Masterpiece

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Hey, so, has anybody ever said to you, you're a piece of work? Have they said that to you? Yeah? Yeah? Usually it's kind of with that little sarcasm in it, right? Well, you are a piece of work. And it's usually after you've shown kind of a toad towards them, or said something a little snarky. I'm never snarky, by the way. No, but, yeah. And so, I don't think we realize that that is so true. That's true beyond their wildest imagination, if they've said it about you. And it's true beyond your imagination, probably. You are a piece of work. So, what I want you to do right now is turn to the person next to you and say, you're a piece of work. I know, we're laughing about it, but it's true. And here's the Bible verse where we can say, this is a biblical, gospel-centered message here. It's Ephesians 2.10. This is the verse that we're going to be focusing on as kind of the foundation for this six-week series. Let's say it together. It's nice and short. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Okay. What kind of piece of work are you? That's kind of the question. And we're going to find out here in this message through three points. And these might be intriguing to you at first, but it's going to make a lot of sense at the end. It's all in this verse. First of all, God's poem. That's number one. Number two is God's prototype. And number three is God's purpose. So, first of all, God's poem. Don't think you're the clunky when we're talking about a piece of work. It's not my seventh grade modeling clay art project. Do you remember that? I goofed around. You're not a goof. You're not a mistake. You're not like an oops at all. And it's not even maybe your shop class project you did in high school. And it's not even your grandma's crazy quilt that she made for you. Even though that is beautiful and it's an heirloom and you're holding on to it. Maybe you're thinking more like a masterpiece. Like a Rembrandt. Like this painting here of Rembrandt. Or maybe a Manet. Or maybe even a Picasso. Or maybe not Picasso, because you kind of look at it like, oh. Or if you think architecturally, maybe like I.M. Pei's. Beautiful symmetry. Or possibly Frank Gehry, if you want to be a little more wild and crazy. Right? Or if you want to go farther, one of my favorite novels. Maybe like Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Or possibly a wonderful play drama by William Shakespeare. Okay? Now why do I bring up all of these artistic creations? Because that's kind of the word that's behind all of this. It's God's workmanship. And the Greek word is actually the word poiema. There it is, poiema. And you can see what word we get from it in English. Poem. So it's not like a piece of information or statistic that God gives that he just kind of manufactures. It's not that you are a mass-produced widget that comes out of his God machine factory. You are an artistic masterpiece. God's poem. Now there's one other passage outside of Ephesians 2.10 that Paul uses this term. He chose it very specifically here because he only uses it twice in all of his letters. And the other place is in Romans 1.20 where he says, That's the word poiema there. The things that have been made. It takes quite a few words to explain what poiema is. He's made it so that nobody's without excuse. In other words, you can look at everything in this whole world. It's an epic, amazing tapestry of God's glory and grace and mercy and love he created out of nothing. Now you can think of the wonderful poems that somebody like, let's see, Homer or Dante or Milton or Spencer have written in the past or Shakespeare. And they're wonderful things that might be, but guess what? They're just words on a page. Or maybe they're finally dramatized on a stage. But the poiema, the poem that God makes, comes to life. He speaks a word and it happens. It's so. It's the way it is. And it accomplishes everything he intends. So we have God's great symphony. God's masterpiece. God's poetic glory throughout everything that you see in this universe. But this is the amazing thing about it. Even though it's everywhere listed as finite and small in this vast universe of billions and trillions of stars and galaxies and everything else that we haven't even grasped. You, though, are more brilliant than the sun itself in God's eyes. And even more glorious and awesome than the Andromeda galaxy that we can see through our microscopes. Because what you can do is you can stand in wonder and awe and response and love and grace and none of the rest of creation does that. It gives God glory but doesn't respond freely to his grace. Do you get that? So when we're talking about your shape, what's amazing is why would even God? It's rather an amazing psalm. You could read it sometime. It says, when I loo...