The Finishing Touch

Well, I'm not a big fan. I've never been kind of a connoisseur of art or sculpture or anything like that. It's never been kind of the thing that has, you know, attracted my attention. But as you go around to various places and maybe as you become older, you become a little bit more appreciative of the things and the differences of people and the talents that they have. And, you know, if you had the opportunity to go over to Italy and Greece, you see some of the fine sculptures from, you know, centuries ago that people did.

And, you know, you look at those and you kind of realize you're kind of looking at a finished product, but you don't really see until you think about it the years and maybe decades of work that went into some of those pieces. You know, back in ancient Greek, they had some fantastic pieces. When you look at some of the sculptures that were there, there were some, you know, if you look online, they'll tell you there were six million sculptors back in Greek, and they did some amazing work for the time, back, you know, a couple thousand years ago, even.

One of those sculptors, his name was Phidias, and he's the one who actually carved the statue of Zeus that was considered one of the seven wonders of the world back at that time. And I've seen pictures of it, and it's very intricate, very intricate. He also carved the statue of Athena, and it took this man literally decades to do those things. And I remember in school, you know, you would do the things with the with the kills and the clay, and you kind of fashion your little, you know, little bowls and whatever you were doing.

It was kind of fun to do that, but you didn't put much time into it. But these people, you know, they all, they kind of thought was their life's work. They had a vision of what they were doing, and they had the patience. They took the time to do take care of every little detail. It was said of Phidias, for instance, with after he carved some fish, and they were so lifelike that someone said, you could just simply add water to those fish, and they start swimming.

And yet they were out of stone. There's another little story, a little, another little story I want to read to you that's out on the internet about Phidias. Let me just read it to you. It says, Phidias was very likely the greatest sculptor among the ancient Greeks. Legend tells us that he was extremely careful when applying the finishing touches to the beautiful statue of Athena, I think it's supposed to be Diana, the beautiful statue of Athena, which was to adorn the Acropolis in Athens. As he applied his chisel to the rear side of her head, he shaped each strand of her hair with great patience, giving his full attention to the tiniest detail.

An observer reminded Phidias that the statue would stand 100 feet high with its back to a huge marble wall. Why waste your time on those finishing touches, which will never be seen? he asked. Who will ever know such beauty is there? And Phidias replied, I will. I will. He had a vision in mind. He knew exactly what he wanted to do when he was when he was carving that statue. He knew exactly where it was going, and everything was going to be perfect in his eyes, even though other people may not see it or understand what it was.

He was going to get that done right, and it was going to be to the specifications that he wanted. You know, that's the mark of a true artist, a true sculptor. I don't know if in America or in the world we have any real sculptors anymore, like they were in olden times, because it took such attention to detail.

It took so much time to do those things and to go over it and over again and build everything into it that you wanted. Well, you know, we might not know any sculptors. We may not appreciate the work that went into it, but every single one of us is part of a work of art that's being worked out in us and in the world we live. You know, there is no greater sculptor. There is no greater artist. There is no greater painter.

There is no greater visionary than God. And he took something from nothing way back when, and he made it into something that is absolutely perfect. No one knows how long it was to form the earth the way it is today. Certainly, you know, we read in Genesis 1, you know, it goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. How many in our time, millions of years, or billions of years, to get everything exactly right, every single detail in place?

And so we look at that and we know the earth today isn't the finished project, isn't a finished product. There's finishing touches that have to be put on it. God had something in mind at creation that's still at work. Centuries, decades, millennia, maybe millions of years in the making. He's very detailed, and everything's going to be done to his specification. Let's look at a few verses here. Back in Isaiah, or in Isaiah, Isaiah 46.

The first we seem to often remind ourselves of, that God is in control, and God is the one who is carving out what's here below. God is the one who will bring this sculpture, this creation, this masterpiece that he's working to conclusion in exactly the way that he wants. Isaiah 46, verse 10, it says, God declares the end from the beginning. He knows exactly where it's going to go. You know, Phidias and the great sculptors, they had a vision in mind. This is exactly what the detail they were going to do, and they just kept honing it and honing it and honing it until it was ready to be revealed. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.

I will bring it about. And so we live on a planet. That was developed out of nothing. Let's turn a few chapters back to Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40. And verse 21, it says, Haven't you known? Haven't you heard? Hasn't it been told you from the beginning? Haven't you understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He, it is God, who sits above the circle of the earth. Its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, which stretch out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. You read about the circle of the earth. And I know there's people out there in the world today that there's this flat earth theory that's going around that some pay attention to. And you kind of scratch your head and think, what is the basis of it? The Bible tells us right there, God sits above the circle of the earth. He formed it. He's got everything exactly the way that it should be. You know, even look up back in Psalm 19. We won't turn there. So it's the heavens declare God's glory. Look at His masterpiece. David would marvel when he would sit, lay on his back, and look up at the skies and say, who could ever paint a painting like that? Who could ever decorate a sky, a canvas the way God decorated it? He is the master. He is the creator. He's the one who's doing things. He's the master potter. He's the one who is forming and continues to create and mold His creation to the desired end that is yet ahead of us. We go forward in Isaiah to Isaiah 64. Isaiah 64 and verse 8. Isaiah writes, but now, O eternal, you, you are our Father. We are the clay and you our potter, and all we are the work of your hands. You're the one molding us. You're the one developing us. You've got the end in mind. We're just that clay. We are the dust of the earth. You took us from nothing, and you keep working, and you keep working, and you keep working because you have something in mind for mankind. You have something in mind for earth. Just like the great sculptors of old who had something in mind, it might have taken them years and decades to complete it. But they were patient, and they were attentive to every little chisel they made in that stone to get it exactly right. God is patient, and God works with us because He wants to get what He wants us to be and wants us to become exactly what He wants. Let's...

Next book is Jeremiah. Let's look at Jeremiah 18. Jeremiah 18 and verse 1. God's word came to Jeremiah, verse 2, and he said, Arise, Jeremiah, go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause you to hear my words. And I went down to the potter's house, and there he was making something at the wheel. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter, so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. Was it right? Retooled? Got things going again. The word of the Lord came to me, saying, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter? Look, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. And then he goes on to talk about, listen, I can form this to the I desired and the way I want. The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck it up, to pull it down, to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have soaken turns from its evil, I'll relent to the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. And he goes on of this. I'm molding this. I'm developing. I've got a plan in mind. Everything that you go through, everything that is part of the molding and the pot to clay and what God is working in this world and in us is all part of his plan. He has an end in mind. And maybe sometimes, like, you know, the person who asked, why are you paying attention to that? What are you doing it that way for? Now, we might have those same questions, too. What do we need to do that for? What is this teaching us? But we have to rely on the master potter. We have to rely on our architect. We have to rely on our masterpiece builder that has got an end in mind.

Let's go back. Let's go back and look at a couple of the things that God has done. Let's go back to Genesis 1. Always interesting to look at the creation story. And we're not going to read the entire chapter of chapter 1. But again, we see at the beginning, you know, in Genesis 1.1, God created the heavens and the earth. And as he looked down on it after it had been there for a while and decimated by someone who didn't have God's vision in mind and who departed from him, the earth was without form. It was void. It was tohu and bohu. It was chaos. It was confused.

It was dark. And then God was going to create. Then God was going to begin working with that toward a desired end that he had. And you go down through and you see how he just, one day, day one, day two, three, four, five, he just created the things. And all of a sudden, out of literally nothing, you have this beautiful planet. You have this beautiful planet. We come down to verse 26.

You know, as God went through five days of creation and you had a beautiful planet was there. It had animals. It had birds. It had fish. It had an ecosystem that was all developed. It was perfect. It was self-sustaining. You couldn't get it more perfect if you had tried. It was a masterpiece. And then God put the finishing touch, the finishing touch on that creation when he created man because there had to be something then, just the other physical things on earth. Verse 26, God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them, blessed them, and said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. I'm putting you in charge. You're the finishing touch. The creation is there. Now I'm giving it to you.

It needs man to oversee it. It needs man to cultivate it. It needs man to work with it. It needs man to learn from it. It needs man there. Without man, the earth was incomplete. So when God on the sixth day put the finishing touch of putting man there, we'll get back to man.

But even at that point, we had a self-sustaining earth. We had a beautiful masterpiece, a beautiful place that Adam and Eve were in.

Was the physical creation enough? Was that all that God had in mind? Just create a great, beautiful, physical place? Could it sustain itself with man overseeing everything, even though God had built in every feature into that earth to keep it going? No, it needed something else. It needed something else in order to become what God had in mind, because that was the finished product for now, but that was just the beginning of what God had in mind. So we move to verse chapter 2. Verse 31 of chapter 1, it says, God saw everything that He made. It was very good. It was perfect. It was exactly the way He wanted it to be. Verse 1 of chapter 2, the heavens and the earth, and all of them were finished, complete. The work is done. But there was one more thing that had to happen in order for that masterpiece to continue on, another finishing touch. And that finishing touch we find in verse 2. On the seventh day, God ended His work, which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work, which He had done. And He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work, which He had created and made.

The earth wasn't complete. The physical wasn't complete without God. You had man who had dominion over the earth, but God built into the earth. Without God, they'll never amount to anything.

Without God, it's not going to take the next step. Without God, it's not going to ever progress toward what the ultimate is, what the end is that God knows from the beginning. It's going to have to have God. And mankind has to have built into His week, into His time, time for God, to acknowledge Him. Because if He doesn't have time for God, the sculpture stops building. The sculpture doesn't progress in the way it should be. It doesn't have the desired effect. It doesn't have the desired end. It's not beautiful. And so God created the seventh day. And Jesus Christ said, the Sabbath was made for man. It's a tool for man. It was a gift to man. It was a time for Him to remember God and to remember that God has something in mind beyond just this physical creation and the physical bodies that we have today. There had to be God involved, just like the statue of Zeus and these other statues and sculptures of Phidias. If He wasn't there, it was just going to stop at the legs or at the waist, and it would have never been completed. If He disappeared, it would have never been completed. Without God, what God started would never be completed. But we know the story. We know that mankind, you know that mankind rejected God. They took it upon themselves, and they didn't pay attention to. There's the potter and the clay. We would just as soon do things our way. We don't want to do it the master's way. We don't want to do it the sculpture's way. We want to kind of build this ourselves. God allowed it to happen. God allowed it to happen. Well, you know what? I'm going to build that into the sculpture because this is something that they need to know. We need to have this part of what the ultimate end is so they can build this in. We'll chisel. That's part of the process of the development of the whole thing. Let them be what they want to be because that's part of the masterpiece. That's going to get us to the desired end and the vision that God had in mind. And we see what happens without God in not too many years, 1500 years maybe, in Genesis 6. Without God in their lives, without remembering the Sabbath day, without the master that was there, that would have created and had in mind a beautiful, peaceful, awesome existence for mankind. Where everyone will be living in accord, it descended into the same state it was before, but this time with man in it. It descended into chaos and confusion and violence. Genesis 6 verse 5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts in his heart was only evil continually. The mark of a world without God. The mark of a world without God, without the master sculptor. Let's forget him. Let's do it our way. It doesn't turn out well. It doesn't turn out beautiful. It doesn't turn out as the magnificent thing it should be when you fire the master sculptor and then think if you do it your own way it's going to come out.

Well, it just doesn't work that way. We go to the New Testament in Romans 1.

And we see even as the flood came and everyone except Noah and his family died and the earth was restarted with that family that did follow God, that the same thing happened. So here in the end days when we look at Romans 1 and verse 29, you know, we see a definition of the age that we live in. Verse 29, filled with unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness.

They're whisperers. They're backbiters. They're haters of God. They're violent. They're proud. They're boasters. They're inventors of evil things. They're disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, and unmerciful. I mean, how many more negative adjectives can we have? That's the world we live in. This is what happens when a world doesn't want what the sculptor does and they say, we're going to take matters into our hands and we're going to sculpt this the way we want. And that's the world we live in today. Verse 28, it tells us, these people didn't like to retain God in their knowledge. Adam and Eve didn't want to retain God in their knowledge. The people before the flood didn't want to retain God in their knowledge. The people today don't want to retain God in their knowledge. And so here we are in June of 2020, and we look at a world that has had so many things happen to it over the last several months. One thing after another, you know, makes you wonder, where's the next thing? What has the building of this world, the sculptors of this world, what has it brought us to? You know, we've got health pandemics going on, we've got economic questions going on, we've got everything going on in the world today with the George Floyd case and the response to that. The world is seeking for answers. The world is looking for answers. There's a world that doesn't even understand each other, and there's so much work to be done in that area. When you see the magnitude of problems that are building up, and who knows what it's going to be next, because it just seems to happen over and over. It's like a wave, the waves coming in from the ocean. What's the next one that's going to stop us, that knock us off our feet? You know what the problem with the world is?

You know, they're going to have all the committees they want, and they can, you know, we can have all the protests and nothing wrong with them. I understand the sentiment behind it. I get, I'm beginning to get, what the problems are, but there are no answers in the world. The sculptor of this world does not have the answers. Only the master sculptor has the answer to what's going on. And if the world would go back and say, you finish what you created, you sculpt us, you mold us, you know what? You know what? It would be a much better place. And that master sculptor, he has not abandoned the world. He's letting it be chiseled into the fabric of mankind and the fabric of the earth. It's all part of what his plan is. He will get to the point of where he wanted it to be that he saw from the very beginning because he knows what the end is.

And with everything that we go through in this life, good and bad, it's like that master sculptor taking the time and patiently chiseling in, chiseling into that statue, that form, our existence, what it is and how glorious it will be when the final, final touches are put on it. But somewhere along the line, the clay has to say, we'll let you, Master Potter, we'll let you finish what you began because what we have done, what we have built, the picture that we're painting isn't very pretty, isn't very pretty, and hey, we have no idea how to get out of it. We have no idea what to do. We have no answers to the things that are going on in the world today.

Mankind has no answers, but God does. Let's go back to Isaiah 55.

And Isaiah 55 and verse 8. You know, we could look and we could say, well, why is this happening?

Why do we have to go through this? You know, just like the man asked Phidias, what are you doing that for? Why are you wasting your time on that? Does that have to be part of it? Yes, everything that goes on has to be part of what God is building in this world. We may not know why.

We may question. Verse 55, verse 8, we're reminded, as God says, my thoughts aren't your thoughts.

You may not get why this happens. You may not understand it now. I've got an end in mind.

I've got an end in mind. And every stroke I take, every color I add, every chisel I make, it's designed to get to the desired end for the earth, for humanity, and every one of us.

My thoughts aren't your thoughts. My ways aren't your ways, says the Eternal. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Something we could all remember when we're going through things and think, you know, God, He is the Master Sculptor. He does know what's going on. I know He's got the end in mind.

I may wish it was a different way, but you know what? I've got to trust that everything that happens, everything that goes on, He's chiseling into us individually and collectively, and the world's history, exactly what it needs for the desired end that God has in mind that He had before the earth was ever, ever formed. We're all in that process. We're all there.

We don't know exactly how far the sculpture is done. It seems it's getting closer and closer to completion, to the final, final touches, where God will say, and Christ says, you know, it's finished. It's done. Well, we can talk about the earth. Let's go back and talk about man.

Because of the things that God created back on those first six days of creation, He created man last, as if man was the—He was the finishing touch on those first six days, and then, of course, God gave him the Sabbath day on the seventh as the finishing touch of what He would need. Everything was in the earth that He would need to sustain His life and live His life. He would also need the Sabbath day, and He would need to keep that holy, and He would need to take that time to reflect and stay away from everything of the world and take that time for God in order to continue through the time that God wanted Him to have. But man, when you read in verse 26, you know, He wasn't complete either. He's a physical man with temporary life, no immortal soul, like the world wants to believe. He was created, then He could die. He could die. But God didn't want that. He wasn't willing—He wants everyone to have eternal life, but there's a plan. God chisels us the way that He sees fit. But here's man. Here's man. Now, let's drop down to chapter 2 in verse 18. God says to Adam, who's there, Lord God said, it's not good that man should be done, or should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.

So Adam, you know, as he was looking at the beasts of the field and naming them, you know, he could see, well, they all have kind of mates. There's two of them, but there's just one of me. Verse 21, God says, you know, it's not good for man to be alone. The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, closed up the flesh in its place. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman. So man, Adam had woman inside him. God sort of separated the two, took a rib out, maybe took some emotions out, took some of the way the brain works out, kind of separated it into two, right?

And the rib which the Lord God, he made into a woman, he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Adam wasn't complete in himself.

Adam was a great human being. I mean, we can look at our bodies and say, man, they can do everything, everything we need to do. God's given us to do in this one little body.

But Adam needed something else in order to be all that he could be. He couldn't be it by himself.

God created woman. Why would God do that? Why would God say, why wasn't Adam just enough? Why couldn't he just be there? Why couldn't he just be the finished product? Couldn't he just go out and tend the fields and do everything? Didn't God give him all the talents that he could do those things? What was God building into man? What did man need to have as part of his sculpture to be what God ultimately wanted him to be? There had to be relationships, right? Man had to know how to be one with other people. He needed to have another, he needed to have a relationship. And mankind was going to have relationships. And they had to learn how to get along with one another. Man and woman needed to get married. They needed to become one flesh. They needed to yield self. They needed to submit to each other. They needed to learn all the things that you and I learn in marriage, all the things that we read about in Ephesians and Colossians and Peter says about marriage. And God was doing that because it's part of the fabric of what has to be sculpted into our minds that we learn and we grow. And marriage is a tremendous, tremendous learning opportunity as God sculpts us, forms us, molds us into who He wants us to be because He has something more than mind than just our physical life today, not just the 70, 80, 90, 100 years we live in this life, but the relationships that have to develop that are going to be there for eternity because, you know, there's a purpose in man. There's a purpose that God has in mind. And He had to learn those things. And it had to be built into Him and sculpted into Him. And as we work with our wives and husbands and as we work with other people because we are always in concert with each other, God is working with us. And we learned that relationships are important. Our relationship with God and our relationships with each other.

Because, you know, God created an awfully lot of men. He created an awfully lot of people. There's an awfully lot of people on earth. A lot of people, and, you know, some of them look different than us. Some of them talk differently than us. Some of them have different backgrounds than us.

But what He wanted was mankind to love one another. He wanted one kind to come to love each other just as God and Jesus Christ loved all of mankind, regardless of race, background, socioeconomic status. And He died for all mankind. His will is. And the ultimate goal is all of mankind will live in harmony. All of mankind will be in accord. And if we're going to be part of that finished product, we have to learn that today. And that takes some time. And sometimes we go through things and we learn some things as God chisels away this piece and chisels away that piece so that it can become perfect and a part of the permanent structure that He's building. And so we go through things and as we go through things we might have to look at ourselves sometimes. We might have to realize, oh, there's I didn't get that before. There's a part of me there that maybe seemed like it was, it's in the back of my head and there's this hundred foot marble wall behind me. Who's going to see that? Well, God sees it. He sees what needs to happen. He sees what needs to be perfected. He sees what attitudes need to be chiseled out. He sees what needs to be formed, to be perfectly formed. And so we live in a world that isn't perfect, but as we live in a world and we look at ourselves and our responses, our words, our attitudes, we find, wow, we're not so perfect either. We've got a long way to go. There's more that God has to work on us, to sculpt us individually and collectively to who he wants us to be.

But relationships are so important to God. God the Father and Jesus Christ are two beings.

You know what? They live together in perfect harmony. They live together in perfect harmony.

Both supremely intelligent beings, we don't even have adjectives to describe it, but they've learned to live in harmony and they are perfectly happy and joyous. Millions, billions of angels in heaven. All get along. All get along. There's not the discord. There was one time in history, long, long ago there was discord. They're not there anymore. God's not going to have people in his ultimate masterpiece, what his end result is, that don't know how to live with one another, who don't allow him to chisel away the weaknesses and chisel away the faults, and who don't work with him and allow him to mold the mind and develop it into the mind that Jesus Christ has, the mind that he has as we go through the things of life. They sometimes might seem not fun. What are we going through this for? What do we learn? Well, we should always ask, what do we learn? What are we learning from this? Because it is a part of what God is building in you and me, every single piece. And in the end, God will sit back. Now we will sit back and marvel at what God has worked, what God has worked. You know, let's turn over to Hebrews 2.

Hebrews 2. You know, David Mewsed. David Mewsed as he looked at the world around him, and the skies and everything that he was doing. And he asked the question, what is man that you're mindful of him?

He saw the time in his days and how people were and thought, what do you even put up with mankind for? Why are you patient with him? Why are you dealing with all of this? Why don't you just take the hammer and take that sculpture and smash it to pieces? It's not turning out the way you wanted it to, right? God? So why are you doing that? But it is going the way that God wants to, because his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He knows how to get and what the ultimate end is. Hebrews 2, verse 6. One testified in a certain place, saying, what is man that you are mindful of him? Or the son of man that you take care of him? Well, you've made him a little lower than the angels. Today we're just these, you know, these human beings, temporary life, filled with faults. You have made him a little lower than the angels.

We can't even get along like the angels do. We squabble with each other. We squabble between husband and wife. We don't understand. We've got to work on those things. We've got to let God build into us what he wants us to have and not just take a hammer to the sculpture he's doing and say, I don't even want to be part of your sculpture anymore. I just don't, I just want to give up. No, we never give up. We work at it and we let God continue building. You've made him a little lower than the angels. You've crowned him with glory and honor. You've set him over the works of your hands. You've put all things in subjection under his feet. You gave him this earth to have dominion over. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that's not put under him. But now we don't yet see all things under him. We don't see the finished project, the finished product yet. It's still a sculpture in process. It may be 6,000 years in the making. It's not finished yet. We may have been, we may be 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90 years old. It's not finished yet what God is working. We don't yet see all things put under him, but we see Jesus, the example who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor that he by the grace of God might taste death for everyone. We see what God has in mind. He has in mind to give man eternal life. But not all men. The sculpture has to let the sculptor form him into who he wants him to be. It's his work. We're his workmanship. Not our workmanship, it's we're his workmanship. And if we want to be part of the sculpture that he is crafting as we go through our lives and we go through the millennia that God works with mankind and this earth, we have to heed the words, let him do it, don't question him, don't fight, yield to him, yield to him and submit to him and do all those things that are so contrary to our nature.

Learn to get along with one another. Every other. Seek to understand, we say. Seek to see what's going on. Understand. Understand because God's will is that all of mankind who end up when that finishing touch that he puts on will all be one. The differences will have been resolved. They'll have been dissolved or resolved during the time that we're in now. But relationships is one of the things that God is working in us that has to be chiseled into it. We have to learn those. We can't run from them. That's why we build in the God built in Matthew 18, 15. When we have differences with one another, go to one another. Win your brother back that he tells husband and wife. Come together again. Resolve your differences. Why he gives us the commands that we've talked about. Submit to one another. Respect one another. Love one another. Catch yourself. Don't do the natural carnal thing. But stop and think, what does the master sculptor say to do this as I build the sculpture of my marriage, friendships, church relationships, employee-employer relationships, neighborhood relationships, whatever it is. Use the building blocks and let him, let him do that and pay attention when he starts chiseling away. That's something that we need to be sure we let the sculptor chisel away if it's going to take the form that God desires it to be.

Well, there's man. So man, and God added woman to man because there was this thing that God had to sculpt into mankind. Is that all man needed? Was that a complete, was he a complete product at that time? No. Are we still in Genesis? I'm in Genesis. Let's look at Genesis. Oh no, this is where we're going to hurry Hebrews. Let's go back to Genesis 2 again. As he began sculpting mankind and put him here on earth, he built, got to learn the relationships, got to work on that throughout our lives. And I should mention parents and children too, right? Because children have a responsibility in this too, in the admonitions that God gives us as we work together. In Genesis 2, in verse 15, we see another thing that's right there that God gives mankind right there as he created him.

So there in the Garden of Eden, God, part of the sculpture is, I'm just not gonna, man isn't complete.

He's got some of the things that he needs, but he's not complete. He's got some choices to make, and I'm telling him, you eat this. Eat of this tree, right? Eat of this tree. Ingest it. You got to eat this so it becomes part of your sculpture, part of your life, part of who you are, part of your definition. But mankind didn't do that. They did the opposite. They took the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They rejected God's command, and they ate of another tree, and are reaping the fruit of it, you know, down through history. We see the fruit of it today, in the chaos, the confusion, and the misery that mankind brings upon himself, not just in the national stuff that we have going on today, but in his personal lives and down through the history, the wars, the misery, the people who have starved, the people who have never understood even what their physical potential is because they lived under autocratic regimes and never had a chance to develop even slightly. The same type society that you can see we are headed to today that the Bible says is just ahead of us. The same type thing as man goes back to his old way.

God said, you've got to eat. You've got to eat what I tell you to eat. You've got to do the things. There has to be something that you ingest. Mankind said no. Mankind said no at the time in the Garden of Eden. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, here's his people, you know, they've been part of their sculpture was they were in slavery for centuries in Egypt. There was a reason that they were there for centuries in Egypt. That God was chiseling into that people and he brought them out, gave them freedom. Were they complete? Did they have all they needed? They'd been brought up under under a society and under a government that was so far apart from God it wasn't even in the not even in the same ballpark. What did he add? What did he add to Israel to help them be complete?

Well, he added law to him, didn't he? In Exodus 20, as they came out of Egypt, we see he gave him law. Here's how you live. The way you were living didn't lead to anything that you wanted. Here's the way to live. Pay attention to these Ten Commandments, these statutes, these ordinances. Live this way, and he promised them if you live this way, good things will happen. You will ride the high hills of the earth. You will be happy. You will be the envy of the world. But you got to eat of this way. You've got to take of this way. You've got to follow these laws. And so we find that even with that old, that ancient people that God brought out of Egypt, and he said, you're my special treasure on earth. I'm going to work with you. I'm going to do the things that you want me to do. I'm going to do the things for you. But they needed a finishing touch. He didn't just plant it in their minds and force them to do it. Here's the commandments. Here's the law. Here's the way to do it. And they tried, but they didn't get it done. It was a perfect law. If it had been perfectly adhered to, had it been ingested by them, had they written it on their heart, had they eaten of it, you know, things might have been so different for Egypt or for Israel. But they didn't.

And they went the way of ancient kingdoms. We know that Israel was taken into captivity. Judah was taken into captivity. We see, you know, today what the result of not paying attention to God's law.

Here's the diet. Here's the spiritual diet. If you want happiness, if you want a cord, it's pretty simple. Just do it. But you do have to yield. You do have to submit. You do have to make it part of you. You can't just give it lift service. You've got to do it. Now back in James, James 1, verse 25. You know, as we've been talking, James is a nice little book, right? It encompasses so much. So much for us to look at, so much for us to examine ourselves in. It takes us into, you know, some of the things we have to look at as God sculpts us and that we see where he's going and what needs to be sculpted out and weeded out and some things that have to be added into as he adds and takes away and molds. James 1, verse 25. He who looks into the perfect, the perfect law of liberty. God's law, everything he formed, that must just master sculptor, even his law is perfect. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with it except mankind doesn't want it. Be who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work.

This one will be blessed in what he does. You know, gotta do it, too. That's part of the sculpture, right? That's part of the character. That's gotta be what's built into us. Know it, understand it, and do it. Can't have a perfect sculpture without that being built into it. That perfect law of liberty in chapter 2, verse 12. He again mentions the law of liberty, so speak and so do, as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. So speak and so do. Talk the talk and walk the walk, is what he's saying. You want to be part of that final sculpture? You want to be part of the unresolved of what I have? You want to be part of eternity? You gotta talk the talk. You gotta walk the walk. You gotta eat what God gives. You gotta make it part of you. It can't just be lip service. It has to be all of you. It has to be heart, mind, and soul. You need to sculpt that in as God allows that to become part of the sculpture that he's building individually and collectively. Well, you know, Israel had the law, and that was a nice, that was a kind of an additional touch that God gave them, a final touch, if you will, at that time. And God, the master sculptor, he wasn't fooled by what was going on. He had to build Israel's history into their minds and into our minds because all those things, it tells us in 1 Corinthians 10, happened to them as examples to us. Things that we look at and learn from that get built into our fabric, that are built into us and sculpted into us, and we think, oh, you know what? They weren't a complete product. Just adding the law to the people who were called out didn't work because they were too weak. They didn't have what it took in order to ingest the law and to make it part of them. They didn't have what it took to reject the way of the world that only leads to ruin and misery and evil. They didn't have they didn't have what it took to reject that. So God knew they needed something else. And in this day and age, after Jesus Christ sacrificed himself, that our sins could be forgiven and opened the door to the throne of God and to salvation. God added something to the sculpture he's building in mankind. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 2. As he continued building, now don't get the impression that I'm saying he kind of thought about it, thought, oh, I didn't do this, no, I didn't do that. No, there was a plan from the beginning, and the sculptor adds to it in his own time and the way he wants because he has an end product in mind, and he's the one who sees where he's going. God will reveal that to us, too. We just have to let him take us to where he's going. In 1 Corinthians 2, we read in verse 11, What man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?

Well, you know, I'll refer back to Genesis 2 verse 7. You'll remember that when God made Adam a living soul, he breathed life into him. And when God breathed life into Adam, he breathed the spirit into him, a spirit that was different than the animals, a spirit that was different than everything else on earth. It was the spirit in man that allowed him to have dominion over the earth, gave him the ability to reason, make choices, intellect, coordinate things, make things happen. And that spirit in man is in every man. And so we see a world around us that is marvelous, even technology, even when it doesn't work when we first begin services. But it is still a marvelous thing that we have and that we have the opportunity we have. Look at everything man has done with the spirit in man. That's magnificent. Even the sculptors who, even the sculptors, you know, like Phidias, that's the spirit in man. That's the spirit in man that sees something and has the talents and uses it. But that's not enough. What man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the spirit of God.

There was still something missing. There was still something missing. Man needed a final touch. He had the spirit in man. God gave him the Sabbath day, but he rejected that early on to remind him of that. But to be a complete man, to have the finishing touch on man, he was going to need the spirit of God. He needed to understand the things of God. God needed to open his mind and give him the ability to see where God is going. What is he sculpting? What is his plan?

And give him the ability to control self and overcome the rebellious nature and the revolting nature and the nature that says, you know, I don't need to do this. I don't want to do that. It's my way, not God's way. And maybe even convince ourselves and deceive ourselves that even when we think we're doing God's way, we're really not fully and full-hearted doing it.

So God opened up and he gave man the spirit of God. Verse 12, now we've received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

But the natural man, the man without the Holy Spirit, the one who has a spirit in man, you know, like the world around us today, because God has called just a few people today and given it, ultimately all of mankind will have it. Ultimately all of mankind will have access and be called and their minds open. But the natural man doesn't receive the things of the spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him. What? You think at this day and age God needs us to keep a Sabbath day for 24 hours? What? That's silly. What? You think that God thinks that we have to be bound by marriage before we sleep with each other? Come on. That's antiquated. We don't need that. What? You don't think that God intended that no matter who loves who, same sex, different sex, no matter how we dress, no matter what perversity we feel, that God says we shouldn't do it? What? We got to be bound by that? They don't want to hear the things of God. They're foolishness to him. Nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. When God opens our minds, when he adds and puts a finishing touch of the Holy Spirit, our eyes are opened. We begin to see what God is working. We begin to look in his perfect law. We begin to look in his perfect word. And we see, oh, there's things that we are doing, that God is doing. Things that we never understood before.

Now we get what's going on. Now we get who we are. Now we get where we need to be. Little by little, now all not all in one fell swoop, but over the course of our lifetime, this growing season that we're in from the time that God calls and we repent and we're baptized until the time we die, we get it, we grow, the sculpture becomes ever more and more complete as all those things that God opens our minds into and sculpts into our lives. And when we let him do it, we become complete.

You know, in 2 Timothy 3 verse 16, this Bible, the Word of God that we all have in front of us here today, you know, it's the perfect law of God. It's inspired by God. We know that. And that's 2 Timothy 3.16. And it's verse 17 of 2 Timothy 3. It says that the man of God may be complete. That the man of God may be complete because man is incomplete without the Spirit of God. That man may be complete because if you don't ever have the Spirit of God or if you reject the Spirit of God, you'll never be complete. You'll never reach. You'll never be. You'll never allow the potter to ever mold you into who he wants you to be. A few books forward in Ephesians. Ephesians 2.

Ephesians 2 in verse 10.

It says, we are his workmanship. We are his workmanship. He's carving you and me.

He's carving us collectively as a body, too, because we know that when God opens our minds and when he adds the Holy Spirit, that he puts us as part of his body, part of his family, and he expects us to be together. He expects us to follow him implicitly. He expects us to learn from one another, primarily him. Learn from one another. Get along with one another. Be one the way Jesus Christ and the Father are one. He expects all those things from us. We've heard all these things all our life. We are his workmanship. He's doing that with us. Created in Christ Jesus, he created us for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. He knew.

He knew he wanted you. He knew he wanted me. He knew he wanted us to be a body in this area or whatever area you live in, part of the body of God, working with him and doing the things that he said, not saying to him, no, no, no. You know, I'll let you sculpt this part of me, but I don't want this sculpt. You know, the back of my head, you don't have to sculpt that out. No one's going to see that. Oh, no. Oh, no. The master sculptor he sees, he sees it all, and he wants it done in detail. Just the way that sculptor Phidias wanted everything to the perfect detail, and that's why whatever that statue of Zeus that he created was one of the seven wonders of the world, because the detail was so magnificent, it defied the imagination. How long did it take him? You know, God is even more detailed. How many times have we talked about every live by every word of God? Know the detail, learn the detail, and when there's a detail you've looked over and it comes to your attention, build it into your life. Let God sculpt, you know, sculpt it in. You know, I don't know much about sculpting, but I imagine when you chisel out things, you don't just take one chisel and it's perfect, right? You chisel, you chisel a little bit here, you chisel a little bit there, and all of a sudden, after many chisels and things, it becomes exactly the way it wants. God works the same way with us. We might see something in ourselves, begin to understand something in ourselves that needs to be looked at, and little by little, as we let God chip away at it, he'll teach us.

We'll get to that point. We have to be patient with him. We have to let him do it. We have to work with him. We have to let the Holy Spirit that he's added to us is one of the finishing touches en route to the ultimate finishing touch. Work with us, guide us, and direct us.

And so we see, you know, God continuing to work, continuing to work.

Now, there's a lot of work, I think, if we stop and think, for all of us to let God do.

But we also learn we have to be with him. We have to let him do it. He's, you know, we can resist the chiseling. We can resist the rounding. We can resist the molding. If we're smart, if we're thinking, if we're wise, we're not going to resist what the master potter, what the master architect, what the master sculptor is doing. We're going to let him finish it and bring it to completion.

And we know what that completion is as we go through life. And when God says, you know, to you and me, it's done. It's done. Your life is over. I'm going to plant you in the ground. I'm going to plant you in the ground. And as we read in 1 Corinthians 15, last week or the week before, you know, he's going to resurrect us. He's going to put the finishing touch on mankind. Those of the first fruits who have lived their life, who have allowed God to sculpt them into who he wants them to be, and at the time that their time is over, whether it be by death or the return of Jesus Christ, that he will add the finishing touch of eternal life and the finishing touch of a body that we can't even imagine. You know, in 1 Corinthians 2, right before the verses we read about the spirit and man and spirit of God, it says, eye hasn't seen, ear hasn't heard, it hasn't even entered into the hearts of man the wonders that God has repaired for those that love him.

We can't understand it today. We have to have faith. We have to have belief. We have to we have to let God do it and let him hone that vision in us and that spirit of yieldedness, that spirit of submission, that spirit of surrender, that spirit of thy will, thy will be done.

The finishing touch will come for the first fruits at the time of Jesus Christ.

When he returns and they're given eternal life, the same thing that will happen to the rest of mankind and their time when God works with and gives, puts the finishing touches on them.

And as we read in Revelation, in Revelation 22, you don't need to turn there 21 to 22, the time for the world will be done. The earth will be done too. It'll be that this earth will disappear, will vanish, replaced by what God has in mind. Something so magnificent, we can't even imagine it.

Let's go back to James. James 5.

What do we do through this? You know, as we live through times that we've lived through, times that we've lived through in the past, times that we'll live through, whatever comes next our way, whether it's good times or bad times, and we know there are some times that'll try the soul coming ahead of us. You know, God tells us, and we just read this last week in our Bible study, verse 7, James 5, therefore be patient, be patient. Let God work his work.

Let God sculpt it in his time. Let him bring it to the perfect conclusion, the perfect final product, that he is taking it too. Be patient. Trust him. Spend the time. Don't get mad. Don't get angry. We read in Psalm 37, don't fret over those things. Be patient and learn, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Verse 8, as he talks about how even in our life the farmer has to wait. He doesn't plant a seed one day and have a full crop the next. He has to go through the process during the summer growing period, and he doesn't just sit back in his house and look out the window and say, hey, when October or September gets here, it's going to be crop. He's got work to do during that time. He has to do some things to make sure the weeds are there and everything else that's happening. The farmer waits for the precious fruit. Verse 8, you be patient, brethren.

Be patient. Let the master sculptor finish his work. Let me conclude in Philippians. Philippians 1. And verse 6, God knows what he's doing. We have to trust in him. We have to let him and work with him and yield and submit and do the things to let our master potter complete his job. In verse 6, it says, all of us, let's be confident of this very thing that he who has begun a good work in you, he will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.