"Persevering Grace" Ephesians 2:10 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Ephesians 2 verse 10.

Ephesians 2:10

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

This is one of those load-bearing verses.

This is a verse that is carrying a lot of weight on its shoulders.

This verse is doing a lot.

There's a lot of theology that is lifted up by this, and there are a lot of people that draw their spiritual and support from this, and a lot of people that draw their energy, their appetite, their eagerness to do gospel work from this verse, which is what it is designed for.

This verse has a laser-like focus.

This verse can obliterate all kinds of theological errors.

Those that say they're saved by works, those that think that they are saved by being a good person and trying hard and by righteousness in and of themselves, this verse decimates that.

It makes it clear you're not saved by works.

You're not saved because of any virtue in you.

And by the way, that is the normal default condition of mankind.

Most people in the world would believe that they are saved by their own works.

They might not articulate it like that.

They might not have the vocabulary to say I'm saved by my works.

They might not know the word saved, they might not know the word works, but most people in the world would say that when they die, if God exists, which is an if, but if God exists, God would let me into heaven, if heaven exists, because God would know that I tried hard to be a good person.

I worked hard to be a good dad.

I just did my best.

And God will be satisfied with that.

That is the way most of the world works.

That's the way your typical American thinks that everybody has an equal chance to be good and to be righteous, and God gives us that chance, and I've done my best with it, and so God will reward me.

That's the way most other religions work, everything from Islam, which uses the imagery of scales, where you weigh your good works and your bad works, to in Catholicism, there's the concept of merit that you do certain deeds and sacraments to acquire for yourself merits that God will reward to you, all the way to even Eastern religions that maybe don't even believe in God or a judge, but believe that the way you live your life will be rewarded in the next life, or the way you live in your life will be rewarded in this life with karma, some kind of cosmic balance that you experience through your own conduct.

Human beings are defaulted.

It's our default condition to rely upon works because we are autonomous.

We want to be the captain of our own ship, we want to be the master of our own destiny, we want to choose what happens to us.

And so we fall back on relying on our own works and efforts.

And this verse makes it clear that we are not saved by our own works and our own efforts.

And I just want to drive that home to you because if you rely on works for salvation, if you believe that you are going to heaven when you're a good person, I want you to appreciate just for a second before we go on this morning how little hope is actually in that.

Imagine if you encountered, say, a thief being executed.

We can call him a thief on the cross.

You come across a thief who is being executed, somebody who is, by all accounts, a no-good person, who is not just a common criminal, but a criminal sentenced to death.

And he asks you on his proverbial deathbed if there is hope for his salvation, if there's hope for him when he dies, what's going to happen to him.

Do you have any hope to tell him at that moment if you believe that you are saved by works?

Because what hope would you have to offer him?

He has no more opportunity for works.

You have no hope for him.

Or you go to visit somebody on their deathbed.

A more modern analogy.

He's not going to be crucified, he's not a thief.

He is just a scoundrel, though.

He's a no-good scoundrel.

He's devastated his family through drugs or alcohol abuse or through leaving his family or whatever.

He has just brought heartache wherever he has gone.

He has not worked hard, he has been a curse on his family, and now he's on his deathbed.

And he wants to know if there's hope for him.

No, what do you tell him?

What do you tell him?

Do you have any hope for him?

If you believe that you are saved by your own merit or your own works or your own effort or by trying hard to do good, there is no hope for him other than deception.

But the gospel can provide hope in those circumstances.

Because the gospel tells us that we are not saved by our own works.

We are not saved by our own righteousness or our own effort, but we are saved by grace, despite our works.

We are saved by faith that God gives us absent our works.

So there's one error that people bring, which is that your own conduct in life determines your salvation.

There's another error, though, that is equally dangerous that this verse also steamrolls over, and that is those who say, I have placed my faith in Christ, and I'm going to keep on living as if unchanged.

I'm a Christian now because I have said a prayer, I have placed my faith in Christ, but I'm not going to actually repent of my sins.

I'm not going to see any change in my life.

I'm just going to add Jesus to my life and keep on doing my own thing.

A very common view inside of American churches.

And people will defend that view by saying, listen, I believe by faith that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave, but I'm not ready to give up my sin.

But I know I'm a Christian because of my faith.

And if you tell me I'm supposed to repent of my sin, you're giving me works to do, and we know you're not saved by works.

So I'm going to keep on living in unrepentant sin.

I'm going to keep on trucking.

And nobody can tell me otherwise.

After all, I have faith.

And what can you say about that?

That's another error that this passage totally devastates by showing you that if you have a real encounter with Christ, that real encounter brings with it works.

That real encounter, a real encounter with Jesus Christ will be so radical that it will change your life.

You can't help but lead a different life after a real encounter with the Savior.

So on the one hand, this passage is a, it's like detonating a bomb in the house of those that say they can be saved by their works.

And on the other hand, this passage totally devastates those that think they can lead a life unchanged and yet call themselves Christians.

And this does so through this concept of being made as God's workmanship.

Let me give you an outline this morning.

Three marks of God's workmanship.

And these are three truths that are true in your life.

These marks should be true in your life if you're a Christian.

So this morning, in the sense, I'm talking to believers.

I'm talking to those that have put their faith in Christ.

I know there are some here that are not believers.

I know there are some listening online that are have not put their faith in Christ.

And I hope you hear this message and I hope you hear it and are convicted by it.

And if you're outside of Christ, these three marks are not necessarily true of you.

And I hope that through this message you would give your life to Christ and you would believe in the gospel, and then these would be true of you.

But that's a big asterisk.

It's hanging over these three marks of God's workmanship this morning, is that I'm talking specifically to believers.

And so for those of you who aren't believers, keep listening and keep wondering about the distinction of those whom God has made in Christ from yourself.

And I hope that that convicts you and causes you to come to faith in Christ.

Because this is talking about God's workmanship.

And so marvel for a second, just before we even get to these three marks, marvel for a second, would you?

That the Bible describes believers, that the Bible describes Christians as God's workmanship.

That word workmanship is the ESV word.

The Greek word is poema, which you can almost hear the English word in there, can't you?

Poem.

It's a very interesting Greek word.

It's a word for something that is crafted by hands with intelligence and design, with a personal attention and devotion to it.

That's this word.

And it can be translated a poem in Greek.

It can be translated an artwork.

It's the most common use of it in the Bible's language, anyway, is that of a pot or molding clay.

That an artist puts his hands on something and crafts something with personal attention and this design to it.

It's not a word that would be used for some kind of assembly line procedure.

You know, it's something that's used for a piece of artwork that is unique and intentionally crafted for a specific purpose.

To be not just useful but beautiful.

Both of them are together.

That's this word.

And this is the word that Paul uses here to describe believers.

He wants you to know that believers are God's workmanship, that God has put his hands to you and designed you and molded you and shaped you for his purpose.

Now we know that God doesn't actually have hands.

And so Paul, interesting word, when he's trying to describe the intentionality of God in designing you, uses a word that ascribes to God's hands to best articulate how much personal attention and affection God devoted to designing you.

A painting is designed to express a messenger from the artist.

A poem is not just a random collection of words, but it's designed to express an intention of the artist.

And so it is with believers.

We were made by God to express the intention of the artist.

God has a message to convey through our lives.

And not just any channel will do.

But he designs us perfectly, poetically, personally to convey that.

And that's why the we don't really have an English word that captures that.

The closest thing you you might get, the ESV uses workmanship or craftsmanship, might do a better job of it.

The idea that there's an intentionality in crafting it.

But the idea is that God has personally put his hands in shaping you and forming you so that you can be used for his purpose, for his expressing his beauty.

And that's what it means that you're a workmanship.

Here's three marks of that.

First, that God made you in Christ.

We are his workmanship.

First, it says, created in Christ Jesus.

That when God designed you, he designed you in Christ.

Now, certainly part of this is the new creation that you are when you become a Christian.

And the Ephesians is using this over-the-top language to describe what happens when you become a believer.

You were dead and God made you alive.

You were a prisoner and God redeemed you.

Those are the kind of the images in Ephesians about salvation.

You were dead and God gave you life.

You had chains on you in custody, in prison, and God, through the work of the Holy Spirit, severed those chains.

He regenerated you, he brought you to life and gave you your freedom.

Another word picture here is that you are a new creation.

When a person comes to faith in Christ, they are a new creation.

The old is passed away, behold, the new is come.

A person is born again.

The Holy Spirit gives them life and gives them freedom, has redeemed them from their sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And here Paul says it's as if you are a new creation.

You are created in Christ Jesus.

And this idea that you're created in Christ Jesus, it's speaking of your conversion, but it's going back even before that, to before time from Ephesians 1, where before God made the world, he designed you in his mind.

Before God made the universe, he had a plan for you, and he made you for that plan.

He visualized you, he knew your name, he formed you.

And he formed you in Christ, it says.

In Christ.

Now, so much of Ephesians is connected to the doctrine of predestination or election, and there are those that complain about predestination or election.

They conceive it as I've heard it called like divine duck-duck goose.

That God has pictured all of the people he will create, and then he goes through and he chooses some to save.

You know, saved, saved, not saved, not saved, not saved, saved.

That's what I mean by divine duck-duck goose.

You tracking with me?

But that's not the way the Bible describes salvation.

Don't imagine God visualizing all the people he will make.

And then after that, after he visualizes Jesse and what Jesse will be like and strengths and weaknesses of Jesse and all that, after that, he then decides if he will save me or not.

Not true.

We were created, it says, in Christ Jesus.

So in the mind of God, when he designs you, he designs you in Christ.

Your Christianity is not secondary to you, it's part of God's design for you.

God designed you, he crafted you in his own mind in Christ.

He built you in Christ.

Your Christianity is part of who you are.

When God pictured you, when God formed you, when God planned out your life, he planned out your life in Christ.

That means Christianity is not secondary to who you are, it is central to your identity.

And that's also why, by the way, why you can't boast in your Christianity.

You can't boast in it.

It's not as if he designed you and there was something in you that he saw and chose you to be a Christian.

Otherwise, you could boast.

It was something about you.

Imagine the dog and the cat talking, and the dog boasting to the cat that the dog can bark, and the cat boasting to the dog that the cat can meow.

I mean, it's silly.

Of course the cat can't bark, and of course the dog can't meow.

It's a dog and a cat.

They are kind of made that way.

Not worth bragging about.

And so it is with believers.

God designed you in Christ.

So how could you boast about being in Christ when the one who designed you designs you that way?

And so much so that your identity is wrapped up in Christ.

So that when God looks at you, he sees Christ.

Now he sees you, of course, but you're wrapped up in Christ.

So that he sees you in a very real sense and he sees Christ in an even more profound sense.

I mean, picture this remote control right here.

Here's what I'm advancing the slides with.

I put it in the Bible and I close the top of the Bible.

This remote control now is in the Bible.

It's hidden in the Bible.

The scripture speaks of you being hidden in Christ, adopted in Christ.

You're buried in Christ through your conversion.

You're resurrected in Christ when you come to faith.

And here, this is in Christ, in the Bible.

It's wrapped up in there.

You are so wrapped up in Christ that it's part of who you are.

And the point here in Ephesians 2.10 is that that's how God designed you.

With beauty and intentionality and personally in Christ.

You were made that way in the mind of God.

Of course, you were born that way in sin.

You were born that way, separated from Christ because of your sin.

You lived your life as a one who was running from Christ.

And then through conversion, Jesus adopts you into his own family, calls you his brothers and his sisters.

The Father adopts you into the family of God, and you experience the reality of your connection to Christ, which is how you were designed before you were born.

This is why it's the work of God to give you faith to believe in his son.

Jesus says this in John 6.35.

This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.

This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.

When Jesus says that to the Pharisees, by the way, if you remember John chapter 6, Jesus says, This is the work of God that you believe in this Messiah.

John 6 · chapter mention

And the Pharisees say, What work can you do to prove to us you're Him?

Just marvel at the circular nature of that question, real quick.

Jesus says, This is the work of God that you believe in me.

And they say, Well, what work can you do to cause me to believe in you?

Well, it is the work of God that you would believe in him.

The Pharisees go on to say, Moses gave us manna in the wilderness.

That's why we believe in Moses.

He fed us.

What will you feed us?

And there's nothing spiritual to that question.

They're literally asking for bread.

They're hungry, and they're telling Jesus, we'll believe you're the Messiah if you feed us bread.

That's pretty low standards right there.

And Jesus said, listen, Moses, this is John 6.35, Moses didn't feed you anything.

It's your father who gave you the manna, not Moses, and it's your father who gives you me.

And Jesus says, I am the true bread.

He who eats me shall live.

I am the work of God.

And by the way, he repeats this is the work of God, that you believe in his son, whom he sent.

And when a person comes to faith in Christ, they recognize this is the work of God in them.

So you can truly say, I have placed my faith in Christ, I'm a new creation in Christ, yet not I, but through Christ in me.

It is God's work that brings you to salvation.

Second mark of God's workmanship.

God made you in Christ.

Secondly, God made you for work.

Verse 10, created in Christ Jesus for good works.

When God designed you, he didn't design you merely to come to Christ, he designed you to come to Christ and then to lead a life of good works.

When you speak of predestination, often you speak of predestination for salvation, but it doesn't stop there.

Predestination speaks of salvation and of your life of works after that.

You come to faith in Christ, God has planned out things for you to do, He has marked you with works for you to do.

He wants you to labor for Him.

God has work that He wants done on earth, and He is saving you to do that work on earth.

Not just generically, it's not like God says, Well, there's a lot to be done.

I need to save a lot of people and have them do it.

But personally, where God says, I want these things done.

And the plan of God from before eternity, the comprehensive sovereign decree of God, his plan for all things, he says, I want these specific works done, and I want this specific person to do those works.

He's planning out who is going to do his work in this world before he made the world.

He has it in his mind.

He did not save you to put you on a shelf, he saved you to use you for his purposes.

Now, why would God save you to do work for him?

Does he need workers?

Because he's lazy.

Like, can't he do his own work?

Obviously, he could.

I mean, the rocks could proclaim the gospel to the world instead of missionaries.

Angels could write the good news on the sky instead of people devoting their life to going to other nations and learning other languages.

I mean, that's a lot of work.

Wouldn't it be easier if an angel just wrote it?

Well, yes, it would.

And it'd be easier if rocks just proclaimed the gospel.

That's true.

But that's not God's design.

God's design is for workers, people to do it because God is glorified more through workers than he is through rocks or angels.

That's the bottom line.

An often used analogy is of a dad mowing the grass with his little son.

His son sees the dad mowing the grass every weekend, and the son wants to help, and so he asks the dad, and the dad brings the son out, and there's the son holding on, you know, reaching up to the lawnmower, holding the safety bar, and pushing the lawnmower with the dad behind him pushing the lawnmower.

Does that actually help the grass get mowed faster?

Of course not.

And if you're a dad that likes straight lines in the grass, having the son do this does not help that either.

I mean, it's all over the place.

Drunken sailors mowing the grass out there.

So why does the dad let the son do that?

Why doesn't the dad say, no, don't mow the grass?

Wait until you grow up, get your own grass.

Because the father-son relationship is, in a sense, glorified through the father teaching the son what the father likes to do.

Through the father teaching the son to the son wants to learn because he sees the dad doing it.

There's a partnership there that is more glorifying of the relationship than straight lines in the grass would be.

So, yes, the gospel work in this world could be done more efficiently if God didn't use us.

I mean, we just get in the way.

There is a lot of overhead involved with using people.

You know that, right?

There's a lot of excess time and energy and effort that is spent that is unnecessary to the task at hand.

And yet, God chooses to use us because he is glorified through that.

He's glorified through that.

So God has designed you and He designed you for work to do because He is glorified through you doing work.

Now, if that is true, why aren't you saved by works then?

Why aren't you saved by works?

If God is glorified through you doing work with Him, why aren't you saved by works?

In fact, look at verses 9 and 10.

They're paired right together.

Look at the verse 9.

You're saved not as a result of works.

Verse 10, you were saved for good works.

Doesn't that seem like a contradiction?

Verse 9 says, not by works.

Verse 10 says for works.

Those two verses make angry neighbors.

Those are two neighbors who don't like each other, it seems like.

Spurgeon referred to verses 9 and 10 as an orthodox paradox, which is one of my new favorite phrases.

An orthodox paradox.

People are saved apart from works, but they are saved for works.

You are not saved by works, but without holiness no one will see the Lord.

How do you balance out that contradiction?

Well, you have to understand, if you rely on your works for salvation, then you have a very poor understanding of God's holiness.

You have a poor understanding of your own holiness, your own goodness.

Earlier I said, what hope would you have to tell a scoundrel on their deathbed?

What hope would you have to share with a thief on the cross?

Do you understand there's not a big difference between you and that person?

There's not a big difference between the thief on the cross and you, or between the scoundrel on his deathbed and you.

It's only an issue of degree.

If your standard is the absolute infinite holiness and perfections of God, I mean, I suppose you might be a little bit better by that standard than the scoundrel or than the thief on the cross, but not by much, if we're being honest.

I mean, God is infinitely holy, and you are a very profound sinner, even though you keep it in most of the time.

There's not a big difference between you and the thief on the cross.

And so if you are relying on your works for salvation, you're demonstrating that you have no foundation to actually do good works from.

If you think that you can rely on works for salvation, the truth is that your heart is so corrupted by self-righteousness that none of your works are going to be good.

That is the great irony of the person who relies on works for salvation, is that they're not capable of doing any good works.

Somebody says the most important thing for God is if you tried hard, is not capable of trying hard for God.

It's only when you repent of relying on your works that you are capable of good works.

It's only once you cease seeing your good works as helpful towards your salvation that you become capable of doing good works at all.

And so this verse teaches you that God made you for work, and that work commences after you get saved.

That work commences once you repent of doing works for salvation.

God wants you to do works.

Step one, repent from doing works.

And then having your heart cleansed by faith enables you to do works that are pleasing to God.

Works don't lead to salvation, but works flow from salvation.

That's the point.

It's the difference between salvation and sanctification.

You cannot be saved by works, but you are sanctified by works.

There is no other way to be sanctified other than by works.

You are sanctified by works.

God made you for those works, and you're sanctified by them.

You're not saved by them, but once saved, those works flow from you, and you're sanctified by them.

John 15, verse 8.

John 15:8

By this my Father is glorified.

That you bear much fruit, and so you prove to be my disciples.

Do you see the connection between the glory of God and you doing works?

By this, God is glorified, Jesus says, that you bear fruit, and that proves you're a disciple.

That demonstrates to the world you're a disciple.

Good fruit has to come from a good tree.

If you're pulling off diseased fruit, you know the tree is diseased.

A diseased tree is not going to bear good fruit.

It just won't.

And of course, adding good fruit to a diseased tree does not fix the tree.

You know this.

We have a fig tree at our house that we bought at Mount Vernon four years ago, and somebody lied to us and told us you could grow fig trees in Virginia.

So we've been laboring now, I think, for four years on this thing.

And it is this year it actually gives us some meager fruit.

We're so excited when we get a good fig, we beat the squirrels to it.

It's much rejoicing in our house.

But we can't go to the store and buy a bag of healthy figs and tape them to the tree.

I mean, that would that would probably actually kill the tree.

You recognize the point of this illustration that somebody who is truly connected to the vine is going to bear good fruit.

That's the reality.

God saved you so that you can produce fruit in your life.

And of course, it's the Lord's work in you that's producing the fruit.

It's the fruit of the Spirit.

It's called the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of the Jesse, it's the fruit of the Spirit.

And it's the Spirit that works in you and produces that fruit, which is the works you do in your life.

You are created for that purpose, for working for Christ.

And because it's all the work of the Lord, of course it's by grace.

If your works is a fruit of regeneration and regeneration is of grace, of course your sanctification is of grace.

Of course it is.

If it flows out of regeneration, of course it is of grace.

It is you doing the work, but it is God working in you and through you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

You work out your salvation with fear and trembling because you know it's the Lord who's working in you.

So that as you do the works that you now desire to do, because you're a Christian, as you do those works, you can honestly say, it is I who work who is working, yet not I, but through Christ in me.

The third mark of God's workmanship.

God made you in Christ.

God made you for work, and thirdly, God made you without you.

God made you for these works without consulting you, He didn't talk to you, He didn't analyze your strengths and weaknesses and then make works for you to do.

But the opposite happens.

God has work for you to do and then prepares you for those works.

He does this.

He has the works chosen for you before he even made you.

These works are what he is directing us to.

He has designed you for specific jobs, specific work in your life, and now he's set you free in the world to do the things that he made you to do.

He designed you and gifted you to use the strengths he gave you to do the works he wants you to do.

And there, listen, every person has different strengths and weaknesses.

Every person is made differently, and so we all have different works to do in this world.

You know, DC was up here singing first hour, well, second hour too.

DC was singing this morning, and he and I were made differently.

We have different strengths and weaknesses, and so we have different jobs to do.

God made us for different works, and we can't confuse those jobs.

He's not gonna come preach a sermon, and I'm not gonna come sing a solo.

It's just it's for everybody's betterment that way.

And it's not just that specific kind of calling, like preaching versus singing, but he didn't, God didn't prepare me to disciple DC's family, and he didn't prepare DC to disciple my family.

He gave us different categories of work there, different spheres.

And he didn't make me to be a gospel influence in the lives of all those that DC works with, and he didn't make DC to be a gospel influence in the lives of the people of my neighbors in my neighborhood.

He gave us each different works to do, which is great news because you know, DC's personality, I'm choosing him because he's someone who's very well known in the church, and the kind of personality that he has and the personal traits he has enables him to be much more effective with the people he's around than I could be, and vice versa.

But the great news with that is that God made us each specifically for the works that he gave us, and he didn't give us the wrong person's works.

You're not a chance creation in this world.

We're not just all matter in motion, man.

I mean, God specifically designed us, specifically made us who we are with our intelligence and our aptitude and our personality for the works that he gave us to do.

So that God could be glorified through how we do those works.

And he chose them for us before he made us.

If you go over to somebody's house for dinner and you walk in and they have the dining room table set for dinner already, they set it before you got there.

They were thinking of you and said it before you got there.

I know some people, Deedra's mother, for example, who's probably gonna be listening to this, she'll set the table days before the cut of the whoever they're having over for dinner.

You know, she's having somebody over for dinner on Friday, she'll have that table set on like Sunday night after church.

She sets it for the next Friday night dinner.

A thing is set a week in ahead of time.

Do you understand that God prepares the table for you before you were even born?

He anticipated what your life would be like because he designed you, and then he places you where he wants you to do the works that he had already prepared for you to do.

He designed you to serve him.

Think of the divine love that chose Esther to liberate the Jews.

Before Esther even knew the Jews were in danger, she was chosen to be the one who would liberate them.

Before she would ever dream of being queen, she was chosen by God to liberate the Jews.

Think of Rahab.

Before she even knew what Israel was, or before she even knew what a Jew was, God had chosen her to be the one to allow Jericho to fall and to let the spies get away.

Think of Ruth.

Before Ruth had even met Naomi's son, before Ruth even knew a Jew in the whole world, God had chosen her to be in the line of David, in the line of the Savior.

What's true of Rahab and what's true of Ruth and what's true of Esther is true of you.

When Paul was a Pharisee, before Paul was a Pharisee, he was chosen by God to be the minister of the gospel of the Gentiles, equipped in every way for that.

But the same is true for you.

God designed you perfectly for what he wants you to do.

When we moved into our house, what, eight years ago now, in the backyard is a shed, and inside the shed was is to this very moment an edger.

Now I used to work in lawn care for many years.

I spent many years as a landscaper and on a crew that was cutting grass, but we I never use an edger in my whole life.

We used line trimmers.

We had an army of line trimmers for that.

Never use an edger.

But we move into our house and there's an edger.

The previous owner left it to us, the edger conveyed, I guess, and it's sitting in the shed.

And I went and looked at it once, and I mean it said edger on the side, so I knew what it was.

If it didn't say it, I wouldn't have known what it was.

But it said it.

So I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how it worked.

And it's no power switch on it, and there's no gas tank on it, and so I gave up.

And it has sat in the shed for seven years until the start of this summer, a few months ago, DJ tells me, we're either gonna do something with this or we're giving it away.

Okay?

Because if we're done with having this thing sit in our shed for years, figure it out.

So I Google it and I figure it out.

There's a power cord in it.

It was all rolled up inside of it.

Who knew?

I guess somebody who's used one before would know that.

But you have to like pull out the power cord.

I didn't even know it had a power cord, but you pull it out.

It's only like this long, so I have to go to Home Depot and buy this massive extension cord and figure out how to plug it in, and now I can use it to edge my grass.

I've used it a whole one time now, and it's back in the shed.

But now I know what it's for.

And I know how to turn it on.

The breakdown there is that the person who designed the edger and the person who purchased the edger are different people than me.

I own the edger and I don't know what it's for.

God designed you and He made you and He equipped you to do the task He wants you to do.

And God is, lo and behold, also the one who redeemed you and see He owns you right now.

You're not in somebody else's shed.

You're sitting in the shed of the one who owns you, the one who designed you, and the one who made you perfectly for his work.

God has work for you to do that he made you for perfectly.

And so, of course, it is all of grace.

Because this is the fruit of regeneration, of course it is of grace that God gives you good works to do.

He gives them to you beforehand.

So that nobody can boast about their work.

Nobody can brag about how effective they are in gospel ministry because it's all work that God chose for them to do before they were even made.

So God gets all the glory.

You can do gospel work, and yet you would still declare, yet not I, but through Christ in me.

Well, these are the three marks of God's workmanship.

The God made you in Christ, He made you for work, and He made you without you.

He made you these works, He made these works for you before He even made you.

How should you respond to this?

Let me give you two ways in closing.

You should respond to this first with confidence.

This should be tremendously encouraging to you.

This should give you a sense of confidence and boldness because you're not gonna fail for what God has for you to do.

Because he made you to do it.

Now you might fail with your own goals and your own objectives, and it's good to fail, but failure sometimes is God's plan for your life.

You're not ultimately going to fail.

You're gonna accomplish exactly what God wants you to do, and if in the meantime you stumble here and there, God is just teaching you your own limitations.

But you should have confidence in evangelism.

You should have confidence in sharing the gospel with people that God has put around you because he made you for that purpose.

And if you share the gospel with somebody and they reject you, that's not on you.

It's just God's way of teaching you.

You're not the Holy Spirit.

He's the one who saves people.

He uses you to bring them to the faith, but ultimately he's the one that saves people.

That's fine.

You should have confidence in your work, though.

You should have confidence in how God wants to use you.

You understand that if you are a believer, you have a pure fountain that flows from your heart now, so clean water flows from your heart.

The things you do for Christ will be good and noble before God because he has sanctified you and he prepared you for that purpose.

If the Lord is your savior, you have fountains of living water flowing from you.

And so live with boldness.

Serve the Lord with boldness.

Be confident.

You're not going to lose your salvation.

This is a strong antidote to those that believe you can lose your salvation.

Because look, it says God has prepared these deeds beforehand for you.

He saved you and he's going to use you throughout your life.

Have confidence in that.

Don't doubt the love of your heavenly Father.

Don't doubt the security of the Holy Spirit.

Don't doubt the works that God has placed in front of you.

Don't feel worthless.

Don't feel useless in life.

God saved you to use you.

And as long as He keeps you alive, He has a work for you.

You're not going to run out of things to do because God saved you for the purpose of good works.

When you feel like you have failed or you feel like you're not powerful enough to be a gospel witness to people or to do the work of the Lord in this world, you should not, you should not feel that way because God saved you for this purpose.

It's not the box that makes the ring special.

You know this, right?

It's not the box that makes the ring special.

It's what's inside the box.

And you are not what makes the work God has given you special.

It's the Lord's Spirit inside you that sanctifies you and compels you to do gospel work.

That's what gives your life integrity and gives your work efficacy and power.

It's the Lord's work in you.

So your first response to this is confidence.

Your second response is obedience.

Look at how the verse ends.

That we should walk in them.

God created you in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand, that you should walk in them.

God wants you to do work in this life.

He doesn't want you to hole up and hunker down and wait for this life to be over.

He wants you to labor for him.

It is definitely better to burn out than to rust out.

And I've had people tell me when I said that before, no, no, no, because either way you're out.

What?

No, you're gonna die.

News flash, you're going to be out.

You're going to exit this life.

That will happen.

You can't avoid rusting out.

You're going to expend your life and you will die.

It is better to go hard.

It's better to live for Christ with boldness and to do what he wants you to do than it is to put yourself up on a shelf.

The surest way to waste your life is to try to protect it and keep it and just stop it.

You live with boldness, knowing that God has made you for the purpose, and that purpose is living with boldness for him.

You have to be obedient to this.

You know, if someone says, Listen, I place my faith in Christ, but I'm not going to repent for my sin.

I place my faith in Christ, but I'm just going to live how I want to live, and I'm just going to be me and just do according to my own desires because, you know, that's that's who I am.

That person has not had an encounter with the Lord.

A real encounter with the Lord rocks your world and it changes who you are and presents to you a life of conformity to his word that you can then walk in.

Granted, you fail at every, you know, at every step, but you're walking in the right direction.

You're following the footprints he's laid out for you to walk in.

How can someone say they're following the Lord when they're not walking down the path he paved in front of them?

Well, I believe in the Lord, but I'm going to walk that way instead of that way.

Hardly.

God saved you, changed you, reoriented you, and pointed you down the path of obedience.

Someone says, Ah, I believe in Christ, I'm going to go on and live as I like.

You cannot do that.

Because if you believe in Christ, he will not let you live on in your flesh, giving into the desires of your flesh.

By his spirit, he will change your hearts and he will conform you to his image.

He will mortify the afflictions and the lusts of your heart and conform them to his own heart towards you.

And if that's not happening to you, that is a great big warning sign that you are not in the faith.

If God gives you faith, he will give you works afterwards.

He does not give anyone faith and not give them works.

He does not give anyone faith and fail to conform them to his word.

One of my kids recently received a matchbox car that you like pull back and the wheels wind up and then you let it go.

You know the kind of car?

That's how God made us.

That he winds us back at salvation and then he lets us go and launches us into the world.

All scripture is breathed out by God, 2 Timothy 3.16 says.

And is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness so the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

God saved you and gave you his spirit and gave you his word so that you would be equipped for every good work.

I serve on the board of a uh a nonprofit that recently had a donor give us several, I think five or six very, very expensive violins.

This guy is a very wealthy uh musician and music professor, and I thought music professor and wealthy wouldn't go together, but in God's providence they did in his life, and is these extremely expensive violins, and he donated them to this nonprofit, which are a generous gift, but the violins aren't helpful to us, and so we turn around to try to sell them.

We have them appraised, and they're you know ridiculous amounts of money, and we do things like lend them out to famous musicians to play them because that increases the value of a violin, I guess, when a famous person plays it, it's like, oh, it's worth more now.

And so we do that, and we got in this weird cycle though, with the higher their value went, the fewer people could be interested in them because the fewer people that could afford them, and we sold some, but for several hundred thousand dollars, which is crazy when you think of a violin, but we had this one that the value went over a million bucks, and nobody's gonna buy it, and it's just sitting in a safe.

And after a couple years, the guy who donated it to us comes back and buys it from us.

He said he just couldn't sleep at night thinking of that violin in a safe.

It doesn't belong in a safe, it needs to be played.

And so he went and bought it back and now plays it at his own church every Sunday.

It's great.

They have no idea what's in front of them.

This is us.

God designed us with a purpose, crafted us with value and love and intention, and gives us infinite worth based upon the work he wants us to do.

Our sin locks us up in a safe, our sin makes us worthless and useless.

But God, because of the love he has for us, breaks into that bank, breaks open that safe, and takes us out and puts us back in the world where we can be used by him.

Lord, we're thankful that you loved us enough to save us and then to use us for your glory and for your purposes.

Lord, keep us from loving our own life above obedience, keep us from loving our own comfort or safety above the work that you would have us to do.

Give us the faith to take risks for the gospel.

Give us the faith to be bold for the gospel, give us the faith to be courageous ambassadors for your name's sake in this world.

And we pray that you would be honored and glorified through how we live.

I pray for anyone listening to this message that doesn't know you.

I pray that they would be convicted by their sin, that they would see that their works cannot save them, that they would fall at your feet, so to speak, that they in their own hearts and minds would pray to you and beg you for salvation.

They would confess their sins to you.

And by turning to you in faith, that you would receive them in faith and save them.

I pray there would be people this morning here in this worship center who come to faith in Christ because of what they read in the Bible this morning.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.