Baptism Sermon Ephesians 2:8-10

God has created your salvation (your past)

God has created you (your present)

God has created work for you to do (your future)

The mode of salvation and its results.

The word gift:

Same word used in Matthew when the wisemen bring their gifts to Jesus.

Also in Luke 21:4

Luke 21:4 CSB

For all these people have put in gifts out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

It is normally used to speak of an offering or gift we give to God but here it is used to speak of what God give to us.

Which makes God’s point all the more clean. Our salvation is a gift from Him. We cannot earn it by give Him anything because He give us to us.

the word works (ergon) can also mean deeds or actions

Michal Jordan and there is no I in team.

Galatians 6:14 CSB

But as for me, I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world has been crucified to me through the cross, and I to the world.

The word handywork: the word ποίημα is only used 2 times in the new testament.

The only other time in the New Testament it is used is in Romans 1:20:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Here it takes five English words to unpack poiema. All that we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell in the universe is reading God’s creative masterpiece

It is uses more in the LXX especially in Ecclesiastics

it can mean work or creation or what is made.

In the LXX it carries the idea of accomplishment.

In English we have this word poem. Which is something you write and compose which comes from this word.

Some people have said that we are God’s poem. I don’t think thing that is correct. But it is correct that you are God’s creation. He made you and is still making you. He is still working on you.

Out of all the things in this green earth that God created He has also made you.

thousands of years after he created the world he created you.

He made the baby in my wife tummy.

He is still creating you. Kids you will go through puberty and grow taller and God will create you more and more.

But the real creation that this is talking about is how he created salvation for you and what Jesus Christ has done to restore us back to God. We are created in Christ Jesus.

He is still creating you into what you need to be. So that you can in obedience do His work.

He has created you and He has created work for you to do.

He has made you to do His work.

God has created your past, present, and your future.

this is exactly why we are not to boast. because we have had so little to do with it.

You’re a piece of work and Jesus has plans for you.

God has given your life purpose