The Lord's Perfect Provision for His Own Masterpiece — Hans R. Waldvogel

God's Workmanship Revealed in Creation

We ought to remember that we are his workmanship, his masterpiece. This morning I picked a flower that looms very profusely in the park. I don't suppose many people pay attention to it, but I can't help it because when I was in the jewelry business, I made such things with diamonds and platinum and gold and silver, and I looked at this little flower that practically nobody pays attention to, and I couldn't help but say, Oh Jesus, how wonderful you are.

Every detail so perfect, the design of it, the shape of it, the beautiful coloring of it, different colors, and just perfectly marvelous and is only one of billions of flowers and plants that not only are made by him but held by him.

He upholds all things by the word of his power. And then taking a flower into my hand, I see a little ant crawling through it. And what is the ant looking for? Well, for an uncle, I suppose. But anyway, to think that of all the billions of creatures that Jesus Christ created, he has food for them all.

They can all find the table spread. And they didn't have to make it. God makes it for them. He feeds them all. He feeds the crabs in the sea, and he feeds the fish, and he feeds the birds, he feeds the sparrows, he feeds the squirrels too, and provides them with acorns and nuts and things.

And God knows just what tastes good to them. Just think. Talk about baking cake. My mother used to complain. She said, well, my cookbook says take half a pound of this and take 15 grains of that and so on.

But it didn't tell you where to take it from. But Jesus knew where to take it from. Beloved, everything is so very marvelous and so very wonderful that we're great sinners if we don't believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, if we don't fall down and worship him, and if we don't have perfect confidence in him.

Christ's Care for His Masterpiece

For these things were all created by his word. They didn't create themselves, but by his word and by his will. He makes the rose an object of his care. He guides the eagle through the trackless air, and surely he remembers me.

And he tells me that I'm his masterpiece, and he's going to show me forth, not only to the angels, but to the Father. A masterpiece immaculately, without spot or wrinkle or any such a thing, provided I yield and abandon myself to him.

That's where faith comes in. We like to monkey with this masterpiece and we spoil it. And we ought to quit that. We ought to enter into perfect faith and perfect confidence. And here we have it. And when God gives us the New Testament, he gives us his cookbook.

And he says, now you take this and take that and take the other. It's all provided. But it's his command that we take it and let him use it in the proper place. When Jesus says, let not your heart be troubled, that's a command of the Almighty God.

He says, what's the matter with you? You let your heart be troubled? Come on, bring your troubles. Tell me what they are. Take a piece of paper and a pencil and write down your troubles. A woman did that in Stuttgart.

She brought me a piece of paper and she had about two or three dozen different diseases marked. And I thought she wanted me to know how many diseases there were in the calendar of medical science. And then I found out those were all the sicknesses she boasted of.

She rejoiced in. They were all her sicknesses. Now you take a piece of paper and write down all the things that might trouble you. In body, soul and spirit. Listen, that's none of your business. It's his business.

He says, let not your heart be troubled. That's a command of Almighty God. He says, as long as you do, you take yourself out of my masterful hand and you don't let me do it. But come on, abandon yourself to me and I do that by perfect confidence.

God's Promises and Perfect Provision

Being fully persuaded. Fully persuaded. Where does that persuasion come from? Right from the Bible. These exceeding great and precious promises are God's proposition, God's command, God's design, God's supply.

God's Provision Before the Foundation of the World

I was in Egypt one time under the pyramids and I had an awful time to escape the Egyptian guides. Soon as I got on the street, I was surrounded by them. One was on camel's back, another on horseback, another on foot.

And each one wanted to guide me. And they showed me some emblem they had on their wrist, some writing that tells that they were the only honest guides in all of Egypt. Don't trust the others now, I'm the only honest one.

And they were all liars, they were all thieves, every one of them. So I had a hard time escaping them. And finally when I got rid of those three, I went to the pyramid and another one came around. And he had a bunch of keys and he said, you know, I'm the only person that have access to the tombs of the kings now.

Now I'm not a guide at all, but I'll let you see them. So I fled him too. There was a house nearby, beautiful house. And I went into that house and found it was a museum dedicated to the former prince.

You remember the king of Egypt or whatever he was. He was fired after a while. But anyway, when they expected a baby, they fixed up that house, they had a golden cradle and they had everything, tops, everything.

Before that baby was born, everything was provided for him, I suppose, for the rest of his life. That's what God did for you and for me and he did it before the foundation of the world for me and for you.

And now he has a perfect right to let me be the master. Let me take me, I know that God created me. And you don't have to go outside of your own spirit, soul and body to recognize the wonder working power and wisdom of almighty God.

Now look at every one of us has a crop of hair on his head. Wonderful. God knew where to put it. And God put the color there, red. And black. And white. And God did that by his own design and by his own wisdom.

Surrendering to God's Work in Us

Thank God. But, I know my God that I'm thy creation. I didn't make myself. And I know that thou art my redeemer. And I didn't redeem myself. Hallelujah. Thou has the rabbi at Zochariah house begun a good work in me.

Thou alone will know how to finish it. And so he gives me his blueprint here. And he wants me to act according to this blueprint. And when he says to that man at Bethesda, Will thou be made whole? What a question.

Why, of course. He asks that to every one of us. You want to be made well? Why, of course. But the angel always brushes me aside. He's a diplomat. He doesn't come near me. He only heals the people that are close to him.

Now here comes. And he says, And I haven't got anybody that helps me. Jesus says, Wait a minute. I came all the way from heaven. God sent his son. Thank God to condemn sin in the flesh. To bear my sickness.

To be my righteousness. My sanctification. And my redemption. What a God. What a provision. Thank God. And then when that man said, Sure, I want to be healed. Jesus says, Okay. I'll bear your sickness.

I'll take it to the cross. I'll be smitten for you. I'll do the whole job if you'll just get up and walk. Get up. Oh, beloved, we've got a lesson to learn. And we seem to be very slow in waking up to the wonder of this great salvation.

And you cannot please God if you don't let him save you to the uttermost. Body, soul and spirit. You know why? Because that's the only way in which God can lick the devil. He needs you. And he needs me.

He needs your faith. And he needs my faith and my confidence. He needed Abraham's confidence. And when Abraham was tested and tried, God allowed the armies of hell to come against him. And David choked them one by one.

Faith Strengthened Through Testing

Instead of growing weak in faith and saying, Well, good night. It's all over with us, Sarah. Might as well give up. The Bible says he waxed strong in faith. How? By looking at the promise. He considered not his own body.

He didn't consider his own strength. It was all gone. There was no natural hope. But against hope, he believed in hope as we heard a while ago. Beloved, Jesus Christ is a perfectly marvelous and wonderful and all-sufficient Savior.

And we cannot please him if we don't allow him to make us his masterpiece. And he does that where there's no natural hope and no natural strength. And I've known God to allow some people to really backslide badly because they thought they were so good.

They judged everybody else and God allowed them to see that they were good for nothing. And then they were willing to let him save them. But here he is. God's proposition. The New Testament is his proposition.

What the Law Could Not Do

What the law could not do. Why? It was weak through the flesh. The law showed me the sinfulness of my sin. And the law said, Thou shalt be holy, even as I am holy. But it didn't tell me where to take the flour from.

I told the hamburgers who eat hamburgers how to cook, how to bake a cake, and they laughed at me. I had it in the back of my head. I thought I knew how my mother baked it. I liked it very well. I said, You take a half a pound of flour, half a pound of water, half a pound of eggs, half a pound of baking powder, half a pound of salt, half a pound of sugar, and you stir it well, and then put it in the oven.

They laughed at me, but next day I got a cake. One woman knew better how to do it. God knows better than you. He does. And what the law could not do, God did. And how did you do it? How did you do it, my God?

My hope was gone completely. There was nothing to lay hold of. I knew what I ought to be, but there's nothing to lay hold of. Well, let me mope a little bit. Let me look around for sympathy. And that's what most people do when they get up and they tell how bad they are.

They don't believe it themselves. Don't you step on their toes, and they'll punch you in the jaw. No, you don't do that. You rejoice with joy unspeakable. And full of glory. Whom having not seen ye love, in whom though ye see him not, and though if need be ye are in heaven, is through manifold temptation.

Trials as Opportunities to Know Jesus

What for? Every temptation is an opportunity for God to give you himself in place of yourself. To give you beautiful ashes, the oil of joy for the spirit of heaviness. Oh children, we're in school. Let us get acquainted with Jesus.

And we can only get acquainted with him in these hours of trial and testing. When we quoted Psalm 27, I have my service testament from the first world war, and that's the only psalm I underline. When he says, When mine enemies came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.

They really, I tell you, these enemies came upon me. And there was another verse here that says, Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies. Why, they painted the gallows before me. One of them, an officer, said, I'll meet you tomorrow night in this parish.

And I'll have a baseball bat, and we'll have it out. And I said to myself, If Uncle Sam has to depend on that brand of heroism to win the war, then God save America. Well, that's the way they spat at me.

And there was no hope, naturally speaking, for me, but this word. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart.

Wait, I say, on the Lord. And learning that lesson, you know what happened? Just a little more than a year later, God called me into the ministry. Half a year later, he baptized me with the Holy Ghost.

Waiting on the Lord for Spiritual Renewal

It pays to wait on the Lord. And all the Psalms, our New Testament expressions, when David says, My soul wait thou only upon the Lord, not upon anybody else or anything else, for my expectation is from him.

And that's why we have these days and hours of prayer and waiting upon the Lord. And it is a marvelous thing how God immediately responds. Have you noticed it? How immediately there's a deepening and a strengthening and a glorifying of the whole atmosphere.

It shows that God wants to finish his masterpiece, but he can't do it unless we give him a chance. We're still monkeying around with it and we still try to fool with it. And it's true. Man came here a few weeks ago from a very successful Pentecostal work.

Oh boy, we can't measure ourselves with them. They're doing great things, building great churches, building great organizations, doing wonderful things. And he said, You know, I'm backslidden. I found in this meeting something that I had lost.

I had lost my interior contact with Jesus. And he says, I come into this meeting, but everything is calm and quiet, and I find Jesus again. What have you got if you haven't got Jesus Christ within? But you have.

And that spirit that raised Jesus from the dead wasn't finished when he raised Jesus from the dead. He is going to raise you and me too. And he's working at it. And oh, we ought to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory and get acquainted with this cookbook.

God's Provision for the Work He Calls Us to Do

I was... I was trying to make jewelry one time at home and I didn't have silver, I didn't have gold, I didn't have diamonds, and I didn't have the proper tools. But when I got a job in the largest jewelry house in Chicago, everything was supplied.

The boss was only too happy to give me all the metal I needed and all the machinery I needed and all the tools I needed and all the diamonds I needed. He was only too happy. And he liked my work, but my work was not really his work because he supplied all the wherewiths.

And oh, beloved, we're here. We're heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. And what matters is whether I live or die, but it makes a great deal of difference whether I let Jesus Christ live in me and finish his job.