Gut issue in becoming God's poetic masterpiece

Paul stresses in Colossians 1:9, “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”

Jordan asks, “Do you know what God’s purpose with the Body of Christ is? It’s that man is going to take wisdom, understanding and knowledge out of His creation and harness it, subdue it and develop it so it manifests the wisdom God put into it. You and I are going to do the same thing up in the heavens.

“Do you know what our ‘reigning in the heavens’ is going to be about? It’s not going to be ordering the angels to ‘Go do this,’ and ‘Go do that.’

“In Mark 10, when two of Christ’s disciples came to Him and said, ‘We want to sit on each side of you in the kingdom,’ Jesus responded, ‘You guys don’t understand; you’re thinking like a bunch of elitist Gentiles. You think government is just telling people what to do. Government is to administer my heaven. It’s to administer my business.

“ ‘It’s to take the wisdom, understanding and knowledge that I have and go out there and figure out how to apply it to ever-increasingly new situations so you don’t need to run to the index every time; you’ve got some discernment to be able to deal with it based upon your understanding my will and, hence, you can manifest my thinking; my mind, my life.’

“Whoa! Do you understand now why wisdom, understanding and knowledge is really the gut issue?! I’m thinking of 30 verses off the top of my head that say this. Ephesians 2:7 says, ‘That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.’

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“The Lord came to Solomon at night in a dream and said, ‘Solomon, what can I give you? I’ll give you riches and power—whatever you want,’ and Solomon answered, ‘I want wisdom.’

“Then the text says Solomon awoke, and what the passage is saying is, ‘You know, it doesn’t help you to work incessantly; stay up all night, get up early to go to work, work through all kinds of difficult, sorrowful, hard, painful experiences, because God gives you His gifts when you’re not working at all. When you aren’t conscious. You’re asleep.’

“I’ve often thought about that. The bottom line is ‘it’s not of works.’ It’s HIS workmanship, not of us. This stuff ALL comes from Him.

“Think back through Scripture. When did God give Adam Eve? When did He cut the covenant with Abraham? He put him in a deep sleep. I mean, Solomon isn’t the only one in Scripture that that’s true of, and that’s why God writes it into these accounts.

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“When Paul says, ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God,’ he’s saying God’s the one who gives the blessing, not based on your merit, but on His giving. ‘For we are his workmanship.’ This is His doing!

“That word ‘workmanship’ (Eph. 2:10) there is talking about a work of art. A masterpiece. Preachers like to point out that the Greek word that’s translated there is the word we get our term ‘poem’ from.

“That word comes over in English as ‘poem.’ You’re His work of art. You’re literally the form through which He’s going to express Himself! A masterpiece is something you do to make yourself known.

“Paul only uses the Greek term twice. He writes in Romans 1:20, 'For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.'

Everybody knows something about God. He’s manifest in them. Romans 2:14 says, ‘For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.’

“You see, God has indelibly printed into the heart of man, all men, some information. He manifested Himself. Everybody knows there’s a God.

“That term ‘things that are made’ is a translation of exactly the same word in Ephesians 2 about workmanship.

“Creation is God’s workmanship. It’s His masterpiece that demonstrates and manifests His wisdom, His understanding, His knowledge. He’s placed it in the creation. Literally, when you look at the creation, you find out about Him!

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“Exodus 31 begins, 1] And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
[2] See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah:
[3] And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
[4] To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,
[5] And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.

“Workmanship is an activity that the wisdom, understanding and knowledge allows you to accomplish. Notice this guy is able to work in such a way as to devise cunning works. He literally had the capacity to take gold and silver material and extract out of them purposes.

“When it talks about how they became workers of brass, brass is an alloy. You take copper and tin, copper and zinc; one makes brass and the other makes bronze. You have to figure out there’s copper and there’s tin.

“Somebody had to sit down and figure out to smelt them together to become a heat catalyst to form something new that was better than either one by themselves. That’s devising cunning works.

“Man says, ‘Where’s the owner’s manual for this problem?’ and God says, ‘I’ve given it to you in my Word; the information’s available!’ ”