some magic pill you take to become all that God wants you to be.

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I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again in case you weren't here, in case you don't know.

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I grew up in the church from the nursery until today.

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There are probably only a couple dozen times in my life that I have not been in church on a Sunday morning.

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When God called me into the ministry when I was a freshman in college at Bible school,

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I switched my degree and the first class I took was a New Testament class.

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At 19 years old, I learned for the first time that the Gospels were four different accounts of the same story.

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Growing up in church my whole life, up until that point, I thought that Jesus was born in Matthew and he died in John.

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I feel like that is a less than elementary understanding of the Bible.

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But here I am now, 20 years later, though I still understand that I am not where I want to be.

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I drive Pastor Scott crazy.

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Because I am consistently going to his office and asking for advice because he knows more than me.

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He has more experience. God is still using him to chisel away some things in me because I am not where I want to be.

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So don't be down on yourself because you aren't where you want to be.

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Take joy in the journey and trust that with more study, more memory work, you will become more and more like God has planned for you to be.

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He who began a good work is going to be faithful to completed.

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Over the years, artists have used all kinds of media to create their masterpieces.

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The Mona Lisa was painted on popular wood.

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One of Michelangelo's assistants had to develop a special kind of mold-resistant plaster for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that became the base of Michelangelo's paintings there.

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Wrote in the thinker is made from bronze.

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But when it comes to God's masterpieces, God only uses one means of creating those masterpieces, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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We've already seen how many times Paul has used the phrase, in Christ, in Jesus, or the equivalents, here in Ephesians, those things that keep stumbling over as we're trying to memorize it.

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Is this part in Christ or is this part in Jesus? We don't know, right? Like it keeps confusing us.

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And that's no accident. Paul wants to leave us with no doubt exactly who or what comprises God's masterpieces.

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As magnificent as the Grand Canyon is, as magnificent as Niagara Falls or Mount Everest and the rest of nature may be, they are not God's masterpieces.

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As immense and massive as the heavens are, they are not God's masterpieces, even as intricately and wonderfully made as the human body.

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Even that is not God's masterpiece.

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God's masterpieces are those who have accepted the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ, who have been created anew through the means of His death and resurrection.

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But Paul doesn't stop there. He doesn't stop by just recording for us the process for which we become God's masterpieces.

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He also begins to describe the second thing, the purpose of God's masterpieces.

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Now, artistic masterpieces have been created for all kinds of purposes.

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The portrait of the Mona Lisa was probably commissioned by Da Vinci's father as a gift for some friends.

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Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to fulfill a commission from Pope Julius II.

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Rodin created the thinker as part of a commission to create an entrance into a museum in Paris.

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Although we can find biblical support for a number of different purposes for which God has created His masterpieces, Paul focuses on one particular purpose in this verse.

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The word translated to do is a three-letter preposition which is used to indicate a purpose or a reason.

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So what Paul is indicating in this text here is that when God creates His masterpieces, their purpose is to do good works.

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Now, even though Paul has already made it absolutely clear that there is no room for our own good works when it comes to our salvation,

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there is a place for good works in the life of a follower of Jesus.

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Although good works can never earn us favor with God, when God creates His masterpieces, it is so that we might do good works.

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In a sense, we are like a great work of art.

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No piece of art is capable of doing any good on its own, but in the hands of the Creator, it is able to accomplish the purposes for which it was created.

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The same thing is true for us. On our own, we are incapable of doing anything that is truly good, but in the hands of the God who created us as His masterpieces,

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we can now fulfill the purposes for which we were created. And we have to understand they are God's works, not ours.

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Each year in March, so next month, comic relief has a fundraiser called Red Nose Day.

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You've heard of it? The purpose of Red Nose Day is to raise money for children in need.

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Its cause is to change the lives of the poor and disadvantaged by addressing their immediate needs, as well as tackling the root causes of poverty and injustice.

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Currently, they have raised over $2 billion.

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Now, I don't think there's anyone in this room that would deny that that is a good work.

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Helping children in need, that's a good work. But is that the kind of work that Paul is writing about here?

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Paul describes these good works as those which God prepared in advance for us to do.

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So it seems to me that the efforts, like those of comic relief, no matter how virtuous their intentions could never meet that description since they are works of men.

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And they've been prepared by men. As God's masterpieces, he doesn't ask us to figure out what good works we want to do.

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We just do them. Instead, he merely uses us as conduits through which he accomplishes his own good works.

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We are literally to walk or to live in these good works, not to merely do them.

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Now, I think that's an important distinction because to walk or live in good works indicates that it's a type of lifestyle, not just a to-do list of things to knock off our list.

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So what exactly are these good works that Paul is referencing here?

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What exactly are these good works that God has prepared for us to make our lifestyle?

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I think that is a question that Paul answers a few chapters later in Ephesians.

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So if you have your Bible flip a page, maybe chapter 4, we're going to take a sneak peek at chapter 4.

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But in verse 1, Paul kind of answers this question.

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He says, as a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

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Now, this verse, chapter 4, verse 1, is a transition in Ephesians.

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So the first three chapters contain basic doctrine.

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The last three chapters describe how we put that doctrine into practice on a day-to-day basis.

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Or to put it into Paul's language, the last three chapters are a description of the good works which God has prepared for us to live in.

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So good works include things like unity of the body, growing together in our spiritual maturity, changing the way we think and the way that we act and treat others.

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It's husbands loving their wives. It's wives respecting their husbands.

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It's children honoring their parents and parents training their children to love God.

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It's being good employees and being good employers and putting on the armor of God.

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Those are all good works that God has purposed for his children to walk in.

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God has created each believer as his masterpiece and he has given us a purpose of living a life that is characterized by those good works.

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He has prepared for them, but God doesn't stop there.

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He also shows us the power of God's masterpieces.

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Although Paul doesn't directly address this aspect in this verse, it is certainly implied.

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And it is a principle that has been present throughout this letter up until this point.

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Before we were created as a masterpiece of God through Jesus, we were incapable of the kind of good works that Paul writes about here.

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Perhaps like comic relief, we could occasionally do good things that had some worth.

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But we were still dead to God.

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We were still dominated by the world and our flesh and Satan.

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So no matter how good works they might have been, they were still filthy rags before God.

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And we certainly weren't capable of a lifestyle in which we could live out these good works which God has prepared for us.

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But when God makes us into his masterpieces, one of the benefits is that he gives us the power we need to be able to live the kind of life that Paul writes about here.

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Paul describes that same power in his letter to the Philippians.

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In chapter 2 he says,

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Continue to work at your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

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The reason that we aren't, the reason that we're able to do good works that God has prepared for us is that he is at work in our lives.

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Giving us both a desire to do those good works and he gives us the power to carry those things out.

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Now I am sure there are countless stories of how you have been used by God.

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Pastor Mark this week told me a story about one of the ladies in DeWitt.

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For some reason God has allowed her to be a part of helping three different people survive suicide attempts.

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She doesn't know why.

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It's not something she sought out to do.

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But when you are allowing God to continue to work on you, he calls you to something bigger than you are.

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Think about you being a masterpiece of God's.

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And Paul says he still isn't done with you yet.

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He is still chiseling away.

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He is still moving his brush over your life.

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He is still sanctifying you to be more and more like Jesus.

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But even right now you were considered a masterpiece in Jesus.

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In my office I have what some would consider the greatest collection of the written word.

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Every poem, every written, every book, every sermon I have ever written.

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Every movie script that has made you laugh or cry.

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Every great work of art that has been written is sitting on the other side of this building on a shelf in my office.

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There is only one problem with that book.

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It is not in the order of those works.

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It is the dictionary.

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You can see the problem here.

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I can take that book and I can find four scores seven years ago.

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Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

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I can find all those words but they are not in that order.

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The beauty of the order is missing from those great works.

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You can walk into an artist's studio and you can go into his closet.

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And you can look at the bottles and tubes of paint and say,

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in there is a great piece of art but it is not on the canvas.

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Some Christians look at their lives as being enough beautiful art to be pleasing to God.

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However, if you are not in fellowship with other believers and serving with God's people in a local church,

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you are not on the canvas.

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You are still in the dictionary.

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See, we are his workmanship, not our own.

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We collectively are making an even greater masterpiece.

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The artist decides where the paint goes on to the canvas.

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The poet decides which order the line and the words go to his poem.

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If you are not in God's plan, which is to fellowship and worship and serve and give through a local church,

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you are still paint in the paint jar, a word still in the dictionary.

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So when we come together, we can see even more of God's work in this place.

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We can see that he has chiseled away addictions.

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We can see how he has cut away pride and anger and greed.

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We can see how he has brushed us with his grace and love.

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I thought last week was a beautiful picture of God's handiwork as several of you shared what God has rescued you from.

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I love hearing these testimonies of redemption.

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I love hearing the stories this past week of how such and such as testimony really impacted them.

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I love hearing those stories.

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It's a testament to what God has done, to a testament to his masterpiece.

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But do you know what testimonies hurt me the most this last week?

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The testimonies of I almost got up and shared.

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I wanted to go to the mic, but then I got nervous.

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I heard several of those this week as well.

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Those stories hurt because instead of being a part of something beautiful, you just got to look at it and observe it.

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Your life is a masterpiece if you are in Christ Jesus.

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It is an even greater masterpiece when we come together to allow God to show off his work.

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That's the beauty of the church.

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That's the beauty of the church.

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Let's pray.

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Father, I pray God that we will see ourselves as your masterpiece, a work in progress.

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I pray God that we will take those moments where we feel like you are chiseling away, those painful moments.

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I pray that we will see it as a process that you are using to sanctify us to be more like Jesus.

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I pray God that we will not ever be caught up.

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And we're not quite there yet, but God will be amazed at where we are right now.

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God, help us not just be words in a dictionary.

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Those words are beautiful, but when they are put in the right order and when they are used in the right way, some amazing things can happen.

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God, we ask you to speak to our hearts this morning. We ask you to move, we ask you to convict, we ask you to allow us to minister to you, to each other.

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So God, I pray you take away pride, fear, and we will walk in the confidence that you have created us new.

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You've made us new.

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So God, I pray that you will help us leave the old behind and walk in the newness that you have created us to be.

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So I ask all these things in Jesus' name.

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I'm going to ask the prayer team to be available, to pray with you, to minister to you.

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And I'm going to encourage you, sometimes you feel that urging, urging, right? You feel God speak to you. I need to go do that.

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I need to receive prayer. I need to receive some ministry. I need to receive some advice from somebody else, but we don't do it.

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And so I'm going to ask you to get out of the cabinet, because God might use that urging that He's given you to show somebody else what it's like to be minister to you.

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And so I don't know what God's calling us to do today, but I want us to be open to Him. I want us to get out of the dictionary.

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I want us to see how God can use you in this place this morning. Amen.