The Artisan Soul: Essence of Art

[podcast]http://www.revkwon.com/podcast/essence.mp3[/podcast] Hey all. Welcome back. This summer I’m going to be talking about how to live a life full of creativity and divine intention. The series we’re starting for the next eight weeks is based on the book, “The Artisan Soul” by Erwin McManus and I have adopted parts of it in our current context and get the most out of our summer. I thought of doing a book club type series, but I’ve decided against it and will now just be giving you the highlight reel. Today we will talk about the “Essence of Art.” I love art. I mean all types of art. I love books, movies, photography, TV, music, paintings, murals, etc. I love art. I don’t like creating it, but I do love being immersed in it. I love the intentionality creators have in creating it. I love how JK Rowling creates a wizard world. I love how George Lucas created a Star Wars universe. I love how Jay-Z creates rhymes. I love how all people on Instagram think they’re artists and post works of artificial filters shared to the world. I love art. I consume it. I’m sure all of us love art in some form or shape. Maybe the type of art we like isn’t traditional. Maybe the art that you enjoy and consume is that of the culinary kind, where your palate is taste and the food you produce is luscious with flavors beyond comprehension. Perhaps the art you enjoy is the creativity of how an athlete’s body moves and functions to shoot 3 pointers or penalty shots. Perhaps your art is that of gamers, watching them masterfully create strategies and improvise tactics. Perhaps your art is dentistry, and fillings and moldings are beautiful beyond description to you. But I’m going to be honest. I may not be an artist, in the traditional sense, but I am an artist in what I do. I create and live in a world where I make software reality. I literally take an idea people dream of and create the software and business around it and I tell others how. I advise them on doing it. I paint pictures with my words and show you week in and week out, the love of God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His son in paintings of words. I create art, and so do you. Whether we realize it or not, we are all artists and the question we must ask ourselves is, what is the essence of our art? Let’s go to Genesis 1. ¹In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. ³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. ⁶ And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. ⁸ And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. ⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. ¹¹ And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. ¹² The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. ¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. ¹⁷ And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. ²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” ²¹ So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. ²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. ²⁵ And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ So God created man in his own image,     in the image of God he created him;     male and female he created them. ²⁸ And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹ And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.³¹ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. I want to point something out this morning, something obvious: God is a creator God. He creates as evidenced by the first chapter in our Holy book. If God created humans in His own image, then anthropologically speaking, we are inherently creatives, as God is our creator. Write this down, “being human means that we are creative and engaging in life creatively is an act of faith in God.” Now, I know I just made a huge philosophical jump, so let me explain myself another time to give you a chance to suck it all in: to embrace our authentic selves, as expressed in Genesis 1, in the raw expression of being fully human is the intentional risk of being creative and create as to create is to be human and to create is to fulfill our divine intention. We cannot create without risk and we cannot live life without creating. Just look at Genesis 1:27-28 again, we were created by God through His most creative and intimate act. We are the result of a creative act by a creative God. God reflected at the end of each day and saw the good and beautiful and true. All creation is good because God is good. The universe was created to reflect God’s essence. God left for us a dominion that is in essence beautiful—pleasurable, satisfying and virtuous. The question we will seek to answer over the summer is: is your life, as a canvas for God reflecting that?   The phrase, “And God saw that it was good.” The Bible isn’t using the word, “good” as an adjective of secondary states whereby a being or thing can be inferior to great and good is in the middle of that scale. The Bible isn’t saying that the “light is good” as it can be better; or the “vegetation is good” as in it could have been worse. The phrase “And God saw that it was good” appears six times in this chapter as a description of the ethos and essence of the things He sees. It isn’t a good to great type of deal. What it is “good” as in good people doing the right things type of good; or good, as in the retreat was a good time; or good as she was pleased to hear good news about Jesus type good. These six movements of God seeing it as good leads to a seventh: He saw it was “VERY GOOD.” Do you see all these creative acts, these movements or strokes by God are good on their own. But the essence of creation is summarized by the man having the breath of life and is exceedingly good (pleasurable, satisfying, and virtuous). Do you see this in verse 31? Did you miss it? This is the essence of our art. If our art (the things that we do) is a function of fear, we will never have “good art.” Our creativity will always be stunted and stifled. When we get to salvation—that too was a creative act of brilliance by which God changed the course of human history. He delinks traditional religion—which is based on adherence to behaviors and acts to a risk so unique that there is nothing else like it: this is faith in Christ’s life, death and resurrection. To make your own son the sacrificial lamb to be slain as an atonement offering to disrupt the curse of the law, puts all that was created into risk. God presses against us and reaches all of us uniquely and individually so that when we come to Him, we are beautifully received as good. God’s creative act in us through Jesus Christ, His son, began when we risked it all to allow God to-recreate the universe within us by putting in us a new heart and a new spirit. Look at what God says through the prophet Ezekiel: ²⁶ And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Here are God’s statutes and rules: love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. When we love without reservation, we give our hearts completely and leave nothing on the table. You see, this is exactly what God did when he created the universe to be. The new heart and spirit within us requires much risk. It calls us to risk our heart and our potential regrets. But most of all, it requires us to believe in a future only God can fill in the dark and empty places of our cold stone heart. When Jesus invites us to believe in him and then to follow him, he is asking us to be artists that create and hold nothing back, ever, in love. When we shape our lives around creating in love, we create like God. The essence of our art, our canvas should be the love of God that empowers and gives us a new heart and new spirit. Let’s pray.