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Dr. Irwin "Rocky" Freeman
Now if you take commodities and things that you buy and sell you can understand what he is saying to us in this particular passage of scripture. There is a right that the buyer obtains over that which previously had not been his.
The second thought is the value. Which the buyer attaches to it after he has paid the price. He gives it some value because he has paid a price for it and it has some value to him. Because of his purchase the third thing when buying and selling is the certainty that what he has bought will be given to him.
When he buys something he fully expects that what he buys will be his because he is paying the proper price for it. And the fourth thing is the use that he will make out of whatever he purchases what he's going to do with it.
Once he buys it. And so all of these things are very obvious to us and they are daily In a thousand ways because they make up the life of the community in which you live. Now the words of our text that we just read a few moments ago are taken from a heavenly hymn of praise.
Thou art worthy for thou has purchased us unto god by thy blood. You've redeemed us by your blood. Now there are four things. I want you to notice about this. First of all, there is the right which he has obtained to you.
Jesus christ has obtained a right to your life. Secondly the claim that he makes upon you because he has paid for you. He has a claim that he presents to you. I will hasten to say this jesus christ does not ask any man woman boy and girl to serve him.
He demands it. You do not have a choice in the matter. He demands it because he's paid the price. Thirdly. There is a joy with which he will receive you if you will come to him. And the fourth thing I want us to notice quickly this morning is the certainty that he will preserve and care for you.
He will take care of you once he gets the purchase in his hand. All right, the first thought quickly let your minds run with me somewhat. The right to lust which he has obtained now never on earth. Has any maker never on earth.
Has any person or any one? Ever had such a right over other people as jesus christ has over you. The son of god has ransomed us from the power of sin. He has ransomed us from the power of satan. He has bought you back from satan because satan controlled your life.
If you're a christian this morning before you became a christian Satan was the ruler. The bible does not teach the fatherhood of god and it does not teach the brotherhood of man. Jesus himself said in john the eighth chapter verse 44 to the most religious people of his day.
You are of your father the devil and the lust of your father is exactly what you do. You don't get god as your spiritual father until you become a christian until you are born again. Honor until you are saved by the blood of christ.
When you come to jesus christ and give him your life and receive him by faith as your savior. Then and only then and it doesn't make a difference how good you are or how benevolent you become or how hospitable you may be.
It doesn't make any difference how sweet and kind and lovely we are my friends. Those people the bible says have a darkened heart. They have a black life within and they're white on the outside, but they're like a whited sepulcher.
They're like a grave on the outside. It looks nice and they put the monument up and they trim the grass and they put the flowers around but deep down inside. That mound is nothing but death and darkness and decay and corruption and there is no life down in there.
And he says that's the way people are who run around acting like they love god and all of these things. But they've never known the redeeming power of the blood of jesus christ. And so by yielding to the temptations of satan and the fall from god.
We have become entirely under the authority of satan. Listen to what i'm saying every man woman boy and girl whether you're here this morning without christ or whoever your friends may be. My family your family my friends your friends.
It matters not any person who has never been saved is under the complete authority of satan. Satan Runs that life they think they do but satan controls that individual life. The bible teaches it. Jesus christ said so and if jesus christ isn't truthful there then we might as well eat drink and be merry because nothing else He said can be trusted.
But you know from experience that it's true and I know from experience that it's true. And in the days whenever man was created They were told in the day that you eat it. In the day that thou eatest thereof in the day that you take care of this in the day that you partake of this.
You are going to bring death into your life and not just physical death but spiritual death as well. And so they fell from the grace of god into the death and death has become rampant in this world. And there are all kinds of death other than physical death.
People are dying mentally all the time. I counsel with them by the hundreds in our office in the fort worth area. People are dying emotionally all the time. People are dead spiritually by the multiplied millions.
And yet you and I only think of death as that which puts us in the funeral hearse or puts us under the ground. Now dear people for mankind. There was no possibility Of ever coming out from under such a rule and authority except by the redeeming grace of god.
Why can't man save himself because man is his problem. Man cannot solve his problems because he is his problem. And man's ego will not and let him admit. Anything is wrong with him until god begins to move up on his heart.
Now you and I use a word called redemption and you know about it. We've talked about it all week long in the olden days. The prisoners of war were usually made slaves. Once they were captured they were just made slaves and sometimes an extremely high price Was placed upon them so that anyone that wanted to redeem them had to pay that very difficult price.
It might be a friend or it might be the ruler of these prisoners and a price That had to be paid was this ransom for their deliverance from this slavery. Jesus christ has purchased us unto god by his own blood our freedom from the prison and the slavery.
Of sin self and satan primarily all coming from the enemy himself in which our enemy has lodged within our innermost beings. That it lurks down in where you are in your character the real you. One man said to me one time.
I said, uh, do you have a good working definition of character? He said character is what you are in the dark. He said character is what you are when no one can see you. It's what lurks in your heart.
It's cause it's what causes you to do what you did last night. It's what you do when nobody else is around. It's what you are when no one's around that you can't. You don't have to impress anyone. It's just between you and god and it's what you really know deep down in your heart.
That is character. Well that has been seriously contaminated by the enemy and the law of god condemns us for that now. Listen carefully in order to purchase. In order to ransom in order to buy back means.
That one valuable thing Has to be given for something else. Some valuable thing has to be given for another in order to ransom that back. Our souls and our lives our total personalities needed redemption.
The law demands that there be a payment. God's law has to be satisfied and we were under its power. We were under the condemnation of the law and we were prisoners of all of these things until we could pay What we owed and we did not have the price to pay it and no man does.
There has to be a recompense for the wrongs that we've done. Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest to you this morning. Whether you are an older person or just a younger person you have heaped up enough guilt in your life and there are enough sins accumulated in your thinking and enough sins accumulated by your mouth and enough sins have been Accumulated by your actions and your deeds for god to be perfectly justified to zap you immediately.
And yet we would sit as if nothing is going on as if everything's all right just for my personality god ought to be pleased. We little understand that god's law demands payment for one sin. One sin can get you to hell for eternity.
One lie one unspoken word that you should not have lodged in your mind anything Contradictory to the word of god and to the will of god and to the praise of the father and to the glory of the son Of god any one of those things is enough for god to perfectly be justified and allowing you to spend an eternity Separated from his presence, but god has not chosen to leave us in such a condition.
Jesus christ shed his blood. He gave his life For your and my reconciliation and for the payment for sin and that blood was the ransom price that god demanded For redemption to occur. Jesus christ has bought us by his blood.
He and none else has a right to our life. No one else has ever paid the price and it was a valuable price a tremendous price. And it's the price of all time. It is the price from eternity to eternity.
It is the price of the ages. It is the price of god's only begotten son who had left leave the heavenly pinnacles of glory to walk the sandy shores of galilee. To die a common criminal's death. Him who spoke the greatest messages the world would ever know.
He preached the greatest sermons world would ever hear. He performed miracles that no human doctor could ever perform. And friends. He never did anything wrong in his life. He was perfect and they couldn't find anything wrong with him.
And yet he laid on that cross and they drove a spear in his side drove nails into his hands and feet. The spit of the mob running down his face and they beat him severely with their hands. And he was so beaten about the face that the bible says there was no beauty in him that we should desire him.
It says that his visage his countenance was marred more than any man to that time in history. No one had ever been physically beaten as jesus the son of god was beaten according to the word of god. His visage was marred more than any man.
Most christians never see that verse of scripture. These pictures you see him hanging up there kind of quiet and calm peaceful sitting on a little seat, you know. That is not the picture the bible paints.
The pain was excruciating and you've never known any pain like that. And yet he had the power within himself to call 10 000 angels and sweep them all into hell for an eternity. But he chose to stay. He chose to stay christian god proclaims because of that.
That you are now the possession of his son. God proclaims that to the universe that you are now the possession of his son. Secondly quickly the claim that he makes upon you. I said he does not ask. He demands our total allegiance a lot of people say.
Oh, jesus begged you. Oh, jesus calls upon you. Come and serve him. He demands it. He demands it because he has the right to demand it. Thou has purchased us to god by thy blood. And those words will constantly remind you of the claim you may walk out of here this morning with an unchanged life.
You may walk out of here with the same attitude that you came in with but i'll promise you this from this day forth. You'll never get away from those words thou has purchased us to god by thy blood. Those words are so holy to god my friends that they will ring in your heart.
Every time you start to do something wrong every time you start to be somewhere you're not to be i will guarantee you. Sometime in that process of that those words will be brought out of your conscience.
They'll be brought forth in your mind. You may reject them and throw them back into the back part of your mind. But they're going to ring in your heart. Thou has purchased us to god by thy blood and in every ordinary purchase.
It doesn't make it. It's what you buy if it's ordinary any ordinary purchase the buyer has the right to ask. That what he has purchased be given to him. Whatever he pays for whatever you and I buy we have the right to say.
All right, i'll pay for it. I want it. And also it is carefully stated when and where the delivery will take place and jesus christ sends all of his servants. He sends you this morning. He sends every christian a request that without delay at the very hour and in the very place where the message is delivered.
There the persons are his purchased possession and they are to hand themselves over to him completely and to become subject to him. Immediately it isn't out here in the future when you decide to give your life to him the moment you become a christian.
He demands right then and there that you give him your life and you become totally subjected to his will. What are we to do we ought to say farewell to all foreign authority over our lives. When you become a christian, may I share this with you dear people?
Do you not understand that you lost all choice in your life? You didn't think so when you became christian. You thought you'd just get your sins forgiven so you get to heaven. I said you've lost all choice in your life.
It is not a matter of whether you and I are going to serve god or not. If you don't serve god, you will bear the consequences of that kind of a life. And you may go 10 20 30 years. And then all of a sudden god's hand will fall on your life.
Sir it can cost you your wife. It can cost you a child. It can cost you a husband. It can cost you any number of things. God killed the baby that was born unto david and bathsheba. God took its life. God killed a whole generation in the days of noah.
God destroyed two of the greatest metropolitan areas the world's ever known sodom and gomorrah. God destroyed every man woman born girl and baby in those cities. God destroyed them all. And god says once again that jesus christ will come one day in flaming fire to take a vengeance.
To take vengeance upon them who know not god and who obey not the gospel of jesus christ. You and I must understand as the great preacher of old said there's a payday someday. And it's not buying buying the sky friends you start getting paid down here.
The emotional anguish that you have in your home. The problem between you husbands and wives the reason your children rebel against you. The reason is because god isn't god and jesus isn't lord of those lives whenever that's what he set out to do in your life.
When you turn away from that you can't have anything but the rule of satan. Now what kind of a foreign authority am I talking about? Let me touch on two or three of them. First of all, you know as well as I do.
There's the foreign power of sin. In your life this morning sin has a tremendous and terrible irresistible authority over us. It has soaked to the very deepest roots of our nature. It is thoroughly at home in us and it has become our nature to sin.
We not only sin, but we like to sin. We like to hang around people who sin. We have pleasure being around people who sin and sin refuses to release us. But the lord jesus christ who has bought us by his blood promises you Delivery from that tyranny and that he himself will bestow upon you the power to serve him and to follow him as lord.
He asks only for the choice of your heart when he commands and demands that we give obedience. He said how you do this is simply give me your life. You will to be mine and he will use to that the authority that sin has he will change that authority.
And he will become the authority in your life. There's another of these foreign powers and that's the power of the world and this is tremendously strong. Now when I talk about sin, i'm not talking about murder and i'm talking about robbery and i'm talking about bank.
No, i'm talking about other sins. I'm talking about many but a few of them are just what I talked about a few moments ago indifference apathy. Complacency self-centeredness and all of those things that we know wrap up in our lives pride.
But one of these is the world they're seeing. There's the world. The needs and business Of the world are so manifold and they are extremely urgent. You have to make a living in this world. And so you must be engaged in business.
You must be engaged in civic things and you must be moving about but friends. They begin to lay such a claim and a hold on our lives and on all our powers. The promises the enjoyments the temptations Which the world presents to us are so flattering and exercise such an unconscious influence upon us.
It's subtle you don't see it coming and all of a sudden we're in its throes. As a. And it's difficult to escape this. The favor and assistance of people that we associate with their displeasure and contempt for us.
We separate ourselves from them to live only for god. Work out in many people and many who call themselves christian an enslavement. In the world it rules over them and it demands their obedience to be pleasing to the people to be pleasing to society.
To be pleasing to their social contacts to be pleasing to their dates to be pleasing to the school and it puts an enormous Obedience in their life and satan is the ruler of this world and all that is in this world.
And through the world and through its business and through all of these things that exercises its authority over you. He begins to exercise its power over your life and jesus christ says look to the blood.
He points us to his blood and he says it doesn't have to remain that way and there is another power. It's still a stronger one and it's the one you and I fight more than anything else. And that is the foreign power of self in our lives.
It is here in the realm of self that sin has wrought its most terrible ruin in the human life. The doing of our own will. The seeking of our own pleasure and our own honor are so deeply rooted in us. Down within where we are that apart from an entire revelation of god.
It is otherwise impossible to escape it. Body and soul. Understanding and imagination. Inclination and love all are subject to the power of self-pleasing to the tyranny of self. And jesus christ says that self must be taken down and pulled down sometimes off the throne of your life.
And it must be condemned to death. It must die. You must die to yourself and stop trying to please yourself and all that you do. And understand that you belong to god. You've been purchased unto him and he says you're to serve him.
And his will and not ours must be supreme and we are to give ourselves to him as his purchased possession. Each of us have to deal with that claim. I have to deal with it every moment of my life every day of my life just as you do.
No pastor. No preacher. No one is Immune from this claim. You have to deal with it. Now how you deal with it is going to decide how your life will be in time and eternity. How you deal with a problem of yourself?
In relation to god is going to determine what kind of a christian you're going to be. It's going to determine what kind of a home you're going to have. It's going to determine whether god's going to bless you or where satan's going to bless you.
I said bless you. Satan will give you all sorts of things a home a car just because you've got a home a car and all don't assume God gave it to you. God doesn't give you anything unless you're obedient to him.
God doesn't bless a disobedient christian if your child throws a brick through the windshield of the car. What do you say? Oh, that's okay. Come on I won't take you to dinner for that boy. You really threw that thing.
You know what? I mean, you say all that brick great. Well, I mean, can you do that? Yeah, get the other back window. Let me see how you did that. Well, that is great. There is no way in the world you do it.
You don't do that with your children and god doesn't do that with his children either. God loves you as you love your children. And god loves us more but he is displeased with a child that's disobedient.
And if you think he's just gonna bless you in spite of it all my friends. You need to understand what the bible says about that. Satan will give you a home car help satan can give you anything except eternal life.
And there are many christians that are getting all sorts of things and they assume god's giving it to them. You need to understand there is an enemy out here that is far more subtle and far more cunning and far more powerful than your minds Could ever conceive.
And yet you're just rolling along. Everything's all right. Everything's all right. Well. One day we shall know the idea of mass bible is saying that I use quite a bit it's not original but you've heard it.
Have you ever seen? A u-haul trailer buying a hearse in a funeral procession. You never have. My bible says naked you came in this world and naked you're going to go. And gentlemen that suit that you're wearing at coffin many times don't even have a back to it.
And that little sweet looking white stuff you lay on it's got straw underneath that are sawdust. Lord baron said the worms and the canker are my reward alone. It is a fearful thing to see the human soul take wing.
Well, that's where it is for somebody who's not a christian. But for a christian, it's not that way one of these days he gonna knock on your door. And you're gonna cry out to god. Why me? God will just point to you you can point any number of things in your life.
And so that's why. That's why. That's why that's why i'd say to you this morning last night's why. Yesterday's why. Tomorrow be why are you here right now? You not understand the greater light you have the greater the condemnation the more you understand the more you are responsible for as far as God is concerned.
It's that way in everything. What am I saying to you? I'm saying to you that we have to deal with this claim. And the word of god says he's worthy because he was slain and that he purchased us to god by his blood and our response Has to be thou art worthy.
Oh lord. Here I am. Take what you've purchased. I'm yours. I understand that and I will yield myself to your possession. I want you to become active in my life and he will receive you with joy. It gives us a pledge when it says thou has purchased us by thy blood.
That is his pledge to you that he will receive you now when you come to him. Or if I say to you things like i've said to you this morning. And yet I turn right around and urge you and challenge you and encourage you to come.
You will be hindered by the fear many times that you are not worthy to approach this kind of a guy. You know that deep down in your heart. There are things that have been displeasing to him and we begin to feel so sinful that we cannot even believe that god could ever Forgive everything we've done well most of it, but everything I mean, you mean tell me he just forget about it all.
He would just forgive me and cleanse me and forget about it. I mean, would he do that? And the glorious answer to all that simply is the phrase thou has purchased us unto god by thy blood. Would he do so?
Do you not know that if a person buys anything that he'll take possession of it? You don't see people go out and buy something and say I want to pay for this, but I don't want it. I want to buy that car, but you keep it and give it to somebody else.
I'll buy this house, but just let somebody else have it. I don't want it. Whatever you buy you take and that's exactly the way the lord is someone says to me. But if I buy something now, here's the problem.
I've had a person say this to me. So I just inserted in here if I buy something I know what it is. And I know that it is worth what I pay for it or i'm not gonna buy. But I with all the sin in my life and the attitudes that I have all the time.
And the serving of self that's in my life. There is reason for me to have some fear that he who purchased me even though he did die on the cross. He just might not receive me because you don't know how I really am.
I mean, you see I can fool you and you can fool me, but you don't know how I am inside. You don't know all these things that i've done. You don't know all these things that I have thought about. I am not what I ought to be and i'm not even what I seem to be to you.
I don't want to talk about it, but you don't understand me. When I buy an article and another is of less worth is sent to me when I buy something they send something to me. And it's of less value than what I paid for it.
I just send it back. I just say I don't want that. That's not what I paid for. You send me the good one back. And this is not what I bought and it isn't what I paid for and I say to you that's exactly true.
That is true, but I want you to consider the difference. Now listen carefully. I want you to consider the difference in between what jesus christ who bought us by his blood and human purchases. He bought what he knew was bad.
He bought he wanted because it was bad. He wanted bad products. He knew it was bad and he bought it because it was bad and he will accept it as bad. So that his great love may begin to activate in that life and his joy and his glory might make it good.
He just wants to remake it. You and I will run by bad products, but god does. And jesus died for bad products for people like you and me. Why. Because we were bad and he wants to have the joy of making it good.
That's why the scripture says christ died for the ungodly while we were yet sinners christ died for us. And jesus christ will receive you just like you are if you'll give yourself to him. He'll take you just like you are.
I don't care about anything else. You no longer have to allow yourself to be kept by satan. By his subtle sipping of his poison. You don't have to do that. You don't have to listen to him. You can come to christ and he will receive you.
It is satan who whispers to you that you are unworthy and that god will not forgive you and that god can't do for you. What he says he'll do that mercy is not for you because you are sinful. You are utterly unworthy.
You and I are utterly unworthy to come to god, but you are not too unworthy to come to god. You are utterly unworthy but not too Unworthy to come to him for mercy from god is only for unworthy people.
God's mercy is only for unworthy. Jesus said if you were well, you would need a physician. I come because you're not well. And you need a doctor when you're sick. And that's why I have come. Thou has purchased me by thy blood and it is impossible.
Hear me carefully. Whenever you say you you force him to participate in that. I pray that every one of you might this morning seriously. And I haven't told you anything that you don't know but dear people I challenge you.
Maybe for the first time in a long long time to not worry about who sits next to you or behind you in front of you. But to worry about on number one for a moment. Think about the one who wears your clothes and sits in your place this morning and I challenge you.
As I said, maybe for the first time in a long time that you would seriously evaluate your life. Where are you going your values and your goals and your priorities and ask yourself the question? What happens to you if god calls on you to meet him tonight?
Oh, it's never you you are immortal. You're never gonna die. Well, the next company physical brother that you get what are you gonna do if he says i'm sorry terminal cancer. Ma 'am, i'm, sorry you go for a little iron pill and you think you're just a little nimmy and he says i'm sorry leukemia.
What are you gonna do. One of your young people gets out here in a car wreck. They're hanging in the balance of life and death. You know what? You're gonna do you're gonna call the blessed pastor and you think he's got some contact with god that's gonna solve your problem.
But I got news for you there people god many times. We'll just let the consequence what you've done. Just carry out on through and you'll lose your kid. You'll lose your life and everything else because you play games with god.
You're saying because you get illness you think you're wrong god. No, but many times it's so. Many times it's so Paul said for this reason many of them are weak physically many of them are sickly and many are dead because they took the lord's supper.
With sin in their life first corinthians 11th chapter. You better read it again. What i'm saying to you is he says we are his possessions. What's that imply dear people? Do you not understand in closing that that implies he has put a tremendous value on you?
He has highly valued you and he will not allow anything to occur in your life. That he doesn't want to occur in your life if you walk with him. He will manifest his love to you. And it is his desire to adorn us with his salvation and to fill us with his unspeakable joy and to give us the peace.
That transcends human understanding. And another thought is that our great need is to recognize ourselves as his possession. That is our problem. We know he saved us, but we don't recognize ourselves as his possession.
We feel we got saved but we can still do as we please when we please. But by a reverent compassion of that thought we would have our hearts filled with a consciousness that we belong to him. And the third thought is that we should cultivate our trust in him and let it completely control.
Every thought as to how we are to spend our life and do our work. A possession is reserved and cared for by the owner thou art worthy. Why? Why is he worthy to have your life because thou was slain? And purchased us to god by his blood.
That's why he's worthy of your life. He gave his life for you and you haven't given your life for anyone or anything and won't and neither would I? But he did. And that's why he's worth song in heaven.
It ought to begin to sound something in our cold and different hearts this morning. And it ought to be the heart confession of our relationship and yours this morning. You ought to have a relationship to the slain lamb of god and you ought to remember that the blood is the power of salvation.
And it's the subject of heavenly praise in the future and you need to remember that the blood is the power that binds us Together to the lord jesus christ and it's a bond that cannot ever be loosened.
And we need to begin once again to meditate upon that divine wonder that you have been bought by the blood of jesus christ. And let your life become a translation into the earthly realm of living and the behavior of that song thou are worthy was slain.
And has purchased us to god by his and that ought to be translated into your relationship with your husband and wife. It ought to be translated in your relationship by your children. It'll be translated in your interrelationships.
It ought to be translated out into your job. It'll be translated into everything you touch see or feel it ought to be there. Because we are his possessions. Let's pray together father. I thank you for the personalities that are represented in this.