Remember Who You Are

Sermon for 8/9/2009 on Ephesians 2:10

Remember Who You Are (adapted from Arron Chambers)

Introduction:

There was a young man at the Monterey Community pool and he was complaining that no young lady would want to date him because he is so skinny and so ordinary. I had to pipe up and say, “No, man you are beautiful.”

Thesis: When the Bible says that we are God’s workmanship, this tells us several things:

For instances:

I. We are beautiful

A. The New Living Translation says in Ephesians 2:10- We are God’s masterpiece.

B. (Psa 139:13 NIV) For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.(Psa 139:14 NIV) I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

C. When we look in the mirror, what do we like best about ourselves? The least?

D. Sam was a 14 year old purebred Chinese hairless dog who won the World’s Ugliest Dog contest. Sam is covered in blackheads. His skin is wrinkled, brown, and dotted with splotches and several lines of warts. His eyes are pale and frightening. His teeth are misshapen and jut out of his mouth at odd angles. He has two hairs on his tail and five hairs on his head. He is so ugly that the judges at his first competition recoiled in horror when he was placed before them. But none of this seems to faze his owner, Susie Lockhee. In an interview on CBS’s The Early Show, Lockhee said, “People who don’t know him are pretty horrified. They’re very horrified that I’m always kissing him. I’m very affectionate with Sammy because I think he’s very beautiful. Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?

E. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we are “beheld” by God. God adores us.

F. God doesn’t make junk.

II. We are unique

A. (Song 6:9 NIV) but my dove, my perfect one, is unique, the only daughter of her mother, the favorite of the one who bore her. The maidens saw her and called her blessed; the queens and concubines praised her.

B. Art is art because it is unique. The Mona Lisa is a treasure because it is not a Polaroid picture of our Aunt Peggy. We are not copies we are all originals.

C. Out of the almost 7 billion people breathing right now, there is no one exactly like you. We have our own individual DNA, fingerprints, eye patterns, voices.

D. Larry- God made you special and He loves you very much.

III. We are valuable

A. (Mat 6:26 NIV) Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

D. Helen Frankenthaler’s The Bay is an abstract painting on display in the Detroit Institute of Arts. It’s valuable. This work of art is worth about 1.5 million dollars. Or I should say it used to be worth 1.5 million dollars, until a 12 year old boy on a field trip decided to put his gum on the painting. The gum left a stain the size of a quarter on the painting. The boy was suspended from school and disciplined by his parents. Following his suspension, Julie Kildee, the director of the boy’s charter school, said, “Even though we give very strict guidelines on proper behavior and we hold students to high standards, he is only 12 and I don’t think he understood the ramifications of what he did before it happened, but he certainly understands the severity of it now.” Where the boy once saw something equivalent to the underside of a cafeteria table, he now sees a valuable piece of art. We don’t always understand the ramifications of what we do to our lives because we don’t always understand how valuable we really are.

E. Arron Chambers- A couple of years ago I received an e-mail from a young woman I’d met who is struggling with anorexia. Here is a section from her e-mail: I don’t think other would really care if I was here or not. I’m sure some people would be thinking how it’s best that I’m gone so I won’t cause any more problems or be a burden to others. I feel flawed and damaged. The things that I really want out of life, I don’t see happening. Who is ever going to want someone who is so messed up and damaged? I hate how I dread the future.

F. Can we hear what she’s really saying? This young woman feels worthless.

G. If anyone tells us that we are worthless, don’t just ignore them; confront them. To ascribe no worth to God’s masterpiece is to put spit covered gum smack dab in the middle of a painting.