Stand for the reading of God's Word. We'll be reading from the second chapter of Ephesians, verses 1 through 10. Please give your careful attention to the reading of God's Word. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, 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, in order that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works that no one should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. God's people said, Your Bibles if you will this morning and join me in Philippians chapter 2 We'll continue on our study here, and we'll be looking at two verses this morning just two verses 12 and 13 because in those two verses there is a Truth that is of paramount importance for the Christian life It's a truth that we need to get a truth that we need to grasp and so I want to read these verses together they have a a connection and theme to the text that Joe read for us in terms of the relationship between the salvation that is ours in Jesus Christ freely, without works that no one should boast, and the sanctification that is ours also in Jesus Christ as He works out what He has worked into us. For we are His workmanship. Paul says in Philippians 2 and verse 12, Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure." That's a short little passage this morning, but again, the truth that it contains is of paramount importance for us to understand. And the degree to which we grasp the truth that Paul is speaking of here in these two little verses is the degree to which we will experience genuine growth in our Christian lives. and freedom in our lives as God works to sanctify us by His Word and Spirit. And if you remember in the passage that we looked at last week, Paul was responding to some negative reports that he had heard about the situation at the church in Philippi. Epaphroditus had come to visit him in prison as he was there in Rome in prison, and the report that he had gotten from him was that there were divisions in the church. There was quarreling. There was bickering and factions, disputes within the Philippian church. The Christians there were divided. And they weren't divided over anything worth dividing over. They were divided over minor issues. They were divided over personal matters, over minutia. They were simply being selfish and unloving towards one another. They were making mountains out of molehills. And the result was that there was this growing lack of unity within the church. People were being pulled apart from one another and the unity and the love and the peace and the joy of Jesus Christ was not being reflected and manifested in them or in their church. And so Paul addressed that problem by contrasting that attitude that they had with the attitude of Jesus Christ. He showed how different their attitude of arrogance and selfishness was with Christ's own attitude of self-abasing, self-sacrificing, loving humility. And He exhorts them to have that attitude. He reminds us that Jesus Christ is the one who sits at the right hand of God and enjoys the worship of God as the second person of the Trinity. Jesus Christ is the one who is worthy of all honor and glory and dominion and power. And He who is worthy of all of that did not consider His right to any of that something to be grasped. He let all that go. He condescended. He willingly took on the flesh of men and lived among sinful men for 33 years. He became nothing. He emptied Himself entirely of everything that He had a right to as God. And He did that in order to be obedient to God. Obedient even to the point of death. Obedient to the point of death on a Roman cross. He took on the form of a servant. in order to bring glory to God. He did it because the glory of the Father was of a higher priority than His own glory. You see? And He did it, secondly, Paul tells us, for our sakes. He did it in order that, as we saw in 2 Corinthians 8, by His poverty, we might become rich. So Jesus Christ, who is, as we confess every Lord's Day, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, He didn't consider the form of that a thing to be grasped. He emptied Himself of it. He took on the form of a servant. He suffered the death of a common criminal so that you and I might live eternally by the power of His blood. And of course, the point of all of that for the way in which we live our lives is that we must have that same mind as His people. We must live that same way. Our lives have to come to look like His life. Verse 3 of chapter 2, do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. That's the mindset. That's the attitude, the disposition, the life of Jesus Christ. He considers you more important than His own life. He considers your salvation worth dying for in order to bring glory to the Father. Verse 4, let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. And then verse 5, the pinnacle of Paul's thought here, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. I told you last week, and I'm even more persuaded of it this week, that the English Standard translation of verse 5 I think is much more accurate than the translation that is found in the New American Standard or the King James or the New International Version. All of those render verse 5 slightly differently And the reason for that is that the Greek text lends itself to being interpreted either way. But I think that the context supports the English standard translation better, because I believe that the point that Paul is making here is that in order for us to have the mind of Christ, we are going to have to receive it from God. It's not something that we are able to do in ourselves. You see, the other way of reading it, the way the New American Standard, for example, renders it is, have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus. And that lends itself to the idea of simple imitation. Even more clear, making that same kind of point, the New International Version translates it, your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. It's a simple exhortation to conforming our attitudes and our mindsets and our lifestyles to the picture that we have of Christ's own humility. That sounds good, see, until we try to do it. and fail over and over and over again because we're sinners. Because we're weak. Because we're fleshly. Because in and of ourselves, we don't have the power that is needed to have the mind of Jesus Christ. We can't do it. Being humble is foreign to us. By nature, we are self-willed, self-serving creatures. And the only way that we stop being that kind of a creature and sowing to the flesh is if God transforms us by supernatural grace. Something beyond us. Something other than us. The power under that transformation is nothing short of the Holy Spirit living in us. Applying the living Word of God to us as we believe the Gospel by faith. As we lay hold of the Word of God by faith and as we cling to it, then God's Spirit is using it like pure, refreshing water to enliven us and renew us and recreate us sanctify us, as Ezekiel talks about in chapter 36. He is that living water. He is the one doing the sanctifying. He is the one softening our hearts and changing our desires and causing us to be holy as He is holy. Without His work, we are helpless and hopeless to ever become what He desires us to become. You see, the point is that just as Paul admonishes us to have the mind of Christ, He reminds us that that mind is already ours in Christ. Listen to it one more time from the English Standard Version. Have this mind among yourselves. There's the command. That's the exhortation. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Jesus Christ. Lay hold of it now. It's yours. It's in you. He's dwelling in you. You're united to Him. Now make use of that mind that is already yours in Him. And how is it ours? Again, by faith we're united to Him. And we are indwelt by His Spirit and we have participated in His death by faith. We don't just believe that He died for us, we believe that we died with Him. I have been crucified with Christ, Paul says in Galatians. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives where? In me. Lay hold of Him. Make use of the power of Him and the mind of Him in you and sanctification will be the result. That's that whole principle of Christ living in us that's at work here in the specific area of the attitude of our hearts. And the question is, what defines that attitude? Really, the question is, who defines that attitude? Is it the person of Jesus Christ living in me, defining the attitude and the disposition of my life? Or, is it my flesh? that is still dying and desperately gasping for breath by enticing me to sin still. Who's defining my life? I believe with all of my heart that Christians have got to grab a hold of this truth. That the Christian life is far, far more than just imitating Christ. That it is understanding the power of Christ living in us and supernaturally transforming us and doing battle with our flesh that would seek to drive us and define us. And until we understand that by faith and plug into and tap into that power, we will simply spin our wheels in futility trying to be like Christ when we don't have the power in ourselves to do it. And the degree to which we don't understand this, we will suffer the agony of perpetual and habitual sin or the agony of bondage and guilt, the agony of self-righteousness and legalism. The principal truth of the Christian life is that all of our best efforts are like filthy rags. That we can't do it. That nothing short of that supernatural inside-out transformation of the heart is going to result in a changed life. That's what it means to be a Christian. Now does that mean that you're not responsible for your behavior? That you can let go and let God? and that He's just going to miraculously change you and that there's no culpability for you and how you live. No, it doesn't mean that. Does it mean that if you fail to be sanctified or if you fail to change, that you can just blame God for not doing the work because you weren't capable of doing the work? No, it doesn't mean that. But it does mean that where change genuinely takes place, you can't boast in it. You can't say, I did that. You can only, if you're honest, look away from yourself and look unto Christ and point the finger to Him and ascribe glory to Him and say, thank you Christ for changing me. Does it mean that you don't have to try to be holy? That you don't have to exert yourself towards godliness? No, absolutely not. It doesn't mean that. That is what we have to do. We are responsible to be holy as God is holy. We're just not able to be holy as God is holy. In fact, we're not able to be holy at all. We're desperately wicked. We are in the list of those people whose every inclination of heart is only evil all the time. So the question then that many people ask is, well, how can God hold me responsible to be holy when I'm not able to be holy? That doesn't seem fair of God. He can't ask me to do something that I don't have any power to do and then punish me when I don't do it, can He? How does that work? There's a lot of people who think that way, that if God requires something of me, then I must be capable of meeting that requirement, or else it wouldn't be fair of Him to make the requirement in the first place. I could say to my son, you need to jump 100 feet in the air, and if he didn't do it, I would spank him, and that wouldn't be fair because he's not able to. But see, this isn't that kind of a situation, is it? But that kind of thinking is why many, many people insist that we aren't as sinful as God's Word clearly says that we are. Because if we are as sinful as God's Word says that we are, then it is impossible to do what God requires of us. You see, all of that is fairly flawed logic. It ignores the fact that the reason why we are incapable of obeying God is because of our willful disobedience against God. It is because of our sin, which is our natural and willful rebellion to Him. Don't forget that before the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, there was no sin. Don't forget that Adam and Eve were created in perfect righteousness, perfectly able to keep God's law and to meet the standard that God had imposed upon them. He required them to be holy as He is holy, and they were capable of that because He made them capable of that, right? But then they chose not to. They made themselves incapable by enslaving themselves to sin. And all of us is their offspring with them. God didn't change the standards. He didn't lower the bar. The standard remained the same. But our disobedience is what renders us incapable of meeting that standard. It's it's kind of like this. Here's an anecdote. If you won the lottery today, don't go out and buy lottery tickets. I'm not advocating that. But if you won the lottery today and then use that money to buy a new house because the money enabled you to to make the purchase and and pay the house payment. And so after winning the money and after buying the house and agreeing to pay the bank so much money each month, you decide to celebrate. Don't do this either, but you decide to celebrate by going down to Vegas and gambling a little bit. And while you're in Vegas, you end up drinking and gambling so much that you wind up penniless and broke. You drain the entire bank account. The lottery winnings disappear because of your licentiousness. And so now what happens? You come home to that nice new house. And in a few weeks, the bank calls and they want to know where your monthly payment is. And what would happen? What would happen if you said to the bank, look, I can't make the payment, and so it's not fair of you to demand it of me? Would they go, well, you're right. Your logic is unassailable. And so we just cancel out the debt. That's not how it works. You blew it. You messed up. You lost the money. But you're still culpable and responsible to pay the bank and do that which you are incapable of doing because of your own mistakes, of your own shortcomings, of your own failures. If you try to pull that trick on the bank, they're just going to refer you to a collection agency and repossess your house eventually. It is fair, isn't it? It is not unfair of God to require us to be who and what He made us to be. just because in our sinfulness we messed all that up. We are responsible and culpable and we must be righteous and we must be holy and we must be obedient. And the biblical truth that goes alongside of that is that we are not able to do any of that in our own strength. That's the dilemma of the Christian life. We must do what our nature cannot do. And that's the dilemma that Paul is addressing here and that he talks about in Ephesians 2. He's reminding us of our responsibility to turn from our sin and to turn to the righteousness of Jesus Christ and to manifest that righteousness in our lives. But he's doing it in a way that goes deeper and farther than we usually look when we talk about growth and transformation and sanctification. Normally, again, I think we simply think of that primarily in terms of emulation or imitation. And again, as I said to you last week, that's not all bad because there is this massive responsibility for us to be holy. And the way that we know what holiness looks like is to look at the example of it in God's Word, especially the example of Jesus Christ who knew no sin, whose every thought and deed was righteous. What better example to follow? But remember, I also said to you last week that I think that a Blue Jay has a better chance of imitating Pavarotti than you or I have of imitating Jesus Christ. It's impossible for us in our flesh. To use a biblical metaphor, Jeremiah says that a leopard can no more change its spots or an Ethiopian can no more change the color of his skin than a man can begin to do good who is used to doing evil. It's ingrained in us. It's habitual for us. It's something that we need help in order to conquer. And as I said to you last week, this is why we need the power of Jesus Christ to transcend the power of our flesh. Mark Twain said, few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. Why? Why are good examples so annoying to Mark Twain? It's because they're so hard for him to follow. It's because they're such constant reminders of his own inability. Mark Twain, of course, wasn't a Christian. But he's really observed something there, hasn't he? Because we've got to realize the pervasive nature of our own sin. There's no way for us to follow the example of Christ's righteousness unless He changes us, unless He transforms us. There's no hope of us daring to be a Daniel, as the song goes, unless there is something beyond ourselves that is going to make that possible. For us to do what we must do, there needs to be this supply of power beyond what is already in us. There needs to be a source other than ourselves. And that's why Paul says, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. Now just plug into it. Now just lay hold of it. See, the supply is there. The supply is in Christ. And Christ is in us. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. We've just got to use that power, and that's precisely what he's saying here in verses 12 and 13 also. Therefore, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. There's the command, but here's the promise. It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do what is according to His good pleasure. The principle of the Christian life The principle that we have to get and cling to is that it is ours to work out what God has already worked in us. Notice though, for a moment, in verse 12 there, that Paul says, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence. As you have always obeyed, he says to them. They've obeyed before and now they're not obeying. You see, he's telling them that when he was there with them in Philippi teaching and holding them accountable and admonishing and exhorting and having an influence on them, that they did a good job of obeying, that they did a good job of mirroring the humility of Christ to one another. But now that he's gone and the influence of Paul's presence with them is gone, they've slipped. and they've fallen back into fleshly living. And so he's saying, it's great that you're obedient when I was there to influence you and to help you, but I want more than that. I want to be confident that your obedience isn't linked primarily to me. I want to be confident that it's linked to Christ. I want you to obey the Lord and reflect this humility and love even when I'm gone and when my influence isn't here. You see, that was the problem. was that their obedience was dependent primarily upon Paul's presence, Paul's ministry, Paul's person, instead of primarily upon the person of Jesus Christ. Now, on the one hand, there's nothing wrong with the fact that while Paul was there, that they were more apt to be humble and obedient because God uses us in each other's lives to provide ministry and influence and accountability, and that's necessary. The church is Christ's body. and all of the members are interdependent upon one another. No one can say, I have no need of the other member of the body. We've got to remember that. In fact, that's everything that Paul is exhorting them to in this chapter, isn't it? They've been factious and disunified, and now what they need to do is to be living together in the unity of love and dependence on one another. That's not a bad thing. But what Paul is saying here is that ultimately the problem is that their faith and the fruit of their faith must depend upon Christ and Christ alone. It can't depend on things that change. Paul's presence changes. He's no longer in Philippi. Now he's in prison in Rome. One day he'll be dead. Things are transitory in this world. Things go away. Ministers of the Gospel go away and they die and sometimes they even fall away. And our faith in the midst of whatever happens and changes in our lives has to be anchored to the one thing that is changeless. And that is the person of Jesus Christ who indwells us. And the Philippians were in danger of having their faith rooted and anchored to the faith and the strength of others. And that's a dangerous thing if that's our primary anchor point. If we lift somebody up so high and say, my faith depends on them so that if they die or if they stray or if they fall away, our faith is radically shaken and we don't know whether or not we can believe or trust God anymore, then we've anchored our faith to the wrong thing or the wrong person. And that's what these Christians were doing. Paul had become for them just a motivating influence. Somebody who was able to inspire obedience in them. And you see, anyone can do that. Non-Christian motivational speakers do it all the time. Our flesh is capable for its own benefit and its own reasons. It's capable of following the lead of others, especially if it's given the proper motivation. But that's not sanctification. That's not the obedience that Paul is looking for here. That's not the evidence necessarily of the Holy Spirit transforming your lives. It's a transformation that is temporary at best and superficial at best. It's not a change of heart where your flesh is dying because it has been crucified with Christ and now the Spirit of God is causing you to be raised with Him to newness of life as He is formed in you. Motivational speakers can't do that. Nothing can do that. No one can do that except Christ Himself. Nothing short of that is genuine sanctification and spiritual transformation. And what Paul wants for us as Christians is a reliance on Christ that produces this ongoing and perpetual transformation of the heart that doesn't stop, even if the teacher, or the elder, or the pastor, or the apostle in this case, is absent. True Christian growth and maturity doesn't stop if our mentors and our leaders depart, even if they fall into sin. It doesn't depend on good circumstances, and it doesn't decline in the midst of bad circumstances. If our faith and our character is rooted to Christ, then like Christ, trials and temptations are simply going to provide an opportunity to demonstrate that character and to demonstrate that faith. And that's what Paul wants. He wants for them to obey much more, much more in his absence, because then he knows that it's genuinely anchored to the presence of Christ and the power of Christ. And so really, that's the central point here. The central point is the Christian life is nothing short of being anchored to and moored to the Person of Christ in us by faith so that He is defining our lives and our flesh is becoming less and less influential. It's continuing to die. And so the command is this, verse 12, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Work out your salvation. That's a different word, by the way, than he uses in verse 13 where he says that God is at work in us. They're very different words. And I'll explain the word in verse 13 in a minute. But when he says, work out your salvation in verse 12, he does not mean for you to work for your salvation. He doesn't mean that you are to try to earn your salvation by your obedience or by good works. No, he's referring to the salvation that we already have, that has already been wrought within us. This is the primary difference between Christianity and any other false religion or any other belief system. Every other worldview and every other way of life is concerned with working in order to earn salvation, or working in order to make a difference, or working in order to build a legacy or gain something. And the emphasis gets put on what we must do in order to get what we want. And that's the disposition of our flesh. But Christianity is the opposite. Christianity is all about what God has done in spite of us and our inability in order to give us salvation freely. For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. Not even the faith. It's a gift of God that no one can boast of any of it. You see, Paul is referring to the salvation that has already been wrought within us. And his command now is to work that salvation that is in us, to work it out. What does that mean? Well, he's referring to our sanctification. To lay hold of that which God has done and to live it. He's talking about our growth in God's grace. He's talking about our ongoing transformation of life. And that is what happens as we work out that which God has put in us. But again, the question becomes how? How do we do that? How do we work out our salvation with fear and trembling? Those words indicate a sobriety. They indicate a seriousness with which we must take this process of working out our salvation and growing in grace. How do we weak, fleshly people take this command with deadly seriousness? One of the most remarkable characters in American history was George Washington Carver. I want to just read you a little account. that was written about him. It says, years ago before the slaves were free, a little six month old Negro boy was stolen with the other slaves from his owner. He was born a slave and on one occasion when he was a little boy, he was traded for a horse. He grew to be a man named Carver who lived near Diamond Grave, Missouri, became a professor and eventually, or eventually became a professor at Tuskegee University. He held degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts in the Royal Society for the encouragement of the arts and in manufacturing and commerce in Great Britain. He was also a musician and he once toured the Midwest of the United States as a concert pianist. He was a painter and he had exhibited at the world's finest fairs. But the most surprising thing about him was his ability to make things out of nothing. He was able to paint out of clay. He could make marble out of wood shavings. He can make starch or paste or vinegar or ink or shoe blackening into things that look like polished stone. He can make caramels out of sweet potatoes. He made butter and oil and cheese and dye and face powder and breakfast food and printer's ink and pickles and instant coffee and axle grease and 276 other things simply out of peanuts. Did you know all that about him? In spite of his background, Professor Carver said, When you do common things in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world. Now the reason, the only reason I read that to you is because that is what Paul is talking about. He's talking about a life that is so changed that the world stands back and sees the everyday, ordinary, mundane things that you and I do in our lives and recognizes in those things the glory and the humility of Jesus Christ. Professor Carver was recognized and registered as a genius, but listen to what he said when he was asked about all of his talents. He said, whatever I did, I was doing it simply because God had already put it within me to do. He had enabled my otherwise decrepit nature. And everything that I do is only doing what God has made possible for me to do. You see, he understood. And he's not talking necessarily about sanctification and righteous living. He's just talking about the talents that he had. But he's understood even at that level the point that Paul is trying to make here. That you can't look to yourself for the strength to do that which God requires you to do. What Paul is calling us in Philippians to do is to dig deep Very literally, that's what this word means. It's used in a mining context to dig deep and to dig out what God has put in, like a miner. A miner doesn't go and create gold or silver or diamonds. No, those have already been put into the earth by the Creator of the universe. The miner's job is just to extract them. In fact, the ancient Roman scholar Strabo writes of silver mining in Spain. This is in 68 B.C. before Christ. And he uses the exact same phrase talking about silver mining that Paul uses here in Philippians chapter two, where he says that we are to work out our salvation. That's the word that they used for the mining process to describe that that process of extracting the silver from the earth until every last bit of it was gone and exhausted. And that's the point of the statement here. There is a sense of diligent labor here. Hard work that produces fully developed Christian maturity, but that working out is always based on the energy that has already been worked into us. In fact, there in verse 13 where Paul says, for it is God who works in you, the Greek word that he uses there is not the mining term, to dig. The word that he uses there for work, it is God who works in you, is the Greek word energeo, And we get our English word energy from that word. Work out your salvation because God is supplying the energy that you need through faith in the indwelling Person of Jesus Christ. Now this is where our sanctification and our spiritual maturity becomes a matter of faith. We have to believe that that strength is there. We have to believe that our strength is not adequate. And that there is need of a strength beyond ourselves. and not only need of, but there is the reality of that strength. There is this supernatural source of power that God has deposited within us that we simply have to lay hold of and dig out by faith. It's not a let go and let God paradigm here. It is striving towards godliness only by ceasing to rely on our own strength and instead relying on the strength of Christ in us. One more anecdote to illustrate that just as we finish up this morning. In New York City, I don't know how long ago this was, but in New York City a long time ago, when they were building one of the East River bridges, the construction engineers were sinking these deep pilings down through the water and through the silt all the way down to the bedrock to build the bridge on top of. And as they were working to sink one of those pilings, they hit something down in the sand above the bedrock, but down in the mud. something that was large and something that was solid, something that was hard. It was a sunken barge. It was huge. And it had embedded itself down in the mud there, and it was impossible to work around. And so they had to pull it out. They had to remove it in order to continue building the bridge. And so they attached cables to it, and they tried with the largest motors and the largest winches that they had to try to heave this thing up out of the mud, and they couldn't. Time and time again, over and over again, They kept burning out motors as they tried to pull that thing free. And at one point, the chief engineer was considering scrapping the entire operation when this young man who was fresh out of technical engineering school asked to look at the case and try to devise a solution. And after studying the problem for just one day, this young man announced that he had a plan. And the chief engineer said to him, Young man, all of the combined experience and intelligence of our team, along with all of the power that we have available to us, is inadequate to move that barge." And the young man said, I know. We don't have the power. The solution is simple, he said. You need a power that is greater than what you have. Well, no kidding. Where are we going to get it? But he proceeded to execute his plan. He took and floated another barge over the top of the sunken one and then he attached massive chains between the two barges and then he stood back on the shore with the other doubting engineers and he waited. And they waited and they waited and then to their astonishment, what do you think happened? The tide came in. And as they watched with astonishment, the force of that rising water was a stronger force than what was miring that barge into the mud, and it pulled it up high enough for them to be able to float it out of the way. Why? Because that young engineer had the wisdom to make use of that virtually limitless power of the ocean, rather than relying on the power of man-made motors and winches. You see, Paul says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, and too often that's where we stop. We say, okay, and we set our motors to work, grinding and straining and smoking, groaning, trying like mad to become sanctified. Countless Christian lives are burdened this way. Their motors are dying and burning out and they live with this constant disappointment and discouragement and guilt because they're not succeeding in pulling themselves up from the mud and the mire. But you see, there's this peace and there's this rest when we simply chain ourselves to Jesus Christ and allow His power to be what pulls us up. We can only work out our salvation when we stop trying in our own strength and when we lay hold of the energy and the power of Jesus Christ within us. Just as Paul said in Ephesians chapter 2, we are to obey because why? Because we are God's workmanship. created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. He's done the work. We simply have to link ourselves to him. And as we as we do that. Then our lives will change, it doesn't mean that you meet God halfway and he's going to meet you halfway. It means that God has given you all and everything in Jesus Christ and that by laying hold of Jesus Christ, you lay hold of that which will shape you into the person that gives your all and everything back to God. As we submit to Him, it will be His power that is demonstrated, His workmanship that we reflect. You know what, that word in Ephesians 2, we are His workmanship. It's a beautiful word in Greek. It's a word that was commonly used of artistic creativity like sculpture or painting. In fact, it's the word that we get our English word poetry from. You see, you get the point? God is working in us to create something beautiful. And that is how we have to view our lives by faith as a piece of art being crafted and created by the power of God in order to reflect His glory in the handiwork. When we lay hold of that power and submit our lives to it, as clay in the hands of a potter, then He creates beauty in our lives. And when we walk in good works that He has prepared for us and advanced in, like the fine details of a sculpture, we evidence the mastery of the sculptor, and God's holiness and God's righteousness will be manifested in us, and we will experience freedom, and we will experience joy, and we will experience growth and maturity. And so the word for this morning is, as Paul says, to work out your salvation, but to be confident that it's God who is at work in you, both to will, to desire, to want, and to do, to accomplish, to obey, to act in a way that is according to His good pleasure. Let's pray that He makes this a reality in our lives. Father, we thank You for this Word. We thank You for this biblical truth that is so freeing and that gives us so much hope. Because, Father, it is so true, as the old adage says, that the more that we come to know about Your Word, the more we realize how unworthy of it we are. The more we come to realize how holy You are, the more we come to understand how far from Your holiness we are, and how sinful and how wicked we are. Father, we praise You that You have promised that our salvation is not up to us. That it's the work of God apart from us that no one can boast. And Father, You have also promised that the good work that You have began in us, You will finish and You will see to completion. And so we are so grateful that all of the strength and all of the energy and all of the resources and power that we need to overcome temptation, to grow in grace and knowledge, to see maturity and obedience manifested in our lives, all of that is already there. And we ask this morning that You would give us faith in that truth and that You would give us wisdom as to how to lay hold of that strength and that power, and that You would be at work in our lives, putting our flesh to death and causing the fruit of the Spirit to be born as Christ is formed in us. Father, make us into people that reflect Your glory and help us to be pleasing to You more and more, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Let's sing this morning as we think upon these truths and respond to God's Word to us in this way. Turn to number 688. Have Thine own way, Lord. Have Thine own way. Thou art the potter and I am the clay. Mold me and make me after Thy will while I am waiting, yielded and still. Stand together as we sing and pray to our Lord.