God Works Our Works
Ephesians 2:10
Sermon Summary Our salvation does not come about by good works, but it does produce good works. However, God still receives all the glory and praise as we see that even our good works have been prepared by God Himself. |
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Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
I said back in the summer when we started the book of Ephesians that this was going to be a great study and that you can’t read the book of Ephesians without getting excited.
Personally, having gone through chapter 1 line by line, it was just amazing. My personal time in that section was something of a mountaintop experience. I thought, “there’s probably nothing that can top those first 14 verses.” But then we looked at the prayer that followed and I thought, “Boy, that was really good too.”
I didn’t think that the first 9 verses of chapter 2 would be able to top what we saw in chapter 1, especially since I have already preached this section of Scripture about 20 years ago. Back in my seminary days, I had a couple of assignments that had to do with verses 1-9 and they became a series of sermons. Those were some of the first sermons I ever preached.
Well, I was wrong. I suppose it may have been due to my youthful naivete. Because, for me, chapter 2 has just been another mountaintop. It’s been such a good study.
But now we come to verse 10. And I think of verse 10 as the scenic view that you get when standing on the mountaintop. I really believe that what Paul says here is quite profound. And it is one of those verses that becomes more profound the more you think about it.
In verses 8-9, Paul has made us think about the place of good works in our life. Really, he’s talked about the exclusion of works. He’s mentioned that we are saved by grace through faith. Since we are saved by God’s grace, salvation is by definition exclusive of our works.
We talked about the place of faith too. We said that faith is the means of our salvation. And since it is instrumental, it is not really a contribution to our salvation. Paul further emphasizes this by saying that even our faith is not of our own doing.
But Paul knows the human heart. He knows that we may be tempted, as we often are, to go to the opposite extreme. It’s like what Martin Luther once said. He compared the church to a drunken monk trying to mount a horse; he just falls off on one side or the other. The church can be like this. It has a tendency to go overboard and fall into the error of one or the other extreme.
Paul has just said that our salvation is not based on our works. Works do not contribute to our salvation. But he doesn’t want us to think that works are not necessary. There most certainly is a place for works. And that’s what he wants to show in verse 10. In verse 10, Paul shows us the proper place of good works.
But, at the same time, Paul doesn’t want to detract from his original point. He has made the point that God is deserving of all the glory. Paul doesn’t want us to take credit for anything because all the glory belongs to God. And so, here in verse 10, Paul shows us that even our works, which we are obligated to do, still are owed to the Lord.
And so, I’d like us to think about the working of our works today. Really, I want us to think about God’s work, God’s working of our works. That’s what this verse is really all about. It’s about God’s work in working our works. And so it is only appropriate when we think about our works to think in terms of God and his work.
There are four things I want you to notice about God’s work from this passage. There are four ways we can describe God’s work. When we talk about God’s work we should understand that it is majestic, miraculous, meaningful, and mind-bending.
I. Majestic
Paul begins this verse by saying, “For we are his workmanship.” The Greek word here is the word poiema, which is the word from which we get our English word “poem.”
You understand that a poem is not just something that is tossed together. It is something that is carefully crafted. You work to make words fit together in such a way that they not only communicate ideas, but they communicate them in a beautiful way. Poems are supposed to have a bit of majesty to them. There’s supposed to be something beautiful about them because some real time and thought have gone into them. They’ve been crafted in such a unique way that they have grandeur.
This word can also be translated as “handiwork.” That’s because it comes from the artisan world. If you created a sculpture or painted a canvas, that was your poiema.
This past week I saw some pictures of some hand-crafted figurines. Someone had taken some pieces of wood and whittled the characters from the Lord of the Rings movies. They were only 2-3 inches tall, so they were rather small, but the craftsman had put crafted them with incredible intricacy and detail. Imagine taking the time to perfectly sculpt the eyes of Gollum, to create the flowing beard of Gandalf, along with the creases in his pointed hat. They were simply amazing to behold. I marvel at how someone could take a knife and have the talent to fashion such a thing, especially something so small.
That’s the word being used here. That’s the word being used to describe you and me. We are God’s workmanship. We are the products of his grace. He has created us, fashioned and molded us. He has worked us into something that we were not before.
Think about what that craftsman did to make those little Lord of the Rings figurines. He took a block of wood. It was an ordinary piece of material, nothing really outstanding about it. It was just a piece of wood, and he exerted his power on it to make it into something so amazing that people would pay big money to purchase it. They’d want to decorate their houses with these things.
This is what the gospel is all about. This is what our God has done to us. Think about the raw material that God had started with. We’ve looked at those verses that sit at the beginning of this chapter and we have referred to them again and again. We cannot understand God’s real craftsmanship if we don’t understand what it was that he started out with.
There was nothing outstanding about us. We might even say that we were scrappable material. We were vile. We were ugly. We should have been disposed of and tossed into the garbage because of how wretched we were. But God saw otherwise. He decided instead to take this thing and make it into one of his masterpieces.
That’s why, when we talk about God’s work, we have to say that it is majestic. For what we were and what we have become (and are becoming) is something that is absolutely stunning. We are redeemed creatures, crafted into holy beings, bearing all the unique craft of God’s grace. It’s a real testimony to the power and wonder of his lovingkindness.
Just like in the world of art, you can’t look at what was produced and not marvel at the producer. That’s what Paul intends right here. He wants us to look at what we were and what we have become, to really think about the difference God’s grace has made in our lives, and then simply marvel at the Craftsman.
You understand, from what has been said, how majestic God’s work is. Secondly, God’s work is miraculous.
II. Miraculous
Notice what the verse says: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.”
This is talking about the way we were created. God created us. We are his workmanship. But how exactly did he do it? He created us “in Christ Jesus.”
Now, again, Paul is probably still drawing from the artisan world. Maybe we can think here of some pottery or a sculpture that had been made out of clay (or some substance like that). After you put the clay on the spinning wheel and you spin it around and form it into the exact shape you want it to be, what do you do with it? You put it in the furnace. It is put inside the oven and made into the bowl or the statue that it is supposed to be.
Or maybe Paul is referring to a mold. Sometimes the craftsman will create a mold in a brick or stone and he will pour the gold or plaster into it. Once it is filled up, he lets it sit and harden. Then he takes the mold off and you have the final product.
You were not created in a furnace or a stone mold. You were created in a unique way. You were created in Christ Jesus. That’s why I say that God’s work was miraculous. Because you have undergone a substantial change. There is a new life that is given to us. As we enter into Christ and become united with him, we are transformed.
Think of it - the mold has an image. The plaster that is poured into the mold ends up reflecting that image. There’s a similarity between the two. The mold and the thing that was created in the mold have distinct correspondence.
That’s what Paul is saying here. Because we were created in Christ we are no longer going to look like we did before. Before we were in Christ we were sinful; we were slothful, disrespectful, and belligerent. We were quick to become angry and angry at the wrong kinds of things. Previously, we had been created in Adam and we reflected his corruption.
But God took us and made us into something new. He did a miracle. He put us in Christ and used that new tool to make us into something completely new. And now, we are to reflect the image of Christ. No longer are we belligerent, but we are respectful and submissive. We do not have that hardness and selfishness. There’s a charity that we show, a grace that we offer people, a humility that is willing to admit that we were in the wrong.
It is often interesting to see this in couples. Sometimes you will have two unbelievers who get married and then later on one of them gets converted. I met with a couple a while back that was in such a situation. Before she was converted, everything was fine in their relationship. They hardly ever had problems. But now that she was a believer, things were different. They had tons of conflict. And really, the conflict was because she was different. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. It’s just that she was now seeking to follow the Lord and she couldn’t do a lot of the things that she used to do. And so the guy was frustrated. She wouldn’t go out to the bars and drink with him. She didn’t want to go out carousing and preferred to save all the money that would have been blown off in a weekend of fun.
The problem wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong; the problem was that she was now doing things right. She was different. This wasn’t the girl he had originally married.
There you have it. Here was someone God had changed. He had done that miracle and she had been created anew in Christ. Now she was showing this new resemblance to Christ.
III. Meaningful
God’s work is meaningful because God has a purpose in doing what he has done. Just look at this verse again. It says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”
Here you understand that God’s handiwork is not just decorative. He didn’t make us into what we are just so we could sit around. We actually have a role to fulfill in this world. You could say God’s intentions were completely utilitarian.
We are to do good works. We were made for good works. That means we are to serve one another. We are to make it our aim to please God and be of some real benefit to our neighbor.
Now, I want you to realize how incredible this statement is. I want you to understand just how meaningful it is. Most people think that the whole purpose of getting saved is so that you don’t go to hell. If you would take a poll in the church and ask people, “What is the purpose of getting saved?” most likely those whom you survey will tell you that it is so that you can go to heaven. Maybe a couple of people will say something like, “It’s so that you can experience the love of God.” But that’s basically the same as saying heaven.
To put it another way, most people think that salvation is all about them.
What Paul says here should strike you in a new and radical way. You were not saved simply so that you can enjoy a comfortable life. You were not forgiven so that you can now bask in the bliss of heaven and enjoy the rays of God’s love.
That will certainly happen, though. That’s one of the great benefits of our salvation. We do get to go to heaven. We won’t taste God’s wrath. Hell is something that we don’t have to worry about.
But the reality is that the real purpose of our salvation is so that we begin to live a holy life, that we might begin to obey God’s law and have a new and better impact on the society around us. Instead of serving ourselves and seeking our own gain, our mission is to serve God and do good works.
That’s why I say that this is a meaningful work of God. Our lives have new meaning. Our lives are to have a new purpose. You should go home today and think, “What good can I do now?” Coming here to worship was a good work. Going home and fixing lunch is a good work. Eating that lunch and using proper manners around the table are good works. Cleaning up the dishes is a good work. Sharing your toys and taking turns with them are good works.
You get the idea. God has saved us from hell and damnation, yes. But he’s also saved us from that selfish attitude. He’s saved us from a life that lacks love and tenderness. He’s made our lives so much more meaningful because we now have a new outlook on life. We have new goals in life.
It’s really the same mission that Christ has. He came not to be served, but to serve and give his life for the many, and we are to do the same.
There’s one more thing to note about God’s work. We’ve been talking about God’s working of our work. So far we’ve seen that it is majestic and miraculous and meaningful. But this last point is the real zinger. You have to admit that God’s work is also mind-bending.
IV. Mind-bending
What Paul says next should really blow your mind. He says we were “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
The phrase in focus is two words in English: “prepared beforehand.” However, it’s one word in Greek: proetoimazō. The prefix “pro” means “before” or “in front of.” Etoimazo means “to prepare, to provide, or to make ready.”
Really, the word is redundant. If you prepare something or if you make something ready, it already means you are doing it in advance. If you have company coming over today for lunch, you probably already prepared the house. Maybe you already made the lunch by throwing it in a slow cooker.
But this word has a little extra punch to it with the prefix “pro.” It’s to make ready beforehand. It’s to prepare in advance. Out in front of your preparations, you’ve prepared.
And this is describing the good works which we are now doing. God has already prepared these works. That’s because He’s ordained them from the beginning of the world. He’s already planned that we would do them. He didn’t just save us for them - he had already predestined them from the beginning of the world.
Now, we could make yet another point about the whole idea of predestination. But that’s not the point of this passage. The point here is that you understand that it’s all about God. In other words, there’s not one point for which we can take any credit.
Paul has just said that we are saved by grace. It is not of works. So he’s pointed out that our works do not contribute in any way to our salvation. But he now says that we should be doing good works. Good works are the whole reason why we are saved. If we are saved, our lives will be marked by good works. Our response to this salvation is that we will evidence good works.
But Paul immediately says that even the good works we do are all of God too. Even though our good works are subsequent to our salvation and do not merit our salvation, we still can’t take credit for them.
Yes, we need to do them; yes, they are very important; yes, it is our responsibility to walk in them. But let’s not forget that the Lord is the one who ordained them. He prepared them in advance so that we would walk in them.
Now, isn’t that just something that blows your mind? Here you have God’s absolute sovereignty in perfect harmony with human responsibility. Which one takes precedence: God’s sovereignty or our activity? Well, the answer is both. We must walk in them, but we must remember that God has already written in the heavens that we would do them.
I think the more you think of this the more it will scramble your brain. But no matter how much your head spins, you’ll still come to this conclusion: God is to be praised. Praise God that he works our works.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
I said back in the summer when we started the book of Ephesians that this was going to be a great study and that you can’t read the book of Ephesians without getting excited.
Personally, having gone through chapter 1 line by line, it was just amazing. My personal time in that section was something of a mountaintop experience. I thought, “there’s probably nothing that can top those first 14 verses.” But then we looked at the prayer that followed and I thought, “Boy, that was really good too.”
I didn’t think that the first 9 verses of chapter 2 would be able to top what we saw in chapter 1, especially since I have already preached this section of Scripture about 20 years ago. Back in my seminary days, I had a couple of assignments that had to do with verses 1-9 and they became a series of sermons. Those were some of the first sermons I ever preached.
Well, I was wrong. I suppose it may have been due to my youthful naivete. Because, for me, chapter 2 has just been another mountaintop. It’s been such a good study.
But now we come to verse 10. And I think of verse 10 as the scenic view that you get when standing on the mountaintop. I really believe that what Paul says here is quite profound. And it is one of those verses that becomes more profound the more you think about it.
In verses 8-9, Paul has made us think about the place of good works in our life. Really, he’s talked about the exclusion of works. He’s mentioned that we are saved by grace through faith. Since we are saved by God’s grace, salvation is by definition exclusive of our works.
We talked about the place of faith too. We said that faith is the means of our salvation. And since it is instrumental, it is not really a contribution to our salvation. Paul further emphasizes this by saying that even our faith is not of our own doing.
But Paul knows the human heart. He knows that we may be tempted, as we often are, to go to the opposite extreme. It’s like what Martin Luther once said. He compared the church to a drunken monk trying to mount a horse; he just falls off on one side or the other. The church can be like this. It has a tendency to go overboard and fall into the error of one or the other extreme.
Paul has just said that our salvation is not based on our works. Works do not contribute to our salvation. But he doesn’t want us to think that works are not necessary. There most certainly is a place for works. And that’s what he wants to show in verse 10. In verse 10, Paul shows us the proper place of good works.
But, at the same time, Paul doesn’t want to detract from his original point. He has made the point that God is deserving of all the glory. Paul doesn’t want us to take credit for anything because all the glory belongs to God. And so, here in verse 10, Paul shows us that even our works, which we are obligated to do, still are owed to the Lord.
And so, I’d like us to think about the working of our works today. Really, I want us to think about God’s work, God’s working of our works. That’s what this verse is really all about. It’s about God’s work in working our works. And so it is only appropriate when we think about our works to think in terms of God and his work.
There are four things I want you to notice about God’s work from this passage. There are four ways we can describe God’s work. When we talk about God’s work we should understand that it is majestic, miraculous, meaningful, and mind-bending.
I. Majestic
Paul begins this verse by saying, “For we are his workmanship.” The Greek word here is the word poiema, which is the word from which we get our English word “poem.”
You understand that a poem is not just something that is tossed together. It is something that is carefully crafted. You work to make words fit together in such a way that they not only communicate ideas, but they communicate them in a beautiful way. Poems are supposed to have a bit of majesty to them. There’s supposed to be something beautiful about them because some real time and thought have gone into them. They’ve been crafted in such a unique way that they have grandeur.
This word can also be translated as “handiwork.” That’s because it comes from the artisan world. If you created a sculpture or painted a canvas, that was your poiema.
This past week I saw some pictures of some hand-crafted figurines. Someone had taken some pieces of wood and whittled the characters from the Lord of the Rings movies. They were only 2-3 inches tall, so they were rather small, but the craftsman had put crafted them with incredible intricacy and detail. Imagine taking the time to perfectly sculpt the eyes of Gollum, to create the flowing beard of Gandalf, along with the creases in his pointed hat. They were simply amazing to behold. I marvel at how someone could take a knife and have the talent to fashion such a thing, especially something so small.
That’s the word being used here. That’s the word being used to describe you and me. We are God’s workmanship. We are the products of his grace. He has created us, fashioned and molded us. He has worked us into something that we were not before.
Think about what that craftsman did to make those little Lord of the Rings figurines. He took a block of wood. It was an ordinary piece of material, nothing really outstanding about it. It was just a piece of wood, and he exerted his power on it to make it into something so amazing that people would pay big money to purchase it. They’d want to decorate their houses with these things.
This is what the gospel is all about. This is what our God has done to us. Think about the raw material that God had started with. We’ve looked at those verses that sit at the beginning of this chapter and we have referred to them again and again. We cannot understand God’s real craftsmanship if we don’t understand what it was that he started out with.
There was nothing outstanding about us. We might even say that we were scrappable material. We were vile. We were ugly. We should have been disposed of and tossed into the garbage because of how wretched we were. But God saw otherwise. He decided instead to take this thing and make it into one of his masterpieces.
That’s why, when we talk about God’s work, we have to say that it is majestic. For what we were and what we have become (and are becoming) is something that is absolutely stunning. We are redeemed creatures, crafted into holy beings, bearing all the unique craft of God’s grace. It’s a real testimony to the power and wonder of his lovingkindness.
Just like in the world of art, you can’t look at what was produced and not marvel at the producer. That’s what Paul intends right here. He wants us to look at what we were and what we have become, to really think about the difference God’s grace has made in our lives, and then simply marvel at the Craftsman.
You understand, from what has been said, how majestic God’s work is. Secondly, God’s work is miraculous.
II. Miraculous
Notice what the verse says: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.”
This is talking about the way we were created. God created us. We are his workmanship. But how exactly did he do it? He created us “in Christ Jesus.”
Now, again, Paul is probably still drawing from the artisan world. Maybe we can think here of some pottery or a sculpture that had been made out of clay (or some substance like that). After you put the clay on the spinning wheel and you spin it around and form it into the exact shape you want it to be, what do you do with it? You put it in the furnace. It is put inside the oven and made into the bowl or the statue that it is supposed to be.
Or maybe Paul is referring to a mold. Sometimes the craftsman will create a mold in a brick or stone and he will pour the gold or plaster into it. Once it is filled up, he lets it sit and harden. Then he takes the mold off and you have the final product.
You were not created in a furnace or a stone mold. You were created in a unique way. You were created in Christ Jesus. That’s why I say that God’s work was miraculous. Because you have undergone a substantial change. There is a new life that is given to us. As we enter into Christ and become united with him, we are transformed.
Think of it - the mold has an image. The plaster that is poured into the mold ends up reflecting that image. There’s a similarity between the two. The mold and the thing that was created in the mold have distinct correspondence.
That’s what Paul is saying here. Because we were created in Christ we are no longer going to look like we did before. Before we were in Christ we were sinful; we were slothful, disrespectful, and belligerent. We were quick to become angry and angry at the wrong kinds of things. Previously, we had been created in Adam and we reflected his corruption.
But God took us and made us into something new. He did a miracle. He put us in Christ and used that new tool to make us into something completely new. And now, we are to reflect the image of Christ. No longer are we belligerent, but we are respectful and submissive. We do not have that hardness and selfishness. There’s a charity that we show, a grace that we offer people, a humility that is willing to admit that we were in the wrong.
It is often interesting to see this in couples. Sometimes you will have two unbelievers who get married and then later on one of them gets converted. I met with a couple a while back that was in such a situation. Before she was converted, everything was fine in their relationship. They hardly ever had problems. But now that she was a believer, things were different. They had tons of conflict. And really, the conflict was because she was different. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. It’s just that she was now seeking to follow the Lord and she couldn’t do a lot of the things that she used to do. And so the guy was frustrated. She wouldn’t go out to the bars and drink with him. She didn’t want to go out carousing and preferred to save all the money that would have been blown off in a weekend of fun.
The problem wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong; the problem was that she was now doing things right. She was different. This wasn’t the girl he had originally married.
There you have it. Here was someone God had changed. He had done that miracle and she had been created anew in Christ. Now she was showing this new resemblance to Christ.
III. Meaningful
God’s work is meaningful because God has a purpose in doing what he has done. Just look at this verse again. It says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”
Here you understand that God’s handiwork is not just decorative. He didn’t make us into what we are just so we could sit around. We actually have a role to fulfill in this world. You could say God’s intentions were completely utilitarian.
We are to do good works. We were made for good works. That means we are to serve one another. We are to make it our aim to please God and be of some real benefit to our neighbor.
Now, I want you to realize how incredible this statement is. I want you to understand just how meaningful it is. Most people think that the whole purpose of getting saved is so that you don’t go to hell. If you would take a poll in the church and ask people, “What is the purpose of getting saved?” most likely those whom you survey will tell you that it is so that you can go to heaven. Maybe a couple of people will say something like, “It’s so that you can experience the love of God.” But that’s basically the same as saying heaven.
To put it another way, most people think that salvation is all about them.
What Paul says here should strike you in a new and radical way. You were not saved simply so that you can enjoy a comfortable life. You were not forgiven so that you can now bask in the bliss of heaven and enjoy the rays of God’s love.
That will certainly happen, though. That’s one of the great benefits of our salvation. We do get to go to heaven. We won’t taste God’s wrath. Hell is something that we don’t have to worry about.
But the reality is that the real purpose of our salvation is so that we begin to live a holy life, that we might begin to obey God’s law and have a new and better impact on the society around us. Instead of serving ourselves and seeking our own gain, our mission is to serve God and do good works.
That’s why I say that this is a meaningful work of God. Our lives have new meaning. Our lives are to have a new purpose. You should go home today and think, “What good can I do now?” Coming here to worship was a good work. Going home and fixing lunch is a good work. Eating that lunch and using proper manners around the table are good works. Cleaning up the dishes is a good work. Sharing your toys and taking turns with them are good works.
You get the idea. God has saved us from hell and damnation, yes. But he’s also saved us from that selfish attitude. He’s saved us from a life that lacks love and tenderness. He’s made our lives so much more meaningful because we now have a new outlook on life. We have new goals in life.
It’s really the same mission that Christ has. He came not to be served, but to serve and give his life for the many, and we are to do the same.
There’s one more thing to note about God’s work. We’ve been talking about God’s working of our work. So far we’ve seen that it is majestic and miraculous and meaningful. But this last point is the real zinger. You have to admit that God’s work is also mind-bending.
IV. Mind-bending
What Paul says next should really blow your mind. He says we were “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
The phrase in focus is two words in English: “prepared beforehand.” However, it’s one word in Greek: proetoimazō. The prefix “pro” means “before” or “in front of.” Etoimazo means “to prepare, to provide, or to make ready.”
Really, the word is redundant. If you prepare something or if you make something ready, it already means you are doing it in advance. If you have company coming over today for lunch, you probably already prepared the house. Maybe you already made the lunch by throwing it in a slow cooker.
But this word has a little extra punch to it with the prefix “pro.” It’s to make ready beforehand. It’s to prepare in advance. Out in front of your preparations, you’ve prepared.
And this is describing the good works which we are now doing. God has already prepared these works. That’s because He’s ordained them from the beginning of the world. He’s already planned that we would do them. He didn’t just save us for them - he had already predestined them from the beginning of the world.
Now, we could make yet another point about the whole idea of predestination. But that’s not the point of this passage. The point here is that you understand that it’s all about God. In other words, there’s not one point for which we can take any credit.
Paul has just said that we are saved by grace. It is not of works. So he’s pointed out that our works do not contribute in any way to our salvation. But he now says that we should be doing good works. Good works are the whole reason why we are saved. If we are saved, our lives will be marked by good works. Our response to this salvation is that we will evidence good works.
But Paul immediately says that even the good works we do are all of God too. Even though our good works are subsequent to our salvation and do not merit our salvation, we still can’t take credit for them.
Yes, we need to do them; yes, they are very important; yes, it is our responsibility to walk in them. But let’s not forget that the Lord is the one who ordained them. He prepared them in advance so that we would walk in them.
Now, isn’t that just something that blows your mind? Here you have God’s absolute sovereignty in perfect harmony with human responsibility. Which one takes precedence: God’s sovereignty or our activity? Well, the answer is both. We must walk in them, but we must remember that God has already written in the heavens that we would do them.
I think the more you think of this the more it will scramble your brain. But no matter how much your head spins, you’ll still come to this conclusion: God is to be praised. Praise God that he works our works.