For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.—Ephesians 2:10

At the end of this sermon, I am going to be calling three groups of people to come to the front: (1) current global partners, (2) those in the Nurture Program, (3) those sensing a stirring to global missions. As always, there will be no guilt trip or gimmicks, or manipulation. We have a text and we are going to ask God to speak to us and we are going to ask for the grace to obey.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.—Ephesians 2:10

This is a short verse—22 words in English. This text clearly tells us two things: (1) God made us and (2) He has a mission for us. You could go with the language of the text and say, “We are his workmanship and he has good works for us to walk in.” But these are not two separate or segregated things in this text. We are created for good works, works that God planned beforehand for us. So we could summarize the main point in six words: We are made for a mission.

I want to help you see this main point by breaking this verse into two parts: His work and our works.

His Work

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

First, look at that word “workmanship.” I wonder if you believe it. It is a wonderful Greek word poeima. You can hear in that word the English word “poem.” We get our English word “poem” from that Greek word poeima. It occurs twice in the New Testament (Romans 1:20; Ephesians 2:10).

Listen to Romans 1:20 – For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made (poeima). So they are without excuse.

Paul is making a very simple point. He is saying that humanity has no excuse when it comes to the question of the existence of the Creator because of the poem of creation. Do you feel the force of this logic? If you are on a beach, and you see a mark in the sand, there are a couple of options. It could be that the waves have surged onto the shore and made a little squiggle in the sand. Or it could be that a little child is trying to draw the letter “l” in the sand. But no one could look at a poem in the sand (e.g., Roses are red, violets are blue, I love Global Focus and so do you) and then seriously conclude, “Wow, I never knew that the waves possessed such great poetic imagination and uncanny poetic rhythm.”

We know if there is a poem, there is a poet. If there is a creation, then there is a Creator.

The same is true in my home state of South Dakota. We have a famous place there where you are driving along and suddenly you see the faces of the presidents on the side of a mountain (Mount Rushmore). No one sees that and suddenly exclaims, “Isn’t erosion amazing!? It just so happened that over time, erosion randomly produced those facial features.” No way does anyone ever think that. If there is a sculpture, then there is a sculptor.

So the first use of poiema in Romans 1:20 is talking about the first creation. In the same way, the second use of poiema in Ephesians 2:10 is talking about the new creation.

We know that is what Paul means because he immediately adds a phrase of explanation – we are his workmanship, “created in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:10). That is you. This is a familiar theme in Paul: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are God’s poem, his workmanship, his new creation work of grace.

Do you feel the force of what he is saying? There is a direct implication to this that I don’t want you to miss. This is so personal on God’s part, and so we can’t miss God’s heart on display here. Psalm 104:31 says that God rejoices in his works. We see it clearly and repeatedly in Genesis 1 where God takes a step back to look at all he made: It is good, it is good, it is good, it is good, it is good, it is very good (when he made humanity).

Why do you think the new creation would be any different? Do you think that God does not delight in the creation of his children? He adopts them into his everlasting family! If he made you a new creation, isn’t it even more true and right that he delights over us in declaring “very good”? Why would anyone put a negative spin on this and assume that “I may be God’s poem, but it feels like I am only the rough draft that should get thrown away in God’s cosmic waste basket.” This is God’s revelation. He is telling us this truth. We are called to receive what God says. He is speaking to you and saying: “Believe this; bank on this truth.” Guard against projection that would negate this revelation. Projection puts words in God’s mouth—when we project how we feel about ourselves and then assume that is how God must feel about us. Will you let this text tell you who you are? Let this be a moment of revelation for you—God’s personal word—don’t let it bounce off your bubble of negativity.

I confess that pastorally I get very discouraged by the children of God who feel that their testimony is not very moving or special. In fact, some people would even say that they have a boring testimony. I hear about other people who have been through so much and then Jesus got a hold of them. They overcame so much—like drug addiction. I became a Christian when I was a child. Wish I’d been addicted to drugs or something so that I had a great story. Dear friend, you are created in Christ Jesus—you are a new creation—his workmanship. How did he make you? You have to go back to Ephesians 2:4 to know the start of your story.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.—Ephesians 2:4–6

Do you see how God made you a new creation? How he made you alive? You were dead—spiritually dead. Not almost dead. Stone cold dead. Salvation is a not a cerebral decision that an almost-dead person makes. It is the wrong picture here to imagine that Paul is saying we were almost dead—like we were in danger of drowning, and God throws a lifesaver called salvation just within our reach. All we have to do is decide to be rescued and we receive it.

Don’t water down the sheer supernatural miracle of salvation. This is something God does. Did Adam make himself alive when he was dust? Did he make himself a mist to float over to God’s breath of life? God does not throw a lifesaver and say, “I sure hope he or she reaches for it.” He doesn’t throw the lifesaver; he is the lifesaver. He does not merely offer life. He gives it—MAKES us alive. You were stone-cold dead at the bottom of the lake and God dove in and dragged you out of the watery spiritual grave and performed spiritual divine mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with the breath of life and made you alive. Yes, you may feel like a mess. You may not feel like much. But you are a miracle. There are no boring testimonies, because being raised from the dead is not boring. Yeah, I grew up in a Christian home and my parents told me about Jesus and I responded. Spiritually, you were six feet under and when your parents told you about Jesus. God did something: He created you, raised you, seated you with Christ.

That is your story. Do you know it? Do you ever tell it to yourself or to others? Has it ever become central to you—like part of the very core of who you are? Paul now moves to the other bookend of your story. He began at the beginning of spiritual life (vv. 4–6), then he moves to the culmination of it (v. 7).

So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.—Ephesians 2:7

I find it so sad when athletes like Michael Jordan are no longer in their prime. They have lost a few steps, and they know it. They retire and then they make a comeback because they miss the competition. It is hard to come to grips with the fact you’re your best days are behind you—come and gone. The children of God are different. They know the best days are not behind them! We are not like professional athletes with our glory days tragically behind us. We are children of God with our glory days joyfully ahead of us. And those glory days will never end.

Think of the glory that is coming when God will show off his royal splendor—and not like earthly kings. It is like King Ahasuerus, who wanted to show his splendor and greatness. Esther 1:4 says that he “showed the riches of his royal glory and the splendor and pomp of his greatness for many days, 180 days” (Esther 1:4).

God says, royal splendor for 180 days and a feast for seven days? I display my royal splendor for eternal days—never ending. You can’t count them. We have an eternal feast: The marriage supper of the Lamb. This celebration doesn’t end, but only increases in intensity. When we’ve been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun. Nobody is up in heaven in a cave with chalk writing tick marks to see how many days have passed.

A feast for seven days in which you have couches of gold—golden furniture, that’s all you got? I have streets of gold. Ahasuerus makes a big deal of the fact that people could drink during those seven feast days according to the edict – “no compulsion” (Esther 1:8). That is what you don’t have: no compulsion. Each person can drink as much as they want without limit. God says, “I have no death, no sadness, no sin.” But the most amazing riches are displayed through eternal days (coming ages) when he will “show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:7).

Nobody comes away from this display of royal wealth and says, “Wow, this king loves me.” It is only an episode of lifestyles of the rich & famous. You get a brief, fleeting look into someone else’s life. But God adopts us as his children. All his royal wealth—riches—they are riches of kindness. We become sons and daughters of the King.

I remember as a kid being a little bit scared of heaven. I just thought it would be weird to be on a cloud and play a harp all day, like band practice all day. (Kids would complain about their piano lessons because they couldn’t go outside and play). I asked somebody about heaven and they gave me the worst explanation. They said, “Well, Jason, heaven is like one eternal church service.” That wasn’t good news. My church services were boring. I took my church services and multiplied them by eternity, and I was scared of boredom in heaven. I thought it has to be better than hell, but still boring.

These verses show the children of God blown away by immeasurable riches of God’s kindness lavished on us: A tidal wave of grace crashing over us every day. Just when you think, “Ohthat is too much. I don’t know if I can handle that much grace and glory or I am going to burst,” the next day it’s bigger and better and richer and more satisfying and mind blowing.

You don’t have a boring testimony at the beginning of your Christian life (the new creation), and you are not going to be bored on the other end of life either, because it doesn’t end. You are not going to be bored—you are going to be blown away by God’s love every day.

Application for Point 1

You might be asking, “What does all of this have to do with a vision for missions?” If anyone is ever going to go to hard places where the gospel is not known, you need to first know where you came from and where you are going. You of all people should be able to look at others in their spiritual deadness and say, “That doesn’t intimidate me. I can’t say things well enough to make them alive, but they are not too dead for God. I should know. I was dead! Do you think there are different shades of spiritual deadness? You can’t look at someone and say, “They are almost dead,” any more than you can say, “she is almost pregnant.” You are or you aren’t. You were dead and God saved you.

Now look at your future and compare it to their future. Remember that you were a child of wrath. You were going to eternal torment and misery. There is a double infinity to salvation: Saved from infinite wrath and torment for infinite love and joy! How can you not want that for others with every fiber of your being?!

I’m saying this now because before this gospel is to go wide to all the unengaged and unreached peoples of the world, it first needs to go deep. It needs to go deep to the unreached places in our hearts that are still cold and dark and doubting God’s full love and grace and goodness and kindness and power. You will not declare the gospel if you don’t first delight in the gospel. C.S. Lewis’s point about praise gets at the very heart of how loving the gospel leads to sharing the gospel—urging others to join in believing the gospel and savoring the gospel.

I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?—C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory 

I can’t help but pause and address you if you are an unbeliever overhearing these things today. Isn’t the gospel glorious? Isn’t the love of God absolutely astonishing? Join us in believing the good news of Jesus who came into the world to save sinners. Be saved by this grace through faith that simply and totally relies upon Jesus to save us from all the wrath that our sins deserve. Be rescued from the unquenchable fire and receive the hope of glory—face-to-face fellowship with your Creator and Redeemer in glory.

Thus far God has come to us and told us who we are: We are his new creation. That work had a beginning and it will have an eternal conclusion, but what about the middle? What about now? Does he have a purpose for us now?

2. Our Works

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.—Ephesians 2:10

The first thing to see is that Paul says you were saved and made a new creation for good works. You are not saved by good works; you are saved for good works. Listen to verses 8–9: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Salvation is not by works. We do not create ourselves by our good works. We are not saved by good works, but we are saved for good works. Devoting yourself to good works is not legalism. Being zealous for good works is biblical, not legalistic. Listen to Titus 2:13–14,

… Our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Having zeal for good works is different than trusting in good works (that is legalism). We don’t do to receive; we do because we already have received. As Martin Lloyd-Jones says, “The opposite of trusting in your works is not doing nothing, it is doing everything but not trusting in any of it” (Spiritual Depression, p. 211). We are saved by faith in Christ, not by faith in our works.

The second thing to see is that what we call “our works” are not really ours in the ultimate sense. God himself has planned the works and prepared them. There is so much freedom in those words: “… which God prepared beforehand.” You don’t have to have the plan in hand. You don’t have to have the beginning and the end and all points in between figured out. He already does.

So you may be asking, then in what sense are they “our works”? I am glad you asked. The third thing to see is that our part (which explains why they really are our works in some sense) is simply to walk in them. He empowers our walking, but he doesn’t walk for us. He gives us the ability to walk (he creates spiritual legs, so to speak); he carefully constructed the walking path—and now he says “Get out there and walk!”

This whole section begins in verse 1 and ends at verse 10, and the word “walk” is the bookend term.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked (Ephesians 2:1, 2).

… Good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).

There was a way you walked when you were dead in sins and now there is a way that you walk when you are alive from the dead. Your life will look different! How do we know what good works to walk in? This is a call for discernment. We need clarity to know what they are and courage to act on our clarity. But this is not a chore! This is a joyful calling! We get to be part of the redemption and rescue story that God has planned from all eternity past.

We know the beginning and the end. We just have this short little slice of time in the middle where we get to be part of the work that will have everlasting effects. He has this short little middle section planned out, and I don’t want to miss it!

Application: Arguing With ‘Defeaters’

So here is what I want to do. I don’t think there are too many people here who are the children of God and yet would say that God does not love them. But there are many here who would say, “Well maybe he loves me, but he cannot use me.” These are defeater thoughts. They keep you from the walk God has for you. I want to argue with your unbelief for a moment. This is very personal for me. I want to tell you my story, because this is a life message for me.

I grew up basically believing that God could never use me. My parents divorced when I was 8 years old. I was too messed up. Sometimes I remember yelling at the TV during chipper commercials where everyone was happy and life looked easy. “Easy for you to say—your parents are not getting a divorce.”

I did not find a lot of hope in church. There was some “performance” in church—like how well people knew their Bibles. I would be asked questions and feel dumb because I couldn’t answer them. I did not grow up reading the Bible. I was embarrassed in Sunday school by how my classmates, even people younger than me, knew so much more about the Bible than I did.

I never read the Bible growing up. I would hear it in church and I would hear it once a week when my grandparents would read it right after Sunday lunch. Not a very promising beginning for a preacher. In fact, I always struggled with knowing what to do with my life. I didn’t know this verse was in the Bible, and I didn’t really pray about what good works God had planned for me.

My mom worked at a hospital and she came to me one day and said, “You know, Jason, if you want to make a lot of money and not have to do a lot, you should become an anesthesiologist. Just put people to sleep.” I wanted to know more!

But by that point in my life the Lord had gotten hold of me and I wanted to minister to people and share the love of Christ with them. There seemed to be a hole in my plan with this occupation: “How can I minister to people and share the love of Christ with them if I put them to sleep?” So I changed my major to occupational therapy. That would give me a hands-on way to ministry to hurting people.

My plan came crashing to the ground one day in a very unexpected way. My grandpa was an elder in my home church growing up. One day, at the very end of a car ride, my grandpa pulled the pin on a spiritual hand grenade: “Jason, I have been watching the way you live and I think God may be calling you into ministry.”

I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. He must not really know me like he thinks he does. I was the least likely person that God would call to preach. I was thinking this in my head, but I didn’t say it out loud. I respected my grandpa so I said I would “pray about it.” But pray about it meant, “I will go home, talk it over with God, and he and I will both agree that this is a ridiculous idea.”

But that is not what happened. I started praying and suddenly I had this colossal sense of burden. I could not shake the sense that perhaps God wanted me to do this. I argued with God. I reminded him of things that perhaps he had forgotten. “God, don’t you remember my high school speech class? I got done with my one and only speech, and I said to myself that I was never going to do that again.”

But I had started reading the Bible straight through for the first time and I was up to Exodus. I read about a guy named Moses that was doing what I was doing— fighting his calling. He tried to argue with God and say that he was not eloquent. God said, “Who made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” (Exodus 4:11). I said, “Well, I guess that argument won’t work.”

I kept praying about it, and I even talked to my pastor about it. He said, “Jason, I think you have it all wrong. You are acting as though God only calls the equipped, when in fact he equips the called. If he calls you to do something, he will enable you and equip you to do it. That is what you should discern—his calling and then watch for the equipping.”

The next week the burden got so heavy that I cried out to the LORD on a Saturday in early November 1995. I was up to Judges in my Bible reading. I had just read about someone named Gideon who laid out a fleece to know if something was God’s will. I just took it at face value and said, “Ok, God here goes. I need to know for sure. Please make it clear what you are calling me to do.”

The next day was a Sunday, and in church I heard the one and only sermon I can ever remember on the calling of the disciples to preach. It felt like the whole message was for me. I remember being so tense throughout the whole message. My hands were white-knuckled on the pew in front of me. Finally, I took my hands and put them under my legs in surrender. I didn’t want to fight it anymore. I said, “Lord, I don’t understand all of this, but I trust you. I see now that it is not about my ability, but my availability. I am yours. Use me however and wherever you will.”

The real miracle happened next. Suddenly I began to change. There were fountains of compassion for people that came out of nowhere. There was a boldness to speak about Jesus. Everyone could see a difference. People started to notice. A group of my friends, said, “You are called to ministry, huh? Would you like to preach for our Campus Crusade gathering?” I said, “Um, yeah, I guess.”

I was really nervous because I didn’t have any training. I didn’t know how to preach! But I had something burning that felt like a fire shut up in my bones, so I figured I needed to say it. In my reading through the Bible, I was up to the book of James and I read God say that faith without works is dead. I thought, Wow … I have seen that a lot of that kind of “faith” growing up–people that profess to be Christians but their lives don’t show it—there are no spiritual signs of life.

I was so earnest on the one hand and so clueless on the other. Lord, how do I say this? How do I get this point across that just as the body without the soul is dead, so faith without works is dead? You know what I did? I laid down on the ground like this and pretended to be dead. I did that for one whole minute just like this. Do you know how long one minute is when you are speaking? Then I suddenly got up and said – how many people thought I was dead? Ok, you knew I was playing dead, but I sure didn’t look alive. But now there are no doubts. You hear my voice, you see my energy and my gestures and hand movements and whatever.

James is asking, which one are you? Do you claim to be a Christian and yet there are no spiritual signs of life for anyone to see? Can people actually see that you are a Christian?

I got done and prayed. I looked at my watch. Five minutes. The whole message was five minutes (one minute of which I was on the ground pretending to be dead). But here is the crazy thing—God used it. People were convicted and helped. I was like, “You are kidding? That was terrible.” How does anyone preach for 30 minutes?

Here is my point. Full surrender is true freedom. It is so freeing to stop telling God what I couldn’t do and what he couldn’t possibly do through me. Rather than wanting to argue, I just wanted to stay in step with him as he showed me the good works he had prepared for me every day. It was like living an adventure novel where the God of the Universe was the author. I had entered the story. What is God going to have me do today? It was terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. Discerning the good works that God had planned for me day by day became the passion of my life, like a child asking his father what he had planned for today.

So here is my question: Are you willing to hear the Almighty, Infinite, All-Wise God tell you that he made you and that he has a mission for you? Are you going to hear him plainly tell you that he has work for you—work that has been planned out specifically for you and then turn to him and say, “Liar. You can’t use me.”

Do you think he saved you, raised you up, and planned out a whole life path for you just so you could feel defeated and talk yourself into believing that he can’t really use you after all? You no longer live. Christ lives in you. He has good works prepared beforehand just for you. The question is, will you seek him and pray to him to show you what those good works are and then will you walk in them with him? Don’t say, “God may love me, but he can’t use me.” If you are saying that, then practically speaking you are really denying that Christ lives in you. And you don’t believe in the Holy Spirit.

Christ died for you. He took your place. He paid your debt. He rose from the dead, conquering the grave. He ascended on high. He has made you a miracle and given you a mission.

Conclusion: The Missions Call

Here is the freeing part about God having planned out your steps—your mission, your good works: We are not competing for parts in a play or saying that some paths are second class or sub-par. This is God’s plan. He has planned for some of you to go and for most of you to stay. There is not first class or second class. There is only obedient or disobedient.

Some of you will hear about the need of the nations right now—unengaged and unreached people groups—and God will confirm that his plan for you—the works prepared for you in advance will involve another people group.

It will absolutely break your heart to hear that unengaged people groups are the most lost, the most out-of-reach of salvation, because they have the least access to knowing the name of Jesus. They have an equal need for salvation along with everyone else, but they do not have equal access to the salvation, the name of the Savior. They have zero chance to know the Name because they have zero access to the Name.

The tragedy intensifies at this point because the people who know the Name, in fact, the people who are called by his name (Christians), are not telling them. No, even worse—they are not even targeting them so that they can eventually tell them. We can’t ignore 70,000 people dying every day (twice the population of the city where I live—Roseville) without the chance to know the name of Jesus.

Put this tragedy into specific perspective in terms of missionary workforce. One would think (hope) that the most lost places on earth would be the largest targets for missionaries. But 90% of all foreign missionaries work among already-reached people groups (Winter and Koch, Perspectives, p. 543). The places that need workers most are receiving the fewest.

So here is the call. Right now we are asking the Lord to help you discern if the path that he has laid out for you will mean going to the nations. I am going to call three groups forward: (1) current global partners (already sent), (2) those currently in the Nurture Program (preparing to be sent), and (3) those feeling a fresh stirring to pray about being sent. The good news is that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. We have many people here that believe part of the good works God has ordained for them are helping others discern their sense of calling to missions!

Now of those three groups … I want to ask this question so carefully and yet specifically. We do not believe that some global partners are First Class and some are Second Class. We wouldn’t say emergency room workers are more important than family doctors, for example. But we are asking a question and we are asking it with trembling knowing that it will take more care and the difficulty may be greater, even a greater risk to your life. Are there any here who are feeling a fresh stirring to pray about being one of those who will go out to engage the unengaged? We will pray for everyone together.

Sermon Discussion Questions

Outline

1. His Work
   
2. Our Works

Main Point: We are made for a Mission.

Discussion Questions

• In verse 10, what does the word “workmanship” mean? Where else is this word used in the Bible? What is the connection between “creation” in that text and “creation” in Ephesians 2:10?
  
• According to Ephesians 2:4–6, how did God create us?
  
• According to Ephesians 2:7, how will our story end?
  
• In Ephesians 2:10, what are three things that Paul stresses about good works?

Application Questions

• Do you ever struggle to believe that God loves you and can use you? How does this text help you fight those unbelieving thoughts?
  
• What are some of the good works that God has prepared in advance for you that he has already revealed to you?
• How do you go about discerning how to walk in these works on a daily basis?

Prayer Focus
Pray for a grace to discern the good works that God has prepared beforehand for you to walk in.