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Do any of you like to do jigsaw puzzles? Usually
jigsaw puzzles have a thousand pieces or more, and it can be very hard
to make sense of what the picture is supposed to be, especially in the
early going. Some pieces are obvious and some? Well, they don’t seem to
fit in the picture at all.
I remember when I was little my big brothers were
doing a jigsaw puzzle, and they wouldn’t let me help. They finally gave
in when they were down to the last piece, and I still couldn’t make the
last piece of the puzzle fit. But God knows how to make every piece of
the puzzle work together.
Whenever I get to talk to a lot of young people at
one time, I like to share little secrets that grownups try to hide. One
of those secrets is that sometimes grownups, just about all grownups at
one time or another, get afraid that they don’t matter much to God. We
think we haven’t done much, and we certainly don’t think that we’re part
of something bigger than our own little lives. But the real truth is
that God is always working on us, reshaping us into his masterpiece,
putting up in the perfect place in the puzzle so that his plan for the
world can come true.
Here’s the one thing I want you to remember when we
go home today: You are God’s masterpiece.
He took extra special care to put you together, and
he picked out a place for you in his plan for the world’s salvation.
We are like clay in the hands of a potter. In fact,
that’s what it says in the Bible, in the book of Isaiah: “O Lord, you
are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter. We are the work of
your hands.”
Now some of you young people who were in our Bible
school, help me out. When God made all of creation, when he finished
each stage of the job, what did he say? “It’s good.” And the very last
part of that creation was what? People. God said they were the best of
all. They were the closest to his heart.
They had perfect bodies and perfect hearts, and they
were placed into a perfect world, and they walked around in the Garden
of Eden saying “Wow!” They loved God for making this world for them;
they loved God for making them. And God smiled when he saw the people
enjoying what he had done.
But what was perfect didn’t stay that way. Why?
People started to love other things better than they loved God, so God
had to make some changes. The Bible tells us that he sent a flood to
wipe out all the people except one family, and they would be God’s seeds
to make new, perfect people.
But it still didn’t last. People always start to love
something or someone else, besides God. They still do. But God doesn’t
get rid of us when we let him down. Instead, he changes us. He loves us
so much that he wants us to be perfect again.
Did you ever see an artist making a pot with wet
clay? That’s God. Sometimes he has to redo what he has already made, but
he puts his hands on us and shapes us and makes us beautiful—and useful.
Anybody here ever get a Christmas present that wasn’t
very beautiful and wasn’t very useful?
I’m thinking about something like a chia pet. Every
year around Christmas you can see ads on TV for a chia pet. It looks
like a clay guinea pig, and once activated it grows this green furry
stuff. Looks gross, and has no use whatsoever. But every year they sell
thousands of these things. But God is convinced that we can be both
useful and beautiful. Raw clay isn’t beautiful or very useful, but when
God starts to shape it, that clay can take on a whole new life.
GOD MAKES A MASTERPIECE OUT OF THE WORST MATERIAL.
Over in Italy they have a statue that was made by an artist named
Michelangelo. The statue is supposed to be David right before he fights
the giant Goliath and David just looks beautiful. In fact, some people
say that David is the most beautiful piece of art in the whole world.
But David wasn’t always so beautiful. Michelangelo carved him out of a
big block of marble that had sat around for a long time. The block of
marble was twisted, so nobody wanted to use it, but Michelangelo said “I
can make it beautiful.”
That’s what God does all the time. He takes people
who aren’t very beautiful or useful and changes them into a masterpiece.
And like any great artist, God signs his name to his
work. How does he do that? The Bible tells us God’s words: “I will write
my name on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my
people.”
WHAT GOD MAKES WILL LAST FOREVER. I will never forget
the time that Robin and I visited Paris and toured the Louvre, the most
famous art museum in the world. This is a huge place with thousands of
paintings on the walls, but the painting I wanted to see above all
others was the Mona Lisa, maybe the most famous painting of all time. We
walked down miles of corridors and saw paintings galore, but none was
like the Mona Lisa. In fact, the museum put up little signs of the Mona
Lisa with arrows pointing the way, so you wouldn’t get discouraged.
Finally, we entered a huge room filled with people of
all kinds, and everybody’s attention was focused on a far wall. There
hung a piece of art no bigger than a cereal box, kind of yellow and
faded.
You couldn’t get near the painting for all the people
in the room, so you had to sort of squint to see that it really was the
same Mona Lisa pictured in books. What a disappointment, to come so far
and see that what human hands make is really not that big a deal after
all.
Everything that we make is going to crumble or burn
or fade away. But you? You are God’s masterpiece, and you were made for
eternal life with him in heaven. This week I asked the children, “How
much is a lot of money,” and their answers started in the thousands of
dollars and quickly zoomed up to a google, and then one boy topped that
with a goggle-plex.
Let me assure you, no one could ever count high
enough to put a value on you, or you, or you.
We are all created by God’s hand, and purchased with
his son’s blood, and that makes us priceless.
GOD’S GIFTS ARE JUST THAT—GIFTS. There’s a story
that’s told about C.S. Lewis, the famous English writer. He walked into
the middle of a debate at his college, a debate about what makes
Christianity different from all other religions. Some said it was the
Christian’s belief that God took human form in Jesus, but others said
no, other religions think their God took human form, too. And some said
it was our belief in the resurrection, that there will be life after
death. But others said no, different religions had stories about people
coming back from the dead.
C.S. Lewis listened to this debate for awhile, and
then somebody asked him, “What makes Christianity different?” And he
said “That’s easy. Grace.” What he meant was this: God gives us his
gifts without our having to do anything to earn them at all. Other
religions think you have to be perfect before God will love you. But God
loved us all so much that even when we were sinners, he sent his son
Jesus Christ into the world so that we could go to heaven.
And everything that he gives us, this beautiful
world, these awesome bodies we have, they’re all free gifts. Don’t have
to buy them, don’t even have to pay rent.
But the thing about love is that once you know you’re
loved, you want so to give love back.
And the way to give love back to God is through good
deeds.
My friends, when the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to
the church at Ephesus, he said that the people there were God’s
masterpiece. And he’s saying the same thing today. You are God’s
masterpiece, and God wants to show you off to the whole world. He is so
proud of you. Truly you are priceless in his eyes. Because he loves you
so much, he made us alive in Christ when we were dead from sin. I
remember an old gentleman who could carve anything out of wood. I asked
him if he needed to use plans or whether he sketched out what he would
carve before he started, and he said, “Neither one. I just picture what
I want to make in my mind, and I just do it.”
That’s how I think God dreamed up the world. He just
pictured in his mind what he wanted, and spoke the word to make it so.
And he pictured you and me in his mind to be perfect expressions of his
love, and spoke the words to make it so. Listen to what it says in the
Bible, when God spoke to a man named Jeremiah: “I knew you before I
formed you in your mother’s belly. Before you were born I set you apart
and picked you to be my messenger in the world.”
Isn’t that special? Before you were even a tiny
little baby, God knew who you were, and loved you with all his heart.
So God got busy and custom-designed you. He made you
unique. There’s never been anybody in the world just like you and there
never will be. People spend an awful lot of time trying to be like other
people, and God says, “Don’t even try. You be you, just like I planned.
Nobody else can fit in the jigsaw puzzle like you can.” Just like a fine
car or a piece of jewelry or a well-carved piece of woodwork can’t
build itself without a craftsman, so we aren’t an accident of stuff
that somehow fell together just right.
Paul says “Look at yourselves. This was not your
doing, this is the gift of God. You’re his masterpiece.”
Now the masterpiece is complete. It’s time to display
the incomparable riches of the grace that God has given you in Christ
Jesus. My dear young friends, God doesn’t want you to stay hidden in
your room, in the dark, so only he can admire you. He wants the whole
world to look at you and say “Wow! God is some kind of artist.” And you
can’t do that just by looking cute.
God didn’t put you here so you could sit still. He
wants you to get busy helping others, so that they can see God in what
you do. We who have been given the gift of faith, we have an awesome job
ahead of us. Here’s another secret that I want to share with you
today--somebody out there in the world is going to see the face of Jesus
Christ only because you showed that precious face to them.
St. Augustine once wrote, “Men go abroad to wonder at
the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the vast
compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and they pass
by themselves without wondering.” All he meant by that is of all the
beautiful, incredible things God made, you are the most beautiful, you
are the most incredible. You are made in the image of God.
What more beautiful image could there be? You’re so
special that Christ died for you. You’re the only one of your kind.
This afternoon as we have our party, I want you to
promise me two things—the first is, I want you to promise me that you
won’t mess up God’s masterpiece. Promise me you won’t smoke, or drink
alcohol, and especially not take drugs. All these things harm the body
and hurt the heart of God.
And I want you to promise me that you’ll get busy
helping others and letting them see God’s glory shining in you, so they
can say, “Wow! What an artist.” So why not thank God for what he’s done
for you so far?
Ask Jesus to put his Holy Spirit inside you. Then let
him put you in his jigsaw puzzle of love for the whole world.
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