God's Masterpiece

Introduction

What a terrific and moving time this has been together!  I have had the privilege of serving many different congregations.  Each has had their own unique traditions that have been deeply meaningful.  What you have established in this service of remembering, commissioning, and recommitment is truly a rich expression of what it means to be a church – the Family of God on mission.

This year has been a very significant season in the life of our church as we transitioned in the senior leadership role.  And God, indeed, has been with us.  Diane and I both feel affirmed in our calling here.  There is a sense that we are beginning to work well together as a staff and as a church.  Good things are happening and opportunities for engagement in the community are beginning to emerge.  One of those, the question of whether or not we should partner with the Knox Prairie Community Kitchen, will be addressed in conversation and a forum during our meal that follows this service.  I hope that you will all plan to attend and participate because we need to hear each voice. 

We are a family.  And God has formed something beautiful in us with the love and care that we have for each other.  But the Church is more than just the Family of God.  We have a calling to hear.  We have a purpose to fulfill.  There is a mission to be accomplished.  Probably more than any other book in the New Testament, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians unpacks God’s great cosmic Mission and the role that the Church is to play in its fulfillment. 

On this significant day, I want to read a substantial portion of Paul’s epistle and allow God’s word to shape a new vision for mission that God has for us.

Ephesians 1:3-2:10 (The Message)

How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

11-12 It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.

13-14 It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.

15-19 That’s why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn’t stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!

20-23 All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.

2 1-6 It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Moving forward…

I am very grateful for the ministry of former Pastor Dan Siems.  Through his labor among you, God has shaped us into a beautiful family of God’s grace.  It is remarkable and it is significant.  The love that we experience here is what the world desperately needs and craves.  While we do have unity and community, we need mission clarity.

For years, I’ve been working on writing a book.  I’ve finished the manuscript and a highly respected New Testament scholar and educator has already written a glowing endorsement and forward for my work.  It’s a good book.  But it won’t do anyone any good as an electronic file in my computer or a printout of 200 pages in my file drawer.  I need a publisher.  It needs to be shared with the world. 

God has saved you and me.  He has written our story.  Not so we can just come and gather on Sunday morning, love on each other, and pat ourselves on the back.  What we have needs to be shared with our world. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Pastor Bob.  We’ve all heard it before.   I know.  I have, too. 

What we need, friends, is mission clarity.  And that’s why, for the next several months we will be engaged in a sermon series unpacking Ephesians.  And it won’t be just so that we can understand another one of the books of the Bible.  It must be our prayer and intention that God’s word will upset us, challenge us, and then form God’s mission imperative deep in our soul.  Remember what we heard just moments ago: God has created each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing (vs. 10).

What is that good work that God is doing and that we are to be engaged in?  Paul stated it clearly in his letter to the Ephesians: God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth (1:9-10, NLT).

We are partners in his Enterprise.  We are agents for the Kingdom of God.  We are the Family of God on Mission.  And we have a role to play in bringing God’s purpose to bring all things together as they should be under Jesus Christ.

Our theme verse, then, for 2018 is:

We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:10 NLT)

This is the glorious work to which God has called us.  May we have the faith to embrace it – no, to SIEZE it – and get on with it in Jesus name.