13-02-13.Sermon for Ash Wednesday 2013 - fumc-saline.org

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Sermon for Ash Wednesday by Rev. Laura Speiran; Feb. 13, 2013; Saline First
UMC; using the video of “God’s Chisel,” by the Skit Guys on Worship House
Media.com

Has anyone ever said those words to you before—“You are God’s
masterpiece?” Maybe you have never heard them before. Or maybe you have
heard them before, but you didn’t believe it. Or maybe you have heard exactly the
opposite—that you are good for nothing…that you will never amount to anything.
Maybe no one else has ever said that to you, but it is what you tell yourself—that
you are a nobody…that you are bad, or unwanted, or unworthy of anything but
trouble and pain and sorrow. In the video of the Skit Guys, God says to Tommy
that he has listened to so many other voices in the world and that they have
essentially drowned out what God has been saying to Tommy all along: “You are
my precious child and I love you.”

So maybe you are thinking that that may apply to the guy in the video, but
not to you. We go back to John 3:16, the verse in the Bible that says, “For God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” Yes, Jesus came for
everybody. Jesus came for you. First John chapter three verse one says, “See what
love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is
what we are.”1 We are each loved with an amazing love that cannot be adequately
defined in human words. That’s one of the reasons we have music and art and
poetry and drama. ..they can express ideas that mere descriptive words cannot.

Tommy mentions Ephesians, chapter two, verse 10, which says, “For we are
God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do.” The Greek word that is translated “handiwork” is poiema
(poy’ ay ma), “which means ‘a thing made’ and relates closely to finished works of
art or sculpted stones,”2 which is where the people who wrote this video, the Skit
Guys, got the idea for this. I want you to just roll that idea around in your head for
a minute. If we are God’s handiwork that means that we are God’s creation. God
made us and not only that, but God is willing to spend some time on us. Not that
we have to be perfect to be loved—God accepts us just the way we are, but God
loves us too much to leave us broken and hurting. God wants to save us from that
brokenness and wants us to be healthy and whole.

1 “How do I know that God loves me?” A sermon by Greg Addison , February 2007, found on sermoncentral.com:
http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/how-do-i-know-that-god-loves-me-greg-addison-sermon-on-
forgiveness-in-jesus-104558.asp
2 Tommy Woodard and Eddie James, You Teach Vol. 1, “You Teach Study Guide – God’s Chisel,” (2008-Youth
Specialties). Supporting material with the purchase of the video of “God’s Chisel” from worshiphousemedia.com.

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The verses right before that in Ephesians say, “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.” This means that God doesn’t love us
because of what we’ve done, God’s love is a free gift—it is grace. We aren’t
saved by what we do, we are saved in order to do God’s work. In the Wesleyan
tradition, which is all the people and churches who consider John Wesley’s ideas
in how they understand faith, we talk about grace a lot, and to help us understand
it, we divide it up into three kinds of grace.

1) First, there is prevenient grace—this is the “before” kind of grace that is
with us even before we know who God is. God loves us enough to seek
us out and nudge us toward God.

2) The second kind of grace is justifying grace. This is the moment, or the
process for some people, when we say “yes” to God’s invitation to be in
relationship with God—when we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
It is the moment of being forgiven, and accepted. Not because we were
perfect, not because we did anything special, not because we were good,
but because God loves us that much.

3) The third kind of grace is sanctifying grace. This is the grace that
follows us the rest of our lives as Christians. God gives us the gift of
salvation, but it is not over and done with, it is a lifelong process of
becoming like Christ. We call that process sanctification.

Sanctification is where God makes each of us into a masterpiece. Of course
there are going to be things that shouldn’t be there in our lives. The video tonight
uses the analogy of God chiseling off the pieces that do not reflect Christ. Does
God really have a hammer and chisel? No, that’s just an illustration, but it does
reflect several truths.

1) First, the Hebrews passage, as well as the video, uses the word discipline.
This doesn’t refer to punishment, but rather lessons God gives us to help
us understand how to be more like Jesus Christ. Lessons help us learn
what we need to cut out of our lives, and what we need to add. It’s not
that God doesn’t love us the way we are, it is that God loves us too much
to leave us the way we are. In the video, God named Tommy’s issues
that needed to be cut out of his life: anger, comparing himself to others,
telling lies to people please, being lazy (and trying to fool everyone by
looking busy), lust, and even a secret sin. If we were all honest, we
would all have a list of things that God could chisel out of our lives.

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2) Second, this process takes a long time. In the video, God said, “it is not a
sprint, it’s a marathon.” We can’t necessarily expect life-transforming
results overnight.

3) Third, it might be painful. Letting go of things or behaviors we cherish
feels like sacrifice, but we don’t need to feel alone in that. God knows all
about sacrifice.

4) Fourth, the biggest thing we have to give up is control. As humans, it is
our nature to want to do things our way, in our time. Tommy wanted abs
of steel so he would look good to others—God wanted him to stop using
anger inappropriately. It’s difficult to let go of our agenda and instead
put God’s first. It’s difficult to realize that the most important thing is
not what other people think of us, it is what God thinks of us.

5) Fifth, it is not about letting God do God’s work in our lives just in the
places we allow…it is giving over your whole life to God. Even the
places we don’t want to admit to or talk about.

It said in the video that it is a lie that when you give your life over to Christ,
everything will be easy. Not only is there trouble in the world, but we keep
causing trouble for ourselves! And being a Christian can be really hard, especially
when the world is pulling us in opposite directions from God. Amazingly, God
gives us strength and mercy for the journey and helps us learn from our mistakes
so that we may gain wisdom in the process, and maybe, just maybe, makes us into
a masterpiece.

Now you may have never considered giving your life over to God before.
Or maybe you did a long time ago, but now when you really think about it, you
realize that you only gave parts of your life, not the whole thing. Please know that
anytime is a good time to say yes to God, but Lent is a particularly good and
appropriate time to take a long hard look at yourself. What do you see when you
look in the mirror? Do you see the image of Jesus? Do you see a half-chiseled
chunk of rock? Do you see a little kid who is scared and feeling stupid, who
dresses up each day hoping that no one will notice that he or she is only pretending
their way through life?…In the video, the character of God said the definition of
insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
different results. Don’t waste another day looking to empty wells for happiness!
Go to God, who promises wholeness, salvation, and a process that will make you
into a masterpiece.