Ephesians chapter two, and I
want to focus on the first phrase in verse 10. For we are God's workmanship. Actually, I believe it says simply
we are his workmanship, and the ones who made our translation
thought it was best to make sure we understood who the his is. We are God's workmanship. Now this word, workmanship, simply signifies the product
of work. From it, the word is poiema in
Greek, we get our word poem from it. And whenever you speak of
poema, it signifies that there has been some kind of arrangement
made out of materials. In a poem, the poet doesn't merely express
with words what he has in mind, rather he takes those and with
the craftsmanship or the artistry of a good poet, he puts them
together maybe with a rhyming scheme or a certain rhythm, and
if he does it well, the way he assembles the words causes them
to come across to us with more power than they might have if
he had just simply expressed it in normal prose. If I were to bring to you a lump
of clay and say, this is my workmanship, you'd say, there's no workmanship
there. All you did was scoop out some
clay. I've seen some artwork in our
day that that pretty well describes it, you know. They pick up a
stick. nail it to the wall and say,
there, you didn't do anything. That's not your workmanship. But now if you took that clay
and you put it on a wheel, and you spun that wheel, and you
began to form it, and while you are not changing the essence
of what it is, it remains clay, yet by your actions, you make
it into something. that it was not before. A pot
of some sort, maybe a flower pot, maybe a bowl. Now the potter, when he makes
something out of clay, he has all the power, doesn't he? That
clay can't do anything. It was just laying there in the
ground. And he grabbed it, He decided what he wanted to make
it, and by his energy and his craftsmanship, he turned that
useless blob of clay into something beautiful, maybe, useful. And in that work, and here's
the thing about artistic works, they reveal something about the
nature of the one who did them. When an artist does something,
he puts a lot of himself into it. And you can learn things
about the artist by looking at what he has done, what he has
made, by looking at his poema, his product. Even those, and I remember that,
I don't know much about art history, but I remember them talking about
the Dutch realists. And it's amazing what those,
it's almost like a photograph, those people could paint so well,
yet still, the way that they would cause the light, you know,
to shine in one place and be shaded in another or whatever,
And maybe the objects that they chose to paint or whatever, it
told you something about the artist. Same thing's true in
music. People write songs. Well, the
songs they write, you know, they may be pretty. They may have
words that ring true to us. But there's
going to be something of the songwriter in there. And over
time, when you look at these works of an artist, you begin
to understand something of the artist who made it. So it is
with the Lord God. We not only learn His works,
but by observing His works, we can learn of Him. It says we are His workmanship,
His craftsmanship, His artistry. Now, we may think, hmm, he's
not a very good craftsman. If I'm God's work, he needs to
go back to class and learn. Because we see in us what we are by birth and nature. We see all of that. And we think to ourselves, this
isn't good workmanship. I've not been put together well.
I don't function as I was designed to. But consider this. Compare what
you are now with what you were before God began His gracious
work. I'm not talking about self-righteousness
here. I'm not saying, you know, I'm a better person. I was raised
under a religion that would tell you that, you know, if you've
been saved, you know, you're going to find different friends.
You won't want to be friends with the people you were friends
with, and you'll like different music, and you won't want this,
and I'm sorry, friends. I realized I made a profession
of faith at seven years old, you know, and so how much change
can there be in a seven-year-old? in terms of those things. But I can tell you this, all
of my life I've known this about myself. I'm a sinner in desperate
need of a savior all the time. That's what I see. That's what
I detect more than anything else. And so for me to say, I am God's
workmanship, I would almost feel that'd be an insult to God. This
is the best he can do? Well, let's think about that
for a minute. Compare yourself as you are now with what you
were before God began his work, verse one. As for you, you are
dead in transgressions and sins. Now, I was talking to my son
yesterday as he took me to the airport, and we were talking
about creationism and evolution and this kind of thing, and I
was mentioning a statistic to him from way back yonder, something
that I read about the statistical impossibility of evolution occurring. And I said, according to the
analysis of this particular scientist who is a creationist, he said
to get from single-celled life, most primitive life form, to
something as complex, say, as a horse. The chance of that happening
was one in 10 to the 350,000th power. And they had laid on such
truly astronomical advantages that you don't really even see,
and still came up with that number. Now that's a one followed by
350,000 zeros. And then they made this point.
We have granted them life to begin with. And still the number's that big.
Now what point is being made there? One thing they're saying
is there's the insurmountable obstacle for evolution of getting
from non-life to life. Evolution, and there is not a
scientific law in the world that I am aware of that would cause
life to arise from that which has no life. It says we were dead, but now
we're alive. Now that's quite a work. Wasn't
my work, I know that. The dead cannot make themselves
alive. If we were dead in our sins and now we're alive under
God, God must have done that. And I'll say this, bringing life
out of death is a great work. What else does it say about us?
Who is God's workmanship? Dead sinners. Secondly, who is
God's workmanship? Verse two, in which you used
to live when you followed the ways of
the world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit
who is now at work in those who are disobedient. Now, Ruler of the kingdom of the air
is the devil. That's what he's talking about,
Satan. And he refers to him that way because he's referring to
this world kind of in the same way that
Solomon did when he said, life under the sun. And so if we view
this world simply with what the natural eyes can see, it doesn't
look like God's in control. So if to you all there is is
the earth beneath your feet and the sky above your heads, it
looks like the devil's in charge there. And indeed, he rules in the hearts
of many people. In fact, he rules in the hearts
of everyone who has not been born again by the Spirit of God. And it doesn't matter what their
lives are like, whether their lives are what even humans would
call incredibly depraved, or if they are morally upright and
outwardly righteous as we can imagine anyone being. And everything
in between. Everyone who has not been made
alive under God through the power of the Spirit of God, they are
following the ways of the world, even the ruler of the kingdom
of the air, it's the spirit that is now at work in those who are
disobedient. Now, disobedient to what? The
law? Well, that would include everybody.
When the scriptures, particularly the New Testament scriptures,
when they talk about obedience and disobedience, they're talking
about obedience and disobedience to the gospel. Because to hear the gospel in a saving
sense means to do what it says, call upon the name of the Lord,
trust Him, rely upon Him. So these who are His workmanship
were in times past among the disobedient. They didn't believe
the gospel. They didn't even know it. They may have been some of the
most depraved citizens of Rome. They may have been some of the
most morally upright Jews living in those Gentile nations where
Paul went to preach. But inasmuch as they had not
With their heart, believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, they were
disobedient and they were under the power of Satan. And Paul says in verse three,
all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings
of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. You say,
You know, oh yeah, them sinners, boy, I never was like them. Yes,
you were. All of us were sinners in the
sight of God, disobedient to the message of his mercy and
grace. Like Paul, remember when the
Lord Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus? Now that's
when he was in that state that he later described as touching
that righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless. And
yet he's on his way to a city so that he might persecute Christians
because he hated Christ. He hated the message of Christ.
He hated the gospel of Christ. So for all his law-keeping, for
all his outward righteousness and morality, he was under the
bondage of Satan. He was living among the grossest, and when he says
living among them, he doesn't just simply mean that he lived
on the earth and that's where all these sinners were. He was
named among them in God's sight. He was one of them. He was gratifying
the cravings of his flesh. The fleshly craving of reputation. His pride ruled him. His natural
anger and violence ruled him, and he was seeking to satisfy
it, and simply because he's brought up as a religious Jew, he was
trying to satisfy his flesh through religious activity, whereas others
might try to satisfy their flesh in the more common ways we think
of that. But you, you know, in our day,
the big, the big sins, homosexuality and abortion. That's what the
American church is against all the time. You see one of these
gay pride parades. And I'll admit, it is to me revolting. And they'll go to that scripture
where it says that they call evil good and good evil. And
that's a good example of that. and they glory in the very things
they should be ashamed of. That's true. But the Apostle
Paul, in the days when he laid claim to as touching that righteousness
which in the law I was blameless, he was marching down the road
in a religious pride parade. And it doesn't matter whether
it's a gay pride parade or a religious pride parade, it's a self-pride
parade, and it is wicked and awful and damnable in God's sight. And that's where we were. That's
where we were. You say, I look at myself, and
if I'm his workmanship, doesn't seem like he does very
good work. Well, are you that now? Oh, the old motions of the flesh
are still in us, aren't they? Paul said, in me, that is in
my flesh, dwells no good thing. And that's still there, we understand
that. But that which we once loved and pursued, we now hate
and resist. Not always successfully, by any
means, but nonetheless. There was a warfare born in us. That's quite a work. And then it says, last part of
verse three, like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. One of the key principles in
the preaching of the Apostle Paul was this, we're all the
same. Now he once thought that because he was a Jew, he was
special. And he emphasized his Jewishness.
And in the book of Philippians, when he is describing to those
people how if anybody had a right to boast in the flesh, he could
boast even more. And the first thing he says,
well, I was a Hebrew, born of Hebrews. In other words, he's
saying, I'm a purebred Jew. That's what he was saying. Of
the tribe of Benjamin, which was known to be one of the more
zealous tribes. Circumcised on the eighth day,
that means from the beginning of his life, he was following
the law. He was zealous. He was of the
most strict denomination of the Jews. He was a Pharisee. He was all these things. But he was, by nature, an object
of wrath. He recognized, once God opened
his eyes to see the truth, blinded him naturally but opened his
eyes spiritually, he saw the truth that there was no difference
between him and the Gentiles that disgusted him. I told you, I mentioned, you
know, you see these pictures of these gay pride parades. And
you might think to yourself, that's revolting. And I wouldn't
disagree with you. But we were born with the same
nature as them. It may have expressed itself
differently. But we came into this world no
less worthy of God's wrath than the filthiest sinner you can
think of. Do you really believe that or is it, you know, sometimes
I'm afraid I say things like that just because it sounds powerful.
Do I really believe that that is, that was my inborn nature? But then that's not the only
nature we presently have, is it? And we realize now that we
are by nature children of blessing, children of favor, of grace. How'd that happen? Did we make
that happen? Are we our own workmanship? In the Psalms it says, it is
he who has made us. and not we ourselves. Whatever we are, by grace, it's
God that made us to be that. Are we among those who were chosen
and predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ? I didn't predestine me. I came
into this world pointing my nose the opposite direction of where
God intended for me to go. And he turned me around. And he made me not a child or
object of wrath. He made me an object of his mercy
and grace. That's quite a work. That's a
significant change. Something's been done. Who are these people called to
workmanship of God? Verse four. But because of his
great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy. Oh, what a wonderful
description of our God. Rich in mercy. He's not stingy with mercy. We can say, with all the authority
of scriptures, we can say to any man, God is rich enough in
mercy for you if you want mercy. Most people don't want mercy.
They don't think they need mercy. They still believe they have
some kind of defense that they can mount before the judge of
all the earth. I've been called up for jury
duty. I did all I could to get out of it, but it didn't work. And I got a report to Sioux City
tomorrow for a trial. Now, I don't know what the supposed
crime is, but I know one thing. The very fact that there's going
to be a trial means that whoever the accused is, he's not asking
for mercy. he's going to put up a defense. He's either going to say he didn't
do it, or that there were mitigating circumstances, whatever. Because no one asks for mercy
until they've pled guilty. Because mercy is for the guilty. Mercy is for the needy. We sang
about the unsearchable riches of Christ. Who are they for?
They're not for those who have riches of their own. That's what
our Lord meant when he said, blessed are the poor in spirit,
for they shall inherit the earth. He didn't mean this natural earth. any more than he meant the natural
real estate over there in the Mideast when he made promise
to Abraham. Abraham understood that way back
then, that the promise of God meant a whole lot more than just,
you know, a nation coming from him that would occupy that area
of the world. But God showed us mercy. We were not begging for it until
He showed it to us. You think about that now. It
wasn't until His eye of mercy fell upon us that we cried out
for that mercy. We defended ourselves. We excused
ourselves. and we don't know how long it
was between his sin with Bathsheba and when Nathan confronted him
about it. But all during that time, he
was defending himself. All during that time, he was
excusing himself. Maybe he said, hey, I'm the king,
and I can have whoever I want. I mean, that's what other kings
do. Let's face it, you know, maybe I messed up this time,
but I haven't done this as badly as other kings do. But when Nathan came, and his
guilt was undeniable, because God doesn't look on the outward
appearance, he looks on the heart. And Nathan, being a prophet of
God, spoke in a way that looked right into the heart of David.
In David's response, written out in Psalm 51, the very first
word of that psalm is mercy. It's written in the English,
have mercy. So you'd say the first word is
have, but that's an auxiliary verb. We don't have a simple
verb form of mercy. We say someone shows mercy or
has mercy. But in the Hebrew, the first
word, mercy, Mercy, why? Because when you're guilty, you
know that's what you need. And all the defense is over. Mercy. And God is rich in it. No sinner ever came to God seeking
his mercy and had the Lord turn his pockets out and say, sorry,
I've used up all my mercy. Never. There are stores of mercy untapped. Every sinner that comes to Him
receives the full mercy of an always righteous God. That's
the glory of the gospel. Now because of His great love
for us, not because of our love for Him, Because of his great love for
us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even
when we were dead in transgressions. Now, I like to look these things
up in the original language, and I got a kick out of that
word translated, made alive. Zuo, let me get it right here,
just a minute. Zuope, I said it a few times,
and I practiced. I think I can get it right now. zuopoieo. When it says we are
his workmanship, the word's poiema, the verb form is poieo. And to be made alive, zuopoieo. Because, you know, when you go
to the zoo, that's a place where they have living things. It comes
from the Greek word for alive, for life. It comes to us in, if you ever
know a person named Zoe, that's where the word comes from. And
so, he's made us a zoo. And sometimes that seems rather
obvious, but he's made us alive. Made us alive. With Christ, even when we were
dead in trespasses and sins. Now you see, what I'm trying
to point out here is even though at the present time we see ourselves
full of flaws and wonder how anyone like us could be the result
of the handiwork of God, you've got to consider, what did he
have to work with? And as much flaw as you detect
in yourselves presently, understand this, you were worse before. You're God's handiwork. And that is seen in the fact
that people described the way we've been looking at could never
make themselves into anything else. The dead can't make themselves
alive. The sinful cannot make themselves
righteous. The rebels cannot make themselves submissive. Cannot
be done. God did it. When people say,
well, salvation is by the free will of man, they know nothing
about the will of man. You say God's sovereign, and
they say, well, that would be a violation of man's free will. No, it's not, really. The problem with man's will is
not the sovereignty of God. The problem with man's will is
that he is unable to will anything other than evil. until God does
something. If you look down here in verse
11, who are these who are called God's workmanship? Therefore,
remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called
uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision,
that done in the body with the hands of men, remember that at
that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship
in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of promise without
hope and without God in the world. Now, he said that to them as
Gentiles because even though most of the Jews were just as
spiritually dead as the Gentiles were, they at least had the record. They had the promise of Christ. They were part of Israel. And they had been given something
to hope in And God dwelt among them via the tabernacle and the
temple. But spiritually speaking, this
describes everybody. Until God comes and does that
which He alone can do, His handiwork, his artistry, until he does that,
everyone is separate from Christ, is excluded from citizenship
in Israel. We're foreigners to the covenants
of promise, and we are without hope and without God in this
world. Now, we may grieve our sin, and
when we grieve our sin, we do so rightly. We should grieve
that those who have been so privileged should still sin. Nonetheless, is it not a remarkable thing
that you are no longer separate from Christ? And it wasn't you who made that
difference. God did. You are no longer excluded from
citizenship in Israel? No, we didn't become citizens
of that nation over there. Because that nation, while given
a privileged position in the world, no spiritual promises
came to the natural descendants of Abraham. As Paul said in another
place, he is a Jew who is a Jew inwardly. And circumcision is
not that done by the hands of men, but circumcision of the
heart. And in Galatians, he says, peace
be to the Israel of God. Who is that? That's the church
of the Lord Jesus. We were at one time foreigners
to the covenants of promise. We hadn't heard the gospel, didn't
know it. We were without hope. Oh, we
may have hoped in something. In fact, we most certainly did.
But it was a useless hope. It was a vain hope. And there's
nobody more hopeless than the one who puts his hope in that
which will fail. Better that you have no hope
than a false hope. without God in the world. We were like that. So far as
our experience was concerned, we were cut off from him. The most agonizing thing in all
of the world and the world to come is to be cut off from God. Our Lord Jesus did not cry out,
oh, these nails hurt me. all these thorns that pierced
my brow, all the nails in my feet, all the heavy cross. He
said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's the worst
thing can happen to a person. And we were born that way, without
God. But that's not true anymore,
is it? Now we're looking at things from
the way we see them. We realize that God chose us
before the foundation of the world. But in our hearts, in
our experience, we were cut off from God. Worse than that, we
were cut off from God and perfectly satisfied with that. We weren't
crying out, God, why have you left me alone? No. Oh, the wonderful handiwork of
God, that he has brought us who were aliens to the commonwealth
of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, without Christ, without
hope, without God in this world, and he has switched out all around. Nobody but God could have done
that. But there's something else to
think of now when we consider that we are his workmanship and
yet we look at ourselves and there's so many flaws. If we
are his workmanship, it's obvious he's not done working. Did you hear that? We're not gonna be like this
forever. You say, I hate my sin. I hate
my lack of concern for the things of God. I hate my lack of prayers, and
I hate my prayers when I pray. It will not always be like that. He who began a good work in you,
says Paul. We'll bring it to perfection.
He'll keep working on it till the day of Christ. And when Christ
comes, all shall be perfected, and we will stand there as the
handiwork of God. And the world, I would assume, the unbelieving
world will just stand there, mouth agape, to see what God
made of us. Because they knew us. And they'll say, how did he get
to be him? We are his workmanship. The reason we're still a mess
is because he's not done. The potter takes that blob of
clay and throws it on the wheel and begins turning that wheel.
Well, he doesn't just touch it, and then it's automatically a
pot full blown. He works on it. I didn't do much
in art class, but I liked the pottery portion, probably because
I liked the potter's wheel. You know, guys, we like things
with power, you know? And then you could, you know,
I don't know if you've ever done it, but it is something to the
way you can just take your hand and form that clay and see it
begin to take a shape, a shape you intended. But it didn't happen
when you first put your hand on the clay. First thing you'd have to do,
I remember, and it was the hardest part of it, and yet most important,
had to center. You had to work on it until that
blob of clay was right there on the center. Because you can't
follow it around like that. It's got to be right in the center.
And once it's in the center, then you can begin giving it
a shape, the shape you want. And God, through the new birth,
centered us. got us on the middle of that
wheel, made us alive with Christ, made us alive in Christ. And
ever since that, he's been working. It hadn't always felt good. You know, the clay doesn't have
any intention of changing shape. It's the potter's power that
makes it change. And we may be reluctant to admit
that there's been any change from that time when we first
believed. But just let the potter deal
with that. He knows what he's doing. You
feel that you're still just clay, and you are. But you're clay
in the potter's hands, and he's good at what he does. And as Paul said in Romans 9,
does not the potter have power over the clay to make from the
same lump vessels of dishonor and vessels of honor and glory? And if you have been saved, if
you have experienced the new birth, you are being made into
a vessel of glory. It'll be a glorious vessel and
it will bring glory to the one who made it. And then lastly, first, look at how much God has
already done in this handiwork. Second, look at what he will
do. Conform us to the image of his
son. And thirdly, It means that we are not responsible for the
work. He didn't throw the clay on the
pot, get it centered, and then look at that lump of clay and
say, now make yourself into a beautiful vase. You say, I'm not just a blob
of clay, I'm a lumpy blob of clay. I'm almost dry. Must be hard
for a potter, you know, to shape clay that's almost dry. Okay,
maybe all that's true. But you're in the potter's hands.
And when he's done, you will be glorious. And you will glorify
him. And the whole world will look
at you and they won't say, look what he made of himself. There's
a self-made man. They will say, glory to God,
only He could do that. Rejoice in that, brethren. What you see of yourself that
is still full of corruption, you'll take care of it. The flesh
isn't gonna be gone until you are. I guess that'll be the last
bit of it. Lord will get rid of that which
now pollutes us. But he is making us into the
image of his son. And when you think of what we
were, and even what we are, and then think about what we shall
be, who but God can do that?