Steve McVay, in his book called The Godward gaze, tells an imaginary story of Bob and Jill. Bob and Jill were a young married couple who began to have a conversation on their one year wedding anniversary. Bob said, you know, honey, I've been thinking about how I could really use some help around the house. You know, my work schedule, you know, it's gotten crazy. I haven't been able to keep up with the yard work and find time to mow and and trim the hedges and pull the weeds, and haven't been able to clean out the garage and just all the other handyman things that I have to do around the house. He said, it's just becoming a bit overwhelming, and I'm thinking we could use some help. Jill said, you know, I've been thinking the same thing. She said, You know, my schedule and how crazy busy I've been, and it's been so hard to keep up with the dishes and the cooking and the cleaning and sweeping and mopping and vacuuming and all of the above. And you know what? I agree. We could use some help around here. And so they paused and caught their breath for a second, and about the same time, they turned and looked each other and said, That settles it. Then it is time that we start a family. It's a silly, silly story, right? Nobody thinks like that. We don't dream about having kids one day so that we could make them our servants. We don't dream about starting a family so that they could be our slaves and we could be their masters, right? I mean, certainly it's nice when they help out around the house a bit, don't get me wrong. But we dream about having children because of the relationship that we're going to get to share with them. We're going to get to invest in them and pour into them and they're we know they're going to make us laugh, and it's just going to be so fun to watch them grow up and be able to interact with them. We don't have kids and dream about that because they're going to do chores for usone day. We know that's silly,but yet there are many of us who seem to think that way about God and His children. There are a lot of us who seem to think that God decided to have children not for a relationship and an intimacy that he wanted to enjoy, but so that we could do all of his chores. They believe that God is the master, and we were created to be nothing more than servants. So serving is simply a duty. It must be performed out of obligation, because that is the whole reason that we were created. There are even some churches and people who build their whole church or ministry or life around the slogan like, saved to serve. Saved to serve. That's what my life is all about. I was saved to serve. Serving fulfills the purpose of my salvation. Now, a lot of times when people say that and have that mentality, it's not because they're just pulling it out of thin air. They're saying the Bible. The Bible teaches that. That's what it says. A lot of times they'll point to a verse, kind of like Ephesians, 210, where Paul says, For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. And now so see it says it right. There. We were saved to serve. We were created to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us me to do. That settles it. Right? I mean, this is right. We were saved to serve. I mean, just like the parents who were having kids so that they could do their chores for them, that's what God did. He created us to do his chores. He created us to do good works. He prepared in advance it was for us to do guys. Can I just tell you that God was doing just fine before He created us. I mean, he really think that God needed to create us to get his work done, the one who can speak things into existence and create something out of nothing? Yeah, I don't think so either. I mean, as a matter of fact, the apostle Paul even wrote this in Acts 1725, he said he referring to God is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, He Himself gives everyone life and breath and every thing else. Because if you think that God needs you. You're sadly mistaken, right? You're overestimating. You're making yourself out to be way more important than you really are, at least compared to him. So that's the first thing that I want you to think about when it comes to this kind of mentality. But the second thing is this. Use phrases or to use scripture, excuse me, like Ephesians 210 as the basis for the reason that God created you to simply serve Him in this master slave, master slave or servant relationship is to take it a little bit out of context. Let me show you what I mean. If you back up to the very beginning of what Paul was saying in Ephesians chapter two, and you read all the way up to verse 10 and what he said there. And you take it all as a whole, then you'll start to really see what Paul is trying to communicate here. And so we're going to walk through it a little bit, verse by verse. We don't have time to go a deep dive into it today, but it'll help us see what this is really talking about when it comes to this idea of good works. If you're a guest today, maybe you're here, maybe you're watching online, and you're just checking this whole church thing out. You're you're wondering about this whole Jesus guy, and what this whole Christianity thing really is, you picked a great day to come because outside of what this says to us about service, the apostle Paul is really going to communicate what Jesus is here for, and what it's all about and why he had to come. And so we'll see that as we walk through this passage as well. Here's the way that the apostle Paul starts off in Ephesians. Chapter Two, he says, As for you, and remember, he's writing to a specific group of people, the church at Ephesus in a specific location, people who had put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ for salvation already, they had become the church, and he's writing to them, and now he's communicating about something in their past. So as for you, you were past tense, dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient, all of us, Paul says, not some, all of us, also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts like the rest we were, by nature, deserving of wrath. You know, a lot of us, when we think about what this whole Christianity thing is about, when we think about Jesus and just Christianity in general, a lot of us feel like our biggest problem is that we need to become a better person, we need to learn how to serve better we need to learn how to make better choices. We just need to learn how to be a better us. And so we come to church looking for the seven steps to become a better person. I need to become the best version of myself that I can become. That's surely what this is all about. But then you dive into God's word, and you see that the apostle Paul is trying to tell us here in these first three verses, that your biggest problem in life is not that you need to try to learn how to make better choices in your life, it's the fact that you were dead in your transgressions and sins, and you needed a resurrection, and there's no amount of good works and making better choices and serving people and learning to become the best version of yourself that is going to make you undead. It just can't happen. You're spiritually dead because of transgressions and sins, because you have a sin nature. All of us were born in this situation, separated from God, left spiritually dead. This is our biggest problem, and it is a problem that we cannot get ourselves out of, no matter how hard we try, which is why verse four is so good. Here's what Paul says next. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions, it is by grace you havebeen saved.What Paul is saying here is that salvation is a work of God. He just finished in the first three verses, talking about our desperate situation. We were dead, right? But then he comes in and says, But let me tell you how good that's the bad news. That's how bad the bad news is. Let me tell you how good the good news really is, and the emphasis here is on who God but God stepped in and did something about the situation that you were in. He allowed his one and only Son to leave the glory and riches of heaven, to take all of the sins of the world to the cross and pay the penalties for them so that you could be forgiven by grace. It's a gift that He's going to offer to you, not a work of your own, something that he does, and he offers it to you as a gift that you have been saved, and the moment you receive that gift, by putting your faith and trust in Him, you were completely forgiven of all of your sins. And God May. Lead us alive with Christ, he solved your biggest problem. You were dead. You needed to become undead. You couldn't do it yourself. So God did the work for you. It was only a work that he could do. And so the emphasis here is on God stepping in and doing something about the fact that how we were dead and making us alive in Christ. And as Paul goes on, he will continue to put the emphasis on God and His work and how alive now we really are. You were dead. You were so dead. Really, really dead, but now you're alive and really, really, really, really alive. Here's how alive you really are. Paul says Ephesians six or two, beginning in verse six, and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace. I love that phrase, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ. Jesus Paul says, you wanna know how alive you are the moment you put your faith and trust. God raised us up with Christ, seated us with him in the heavenly realms all ready. That means that the eternal life that you receive at your salvation moment isn't something you have to wait on to get you get it right. Then you're automatically spiritually seated in heaven, and you can begin to experience that eternal, abundant life every single day that you walk with Him. Not only that, not only is that good news for this life, but in the life to come, because in the ages, the coming ages, he's going to show his incomparable riches of his grace when he comes back and after our these failing bodies, you know, finally we take our last breath, we're going to enter into glory with him for all of eternity because of the eternal life that He has given us once again, though that's how alive we really are, but look at the emphasis again, God is the one who raised us up. God is the one who's going to show us the incomparable riches of his grace. Again, the emphasis is all on God and His work. The only thing that's come up so far is that you were dead, dead, dead. Now God stepped in and made you alive, alive, alive, and this is how good it really is. You didn't do anything except receive that gift from him. And he wants to remind us of that even more. And so look as he continues, he says, For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast again, Paul says it's by grace. It's a gift. It's not something you've earned. It's it's not by works. There's nothing that you could do. It was the work that he did. Now you did have to receive it, just like any gift, you can't really call it yours until you receive it. I could offer you a gift all day long, and it could just sit right here on the stage, but until one of you walked up here and grabbed it and had it in your possession, it would never be yours. And so Paul makes sure that we understand that the way we receive that gift is through faith. Jesus said in John chapter 14, verse six, that I am the Way, the Truth and Life. And no man comes to the Father except through me. There is no other possible way to become undead, to be made alive and receive eternal life and be reconciled to God the Father, except through me. And so when we say we're receiving it by putting our faith in him based on what Jesus said about himself, again, it's the image of us sitting at the poker table, and we've got our chips that we can bet on certain things, and some people bet them on another god or another prophet, or on these good works, or I'm going To put this chip in. But it's the idea where, if Jesus says that on the way the truth and life, and no man comes to the Father except through me, then we gotta take all the chips and we gotta push them all into the center of the table. Say, I'm going all in on Jesus. If he's the only way, I'm going all in. I'm not saving one back on the hopes that if I become my best self, then I'm going to earn it one day, right? Or I'm going to hold one back, just in case this is wrong, and I'm going to have one over here in case it's this other religion that some people talk about, or this path that I'm supposed to be on. And so we put 97 of our 100 chips in there, but I'm just, I gotta have some insurance, right? No, no, it's going I'm putting all of them, every last one in. On Jesus. That's the way we receive it. We put our faith completely in him, and the moment you do again, you are completely forgiven and you are raised up to new life with Christ. Again. It's a gift of God. It's his work. He is the one doing it. How many times have we seen that so far in the nine verses that we have looked at and we are about to see the verse that we first looked at in verse 10, do you see how much of the emphasis is on God? We continue to see it. Look at the very beginning of what we read earlier, For we are God's handiwork. Here's the emphasis again, handiwork. It was His work. God's masterpiece. He's the artist. We are the art work. He's the one who did it. The emphasis is on God. Now, a lot of us, sometimes it's translated masterpiece. And we'll take this verse and we'll, we'll look at it and go, You know, sometimes you probably don't feel loved, you don't feel valuable, you don't probably feel like you matter, but look, you're God's masterpiece. He created you, and we'll point to how he created you in your mother's womb, and you're valuable because of that, and you're a work of art, and all of those things. And so whatever you think about yourself, know that you are valuable. You're a masterpiece treasured by God. Now, that is true, in a sense, you are valuable. God did create you and knit you together in your mother's womb. But that's not, ultimately what Paul is getting at here. He is not referring to the creating of you in your mother's womb and you being born. What did the whole other nine verses talk about being recreated in Christ? You are God's handiwork, re created in Christ. Jesus, the moment you said yes to Him, you were spiritually dead. Now you're spiritually alive as a new creation, this masterpiece, this work of art, through Jesus's finished work on the cross, so that now you can do God's work, and we'll see why it had to be this way as we continue to go on and look at the rest of the verse. So again, we are God's handiwork created in Christ. Jesus, emphasis on him, which God prepared. So again, we go, Gosh, he's still talking about stuff he did. It was something that he's going to prepare ahead of time. He's going to reveal them to us. We don't have to figure them out. He's going to show us he did this in advance. But then we get to the very last part of it right here and go, Oh, but see thereit's for us to do. Youcouldn't get yourself out of situation. God had to rescue you. He had to make you alive in Christ, he's the one who spiritually seated you in heaven. You have all this forgiveness and all of this abundant new life in him, but nowit's up to you to do all the work.It's not what he's saying here. This is one translation in the way that this particular translation, decided to translate this last part of what's in the original Greek. Do you know what it literally says in the Greek that God, or God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works, which God prepared in advancethat wemight walk in them. That'swhat it literally says, that God created these good works in advance,not for us to do,but that we might walk in them. Is that different? Is that different than for us to do? Well, let's see. I mean, there's a lot of smart people who are filled with the Holy Spirit and really study the original language and all of those kinds of things, way smarter than me. Here's what one professor of New Testament studies says, Harold honer from Dallas Theological Seminary. He wrote this on his commentary on Ephesians. He says guys, the purpose of these prepared and advanced works is not to work in them, but to walk in them like we just communicated. In other words, he says, God has prepared a path of good works for believers, which he will perform in and through them as they walk by faith, in dependence upon him. This does not mean doing a work for God. Instead, it is God performing his work in and through believers. Do you see the difference? Now, God prepared all these works for us to do in advance that we might walk in them we're going to walk by faith. Yet, God prepared these works in advance for us to do in he now that we're God's handiwork, having been recreated in who Christ, Jesus dwelling in us, so that now he can actually perform and do those works in and through us as we abide and walk by faith and trust in Him. You couldn't do him before, because Jesus didn't live in you. It would have been a lot of your own flesh and strength trying to justify yourself before God, trying to justify yourself before everybody see how good of a person I am. Look at all these good works that I'm doing down here God. And I mean, it's exhausting trying to please him up there, right? And whoever else that you're trying to please hear that we might walk in them, he puts Jesus in us so that Jesus can express his life through us and serve other people in and through our bodies. So when we see that, what it says here is that we should walk in them and not for us to do them. That perspective really does change things, especially in light of God's work, the entire passage God's work, God's work, God's work, God's work, and he doesn't switch. It's still his work that he's going to do in and through us. And so this is why we've got to see these kinds of things, whenever it comes to God's word and the truth about serving right. Now, here's the other thing I want you to see in this, even though it's a work of God, even though he's doing them in and through us, and we're walking by faith, he does them in and through you, right? You are a contact point you. It is not independent of you. It's not like you're not going to feel and experience what he is doing in and through you otherwise, right? Well, if God's doing it, then I guess he just does it, and I don't even get to participate in anything, right? No, of course, that's not the case. You're experiencing the life of Christ being expressed through you, and you get to participate with the living God in the good works that he's doing in and through you. We've been talking about these different rhythms, these different spiritual disciplines, right? And we're talking today about the rhythm, or the spiritual discipline of walking in good works. But if you've been here for the entire series, you know that each and every single week we have been saying that the spiritual disciplines, that these rhythms that we're talking about are not the end goal. We don't do them just to check them off of a list and say, I served, I read my Bible, I prayed, I did it right. We're experiencing them. We're doing them in order to experience intimacy with Jesus Christ. We read to listen and hear what Jesus has to say to us because we're in a relationship with Him. We pray because we can talk to him and experience a relationship with Him. And when you get into a rhythm in the discipline of serving others with these good works that he's doing in and through you listen, you will experience an intimate relationship with him as he does them in you and through you, for example, we've all had this experience. I guarantee you, you could tell me about a time when this is true, where you felt like Jesus was leading you to serve in some way. And a lot of us, when we first feel that, we go, I don't think so. That's scary. I don't know if I can do it right. We go. Is it really going to make any difference anyway. It doesn't really matter if I'm going to do it in the big scheme of things with everything else going on in this world, you know, Ithink I'll just check out on this one but,but when we have those thoughts and we trust Him, and we step into those things, then you begin to experience Jesus in a way that you wouldn't if you avoided those things. All of a sudden, he shows up, and he gives you what it is that you need to pull off, what he asks you to be a part of in that moment. And you get to participate with him in it and experience it. In it, your faith explodes. Going,Wow, that was awesome.Did you see Jesus? Just meet me right where I was at when I said yes to serving in this way, and he did it. I can't believe it. And you get to experience that relationship with Him through stepping into the good works that he created in advance for us to walk in and participate with him. So when we talk about this. Them when we talk about this spiritual discipline of service, we really need to see it for what it is. I love the way that Steve McVay writes about this. He says, Guys, the enemy has fooled many into thinking thatspiritual serviceis their gift to God, but good works are not our gifts to God, but rather his gifts to us. He says, our Heavenly Father has a plan to do some wonderful things in this world, and because of his great love for us, he has chosen to allow us to participate in that work. He doesn't need us to do the work. He chooses to do the work through us. Why?Because he loves us.Those who believe that Christian service is the way that we are obligated to glorify God, he says, will never clearly see his lovely face smiling at them with pride. They will forever be caught in a performance trap, wondering if they are doing enough, right? God, areyou proud of me, yet? You proud of me? Yet? Isthat enough service? How am I doing good? Am I doing good?It's just a trap over and over again. We don't discipline ourselves to serve God out of obligation or duty. We we allow Jesus to lead us into a rhythm of walking in good works that he's going to do in us and through us, and we get to experience relationship with him throughout the entire thing. You want to experience intimacy with Jesus, step into the good works that he prepared in advance for you to do, and you will experience your intimate relationship with Him in a way that maybe you don't in any other way. But whatdoes that practically look like? Whatdoes it look like to walk in a rhythm of good works. Here's what Richard Foster says. He says, Guys, true service comes from a relationship. That's where it starts. Once again, it's about relationship. It comes from a relationship with the divine other deep inside of us. That's where it starts. We serve. Listen out of whispered promptings and divine urgings. He says, energy is expended, but it is not the frantic energy of the flesh, as knowing that Jesus will express his life through us by serving others. We listen. We listen for him to prompt us to participate. We listen for those divine urgings to lead us into those acts of service that he prepared in advance for us to walk in and as we say yes to those we we will expend energy, right? It's your body, it's your mind, it's your emotions. You're going to feel that you're going to get tired when you serve. You're going to experience emotional energy, and you're going to have to use your mind in those things, because he's at work in and through you as a contact point, right? He's doing it, but he's doing it through you as you and so you're gonna feel it, but it's not gonna be the frantic energy of the flesh again, trying to perform when you're doing it out of your flesh is again. It's gotta be proud of me. You're proud of me. It's so exhausting trying to please you up there, right? Or, Gosh, I wonder if other people think really well of me up. I messed up. Now I gotta double time it for the service, so they'll think more highly of me this fleshly, that just gets so exhausting. But when he's doing it, it's not it's not that at all, because we're experiencing him and his work, his energy in and through us.Was actually talking to a coupleof our members who was visiting with there's this week in the library that came by, and we had a chance to visit and and this kind of thing came up, not because we were even talking about it. One like, Hey, I'm preaching, and you got any stories on serving or anything. I mean, it just came up because Jesus lives in them, and he prepared good works in advance for them to do, and he whispers promptings to people, and people say yes to them, and then experience Him in them and through them. They're like Jason. We were just we felt this whisper, this divine urging, get this to bake bread and then take it to some of our widows and bless them with it, or some of our shut ins, right? So listen, it was their hands that had to get all the ingredients together. It was their hands that had to do all of the mixing and and they were the ones that had to bake it, and they had to, you know, package it, and then they had to drive and use their time and energy to get to wherever they were going and deliver it to them. And all. All of those things. And it was Jesus, though, who whispered this to them in the beginning. And he was using their hands and doing all of this stuff through them in order to serve them, because it was a good work that God had prepared to do in and through them in advance. And they said yes to it. I thought we were talking about huge, big, world changing things here, right? Well, it can be maybe it was to those widows who haven't had anyone show up, because not only now were they going to enjoy some tasty bread, but now they had someone to talk to that was just something to give to them, to be in relationship. How you doing? You doing? Okay? How can I pray for you? What's going on? Anything that we can do right now for you, in this particular moment, Jesus was expressing his life through them, in service to them as them, and they felt it. There was energy, and they got to participate in it with Jesus and guys, the same will be true of you. We've already said in the very beginning of this season that one of the rhythms that we talked about was this rhythm of awareness, the spiritual discipline of just becoming more and more aware of Jesus always being with us, his personality and how much he's really speaking to us that we aren't looking for and miss all of the time when we develop that rhythm, I think we're going to hear him whispering these promptings to us even more. We're going to get these divine urgings from these works that he prepared in advance for us to do. Maybe it's at school, maybe it's at work, maybe it's at the gym, maybe in your neighborhood, he might whisper to you about serving in our church in some way, we have a first impressions team, a greeting team, who serves here, and they're really good at it, and Jesus is at work in them and through them. But for whatever reason, we've had a few people who have had to step out of that and and there's some holes in our greeting team right now. Maybe that's one of the things that Jesus is going to whisper to you about. I want to do that in and through you. I want to greet people when they come in and make a great first impression on them. Maybe it's not that, maybe it's something outside in our community. Maybe it's something through an official local missions organization, even had someone else come up to me about, I don't know, six or eight weeks ago or so and and I don't even know this happened, right? We had the mentoring Alliance here, and we talked about the work that they do and that Jesus does in and through them, and how we could partner and be available to be in mentoring relationships with kids in single parent homes that don't have a father figure. And apparently one of our members had a divine urging. Jesus whispered this prompting to him that, hey, I want to use you to be a mentor to someone I didn't even know. He signed up for it. He didn't tell me anything about it. And the next thing you know, he's telling me about how he's been paired with this Junior High boy who lives, I think, down in Jacksonville or somewhere, and he's been able to start building a relationship with Him. Had the opportunity the other weekend to take him fishing for the first kid had never been fishing before, and they just he got to teach him something, and he got to begin to learn more about him, and this kid is connecting with someone who's kind of like a father figure in his life that wasn't existent before all because Jesus whispered to him and prompted him to say, Yes, I guarantee you he was nervous. I guarantee he didn't just go, this is gonna be easy. I got this right? He's like, I don't know, but if you say so, I'll trust you in it, and I guarantee you, because I'm a mentor through the mentoring Alliance as well, and Jesus has shown up and done in and more with my relationship and the times that I've seen with that, then probably he has in my mentees, right? Hopefully he's doing that too, but he's at work in both because it's through the relationship that we're talking about. And so maybe that's you, and maybe Jesus is going to whisper some of those things to you. You're going that's something I want to be a part of, but I don't know how well. Let me just quickly. I won't spend any time on this, hardly at all, but I'll just show you. You go, Well, how do I how do I know? How do I know if Jesus is whispering to me about any of those? Is it any of these? Well, come to our website, click on ministries. Work. It worked before I test. I tested. It even worked in the first service. If you click on ministries on your device, on a real device, there'll be a drop down menu and it'll say missions. And when you click on missions, then you're gonna see all of these things about local missions organizations that we partner with. As a church, and there's a clickable button that says volunteer info on it, and when you click it, you're gonna be able to read more about what it's like to volunteer in those things and allow Jesus the opportunity to whisper to you through those maybe it's nothing. Maybe that's not what He has for you, but maybe it's something you don't know until you go and look at those things. If you click on Connect, it'll pop down, and there'll be a button that says, serve. And then you can find out all the ways that Jesus might be whispering to you about serving in and around here as well. Either way, let's just all remember again that God prepared these good works in advance for us to walk in and to be looking and listening, for Jesus to lead us into them and empower us to carry them out through through our relationship with Him, a father son, a father daughter, relationship with Him in intimacy, amen.