God Is An Artisan! Series

As you know, The Holiday Folk Fair is Celebrating the Culture of the Artisan, celebrating the knowledge and skills involved in creating objects ranging from delicate, detailed work, to the robust, like a sturdy basket or a canoe; in our music this morning a guitar, a flute made of bamboo, even a simple wooden box can be beautiful and create beautiful sounds because of artisans!

Now, look around you and notice people…. Every person is unique and we are all capable of being artisans! You see, we are all created in God’s image and part of God’s image is artisanship! God is an artisan and God created people to be artisans!

But not only did God fearfully and wonderfully created every person in a mother’s womb, God continues to be an artisan for every person still living. God is an artisan and God desires to make each one of us perfect! Let me briefly highlight a few passages from God’s Word the Bible relating to God’s work.

Here is a key verse for us from God: Isaiah 64:8 Yet You, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, You are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

But here’s the question; if God desires to make every person perfect in the world, why is there shame, pain, and imperfections?

You see Isaiah 64:8 is truth, God is the potter and people are clay, but there are many other truths which makes this truth clearer. We must always be careful of just taking one bible verse and ignoring the others.

1. In the beginning God created the first man and woman out of the dust of the earth. God breathe His Spirit in them and they lived perfectly without shame.

But what happened? Because God is love and true love is not controlling, God allowed people to be able to choose. And because true love guides to what is best, God told them what was right and wrong. It was wrong for the first man and woman to take a fruit from a certain tree.

2. The first man and woman chose to go against their Creator God and found themselves naked, ashamed, and laboring.

Choosing against God is sin. And since every person came from the first man and woman,

3. Every person in the world is stained with sin, which causes shame, pain, and imperfections!

The Apostle Paul summed it up this way in the Letter to the Romans Chapter 7 “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do. What a wretched man I am!” We all do this don’t we? We know what the right thing is but we go ahead and do the wrong thing!

If God is our artisan desiring each one of us to be perfected, what is His solution to our problem of sin? With God’s guidance, the Apostle Paul himself answers the question “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Grab your handout and look at the bottom of the front page; highlighted is from the Gospel of John Chapter 3, v16, let us read it together aloud…….

What did God do to solve our problem of sin? God gave us Jesus Christ to die on a cross for all our sins.

4. As we believe in Jesus Christ as our only Savior and God, God takes us from death to an abundant life to eternity! You see, even though Jesus Christ suffered and died for all our sins, God the Father brought Him back to life!

Have you chosen to believe in Jesus Christ as your only Savior and God? If so, then you are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

God tells us in 2 Corinthians 3:18 – Believers of Christ with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. And so,

5. God is an artisan still at work until the work is completed. Believers of Christ will eventually shine like stars in the universe!

God is the Potter, we are the clay!

We are all the work of God’s hand till we become like the Son of God. All He asks is we believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit!

As we sing Amazing Grace, take a quiet moment to ponder on these things. One day soon, as you believe in Jesus Christ, you will shine like a star in the universe!