He Redeems Us (12/29/2002) | NOTE: Intermittent audio malfunctions throughout recording

Have some family time this week. We will not have a Wednesday night service either. Yeah, the pizza's not here.

I mean, you can't change service here. We're saying about the assembly of ourselves together as the manner of some is.

So much the more, as you see the day approaching. We're still talking about redemption this morning, so let's just look at a quick little review here.

Exodus chapter six, verse six. Verse six, wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the

Lord, I will bring you out of the

Egyptians. I will rid you out of their bondage. I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judgments.

I will take you to me for a people. I will be to you a God, and ye shall know that I am the

Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the birth of the Egyptians, and I will bring you in to the land.

So all of that from verse six down to that last phrase is that you might be ultimately brought in.

So first he has to bring us out, and then he has to rid us of the world and the flesh of the devil, and then he brings us in.

All of that is really part of redemption. And so we've been studying that recently.

In very recent days, if you remember last time, we talked about, you want to look at it as an outline, the first one, rid you out.

So he says, I'll bring you out, and then he says in the Hebrew, rid you, it means I'll snatch you away from here.

You won't be there anymore. Boy, that's a great part of being brought out is the fact that then he rids us of it.

So we're talking about he rids us of the bondage, first of all, for himself.

He saved them for himself. He said, it's for my name's sake that my mighty power may be known.

And we're brought to believe in our day and time that he does it for us, and he does do it for us as a byproduct, but he did it primarily for himself, and that's why you can't lose your salvation.

You didn't save you, and he didn't save you for you. He saved you for him.

If you understand that, you don't even need to ever question eternal security again, because if he saved you for you, or because of you, then perhaps you could obey him, and perhaps he would just kick you out of his family and say,

I'm not your father anymore. Now, that's hard to believe. If he saved you for you, perhaps he would do that because it's of him, it's for his name's sake.

He would give him a bad name if he was not a bad name.

He saved you for his name's sake and would make the power of salvation.

We see eternal security based in our redemption, so he rids us, he brings us out, and then he snatches us away, first of all, for himself, secondly, from something, from the hand of the enemy, and thirdly, it's forever.

Those are some of the things that we talked about. Remember how we discussed in Psalm 106 last

Sunday morning, there's beautiful phrases in there that picture this whole redemption, bringing out the saving for himself, the saving from the enemy, and saving forever, because what it pictured was that as he brought them through the

Red Sea, after they were through the waters, the rest of it's been destroyed, and it's all in 106, in verse seven.

So it's for him, it's from the enemy, and it's forever, three very important aspects of this ridding us of the enemy.

Those are some of the things we discussed last time. It's interesting that in Genesis chapter six,

God didn't just save Noah and his family, he destroyed the others.

It's interesting that in Sodom and Gomorrah, he didn't just save Lot, but he destroyed the others.

It's interesting that the Bible says in 1 John 3a, for this purpose, the Son of God was manifest that he might destroy the works of the devil.

He was not manifest just to save us, yet he was manifest also to destroy the works of the devil.

All of this is built into redemption. So redemption is not just a saving in the sense of something where we're going through the

Red Sea to safety, it's also a destruction of the enemy, which destroys any possibility of going back into captivity, at least in the spiritual realm, which is all of this picture.

So that's what we've studied, this concept that he rids us.

I'll give you a second, a major point. Not only does he rid us or snatch us away, but if you go now into verse, chapter six of Exodus, in verse six, follow me and we'll get to the next point under the major point.

This would be B here, as he brought us out. A is he rids us of their bondage.

B is gonna be that he redeems us. Verse six, wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the

Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rid you out of their bondage.

That's A. And I will redeem you, that's B. So that's where we are right now.

Now two aspects to point number B, and that is with an outstretched arm in the second point, great judgment.

Now think about that. As we look at this bringing out aspect of redemption, the first part is he then rids us or snatches us totally away from it.

The second part now that we see is that it says he redeems us. He actually uses the word redeem.

This is the Hebrew word gahol, which means purchase you as a kinsman redeemer. Remember we started out with Ruth when we were studying redemption.

So now not only does he bring us out and snatch us away, but he pays the price.

It makes it legal for him to do this. He pays the price as his right as a kinsman redeemer to purchase us from the slave market of sin, the devil, the world system, our own flesh, the law, all of it.

He pays the price, he brings us out from there, and that's where we are.

That's what this word redemption means. He does it in two ways. Number one, with an outstretched hand.

So we talk about how it's not

Moses that made the waters go back. It was not the people of Israel that made them save ourselves.

We don't just turn over a new leaf and try to do better to save ourselves.

That's what the world thinks salvation is. Every other major religion in the world, whether it's

Buddhism, Hinduism, through its name, every sect and cult of Christianity calls themselves, quote,

Christians. All of them are based on a system of redeeming ourselves, which is impossible.

The only religion in the world that teaches redemption by a redeemer other than ourselves is biblical

Christianity. It is the only one that teaches salvation that way. It is the only religion that teaches that God saves, that it is of God.

It is because of the power of God that you're saved, not your own power. And yet, our

Christianity is perverted in every corner today. Arminianism, where people teach that it's man that saves himself.

You might as well be a Hindu, or go back to Judaism and find you a system or a group of rules, or a set of philosophies, or something that you can use to try to climb the stairway to heaven.

As we stand before the world, and we stand before Satan and his hordes, and we stand before the angels, and we stand before God, totally guilty in our own right,

God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, as he redeems us with his strong right hand, also brings in justice and says, but I have vindicated them.

They are righteously saved. They are righteously saved because Jesus Christ kept the law.

And when he was nailed your sins, every bad thing you ever did in the future, from the day you're born to the day that you die, all of that was taken and placed in the body of Jesus.

And he was not only the sacrificial goat, he was the scapegoat who was sent into the wilderness, never to come back.

And that is what he suffered when he said, my God, you make me. During those moments, we cannot ever know what he went through.

We know it was a total separation from God. He was separated from God.

He was not the source of being in a wilderness where there was no

God, totally away from the presence of God, totally without God, totally in darkness, scapegoat.

And from their viewpoint, he made it just.

We know that what things before God, that destroys every major religion in the world other than biblical

Christianity. Because God's law cannot be kept by sinful man, therefore it cannot save.

So there is no other way to heaven. And the most popular movement today that's espoused by everybody from George Bush, who

I really don't believe he believes this, but he almost showed it when he had all these religions come after 9 -11 and meet in one place, and they all preached.

And then here comes Billy Graham and preaches Christianity, along with the Buddhist guy who preached and the

Mohammedan who preached, and it was just pathetic. Because that teaches the little children in America that, oh, you can go to heaven anyway.

We're all trying to go to the same place. And just whichever religion you have to wake up in in the world, it's just fine.

Take that one. Well, there's sure a lot of missionaries and missionary wives and missionary children who died for nothing, if that's true.

Because you don't need to take the gospel of Jesus Christ anywhere if the other religions can save people.

They cannot. And the reason that they cannot is because the Bible says that the law stands so that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.

There is no law, no religion that can save anyone. The only thing that can save anyone is what

Jesus did on the cross for us as he took our sins in his own body and suffered eternal death as the scapegoat and was sent off into that wilderness, totally separated from God, and he died spiritually so that we don't have to die spiritually.

And he did it in our place as a substitute. Just like that goat, as he takes the sin of the people, he puts it on the head of the goat.

They killed one goat, they sent the other goat into the wilderness. The one who died pictured the death of Jesus.

The justice of the law says the soul that sinneth it must die. So the goat was slain.

That pictured physical death as well, but the other goat was sent out and it pictured spiritual death. Eternal consciousness totally separated from God.

That is hell. I'm not saying there aren't flames. I believe there are. But the hellish part is not the flames.

That just scares us in the world today with a physical body that can burn. That frightens us. But I'll tell you what, that's nothing like what

Jesus suffered on the cross. There were no flames on that cross. But he suffered hell because he was separated from the existence of God somehow for those moments of time.

And he truly died spiritually in our place. We never have to. That's the only way a person can be saved because the law can't save us.

Religion can't save us. Only that acts. And Jesus did say to burn themselves like the monks did by Jesus' faith unto all and upon all them that believe.

For there is no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And you take verse 19 through verse 23, it eliminates every great religion in the world.

And verse 24 brings forth biblical Christianity, not really as a religion, but as pointing to Jesus Christ, the person who is salvation, because verse 24 says, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.

I want to point out something in that passage. That passage teaches this. We talk more about justification than we do redemption.

When we talk about salvation, we will talk about being justified, being made righteous and all that.

We talk about that a lot. We study the doctrine of righteousness, the doctrine of imputed righteousness, that we have the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ is how we're saved.

And all of that, an awful lot. But sometimes we may not have noticed that justification, as is pointed out in verse 24, is through redemption.

Or you might say in redemption. Dia is the Greek word. You cannot have justification.

You cannot have righteousness, if not to have redemption first.

So the very justice of God, the very fact that he is able to make us stand as if we're righteous before him, cannot come until redemption has already taken place.

Now in God's ways, it all happens at once. I understand when we get saved, you know, we have it all.

I've mentioned we list 33 things, we get the second we're born again. That we get as a byproduct of it all.

Not even the main thing. The main thing is God got his will done. But there has to be redemption, or you cannot be justified.

We are justified freely, yes. It's free to us, why? Because there was redemption. What is redemption?

It's the paying of the price. It's the purchase. Yes, it's free to us, but it's not free.

Because it cost God everything. It cost him his only begotten son.

That's redemption. Jesus gave his blood. The father gave his son. His son was killed.

His son died. His son was separated from him. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

He said, and at that moment, he paid the price. And through that price, it now becomes free to us because he gives it to us as a free gift because he bought it.

He paid for it. So you don't have justification. You don't have righteousness without redemption first, at least from our viewpoint.

We look at it in sequence. Redemption, doctrinally, theologically, has to have come first.

It's more important then than justification. It's more important than righteousness because you could not have the other two without this.

I don't know how many of us had noticed that before, but it's a fact. The second aspect of this redemption and the fact that it is made just for God to redeem us is found in the book of Galatians chapter three.

If we turn there to verse 11. Galatians chapter three, verse 11. Not only does redemption bring justification and righteousness to us, this passage in Galatians three, verse 11 and following teaches that it also frees us from the curse.

What curse? Well, you think of many things when you think of the curse. You think of the cuckoo birds and the goat heads you stepped on as a child and had to pluck them out of your toe, or your mama had to pluck it out of your toe because a child could never pluck their own goat head out.

Have you noticed that? You can't do that. Ask your big brother or sister or mom or dad to get that thing out of there.

You think of the thorns on the roses. You think of the toil that you go through to make a living for your family where in this world everything can go wrong.

You can lose the whole crop. You can invest everything you've got to plant and then it not come up.

But God promises he's not gonna let you go hungry. It'll come up next year. It's gonna come up. You're gonna have enough for your family.

But it's never gonna be easy for the Christian because we live in a cursed world. You think of all those things when you think of the curse.

You women think about childbirth and the pain of it or you remember it or whatever.

But really this is speaking of one curse that is higher than all of that.

And that is the curse of death. The soul that's in it, it shall die.

In the day that you eat the fruit thereof, you shall die. For the wages of sin is death. It echoes through the

Bible from Genesis all the way up through the Old Testament all the way into Romans, all the way to the book of Revelation.

The one great curse, the curse of death. Galatians 3 .11 says, but that no man is justified by the law.

Isn't it interesting that when we talk about redemption, you always get that first. You're not gonna get redeemed by a religious system.

Isn't it sad to think from our viewpoint of all the people of all the major religions and cults of the world, they're so sincere.

And they follow their leaders blindly. And their leaders are leading them down a pathway of death because the

Bible says no man is justified by the law. No man is justified by religion in the sight of God.

It is evident for the just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live by them.

In other words, if you're gonna keep salvation by a law or a religion, then you can't break one single aspect of it.

You gotta live by the whole thing. No one's ever done that. There's never been a Buddhist that was perfect. There's never been a

Mohammedan that was perfect, even by the letter of the Koran. There's never been a Jew that was perfect by the

Ten Commandments. Never been a Christian that's been perfect by the laws of Christ. You can't do this by an outward fleshly keeping of the law.

And the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ, look at verse 13.

However, hath, that's past tense, it's already done, has redeemed us from the curse.

What curse? The curse of the law. You'll say, well, I thought you said this is the curse of death.

It's the same thing. Because it's the law that condemns us to death. When we know the law and we break it, we're condemned to death as a human being.

If we don't have Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, and we're trying to make it by turning over a new leaf or finding some new religion or some philosophy to follow, then we're lost because we're under the curse of the law.

What does the curse of the law say? No man is justified in the sight of the law. The soul that's in it that shall die, et cetera, et cetera.

But Christ has redeemed us from this curse of the law, being made a curse for us.

I've said many times throughout my ministry that the little word for is what saved us.

The little word for, the concept, the fact that Jesus was our substitute, that Jesus Christ was made a curse for me.

The curse is the soul that sins must die. He did that for me. He died for me.

He died for you. Being made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.

That's the cross. The blessing of Abraham might come on the

Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. So the second point we see here is that redemption frees us from the curse.

Third point's found in Ephesians 1, verse four and following. And that is that redemption not only justifies us or makes it possible for God to righteously make us be righteous by giving us his own righteousness.

Secondly, redemption frees us from the curse of death and the law. But thirdly, redemption makes us accepted in the beloved.

Look at Ephesians 1, verse four. According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.

Haven't figured out yet how you can lose your salvation if that verse is true. I mean, you don't wanna argue with me about eternal security, you really don't.

I don't think you wanna argue with anybody sitting in this fellowship about that one topic because we've kind of studied our verses.

You just gotta eliminate too many verses. According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he hath, now here's what we're going for.

Look at this. He has made us accepted. Now look at this.

How does he do this? How does he accomplish this? See, we study these things like justification.

We study righteousness. We study, well, I have peace with God. I'm accepted by God.

We study all these things and we don't understand that the thing that it all rides in is this concept of redemption.

Look at this. He has made us accepted in the beloved in whom we have what?

Redemption. Through what? His blood. That's the price.

That's the purchase price. He has made us accepted in Christ through redemption by his blood and then that brings us to the fourth thing redemption gives and it's the next word, the forgiveness.

We have forgiveness. Listen, forgiveness with God does not come like it does with humans.

If you cross me and I love you, I'll just say, well, I'll just blow that off. I love you. I don't care.

Let's put it behind us. I just let it go. That's human forgiveness. God can't do that because he's just.

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. He didn't say it might die unless I get all emotional and decide to let it slide.

God's not like that. He's not like a man that he should repent. If the soul sins, the penalty is death.

So therefore, the only way we can have forgiveness is if there was redemption. What does redemption mean?

The price was paid. I am redeemed. I'm bought and paid for.

The gold, the kinsman redeemer, the fact that it's right for him to pay the price because he's my kinsman and he bought me out of this slave market.

He bought me from the devil. He bought me from sin. He bought me from the law.

He purchased me and set me free from all of this. Therefore, I'm forgiven. I am made acceptable to God by redemption.

I am forgiven of my sins according to the riches of his grace because of redemption.

You see, redemption is free to us. That's why it's a gift, but it had to be purchased.

Now, that brings us to the last point, which I think I'll save for next time.

All of this took place, all of this discussed the bringing out, all of this where he brought us out by the strength and power of God and by the justice of God, which had to do with justification, being freed from sin, being made accepted in God's eyes, being forgiven.

All of this bringing out from captivity and slavery occurred so that what we're gonna talk about next time could happen, and that is that we might be brought in, that he might bring us in, into his family, into his glory.

It speaks of spiritual bringing in. It speaks of a physical bringing in, which is the redemption of the body, which is coming.

Look up for your redemption draweth nigh, all of those things. And that will conclude our study when we get past the fact that he's done all this to bring us in on next

Sunday. But you know what? He accomplished a lot of work before we got to this place, didn't he?

He accomplished a lot of work on that cross. A lot was accomplished when he said, we'll never know all the details about how, what he suffered to bring in the past.

But we know that he has snatched us away from a fallen race bound for hell.

He has snatched us away from death. He snatched us away from our own sin. He snatched us away from the weakness of our flesh and provided deliverance from any sin we choose to be delivered from.

He snatched us away from the devil. We don't need to fear the devil. We need simply to turn him over to the

Lord and let the Lord rebuke him. He has set us free because he paid the price.

Let's stand and have a prayer together. Father, we thank you for your love, your great love that is the back of all this.

You don't give a reason for your love for your own other than the fact that you love your own. And that's enough for us to know.

We don't understand all of it. But we know that you loved us from before anything was created.

And you had, from the beginning, the counsel that we studied in Sunday school this morning, a plan.

In this world, in time and space, you had a plan of redemption, a way to purchase us away from the lostness, a way to make us accepted in your own sight, a way to cause us to be justified as if we've never sinned, a way to give us the very righteousness of Jesus Christ as you look upon us, and a way to forgive us.

That we might be brought in and have eternal life with you. Thank you for these mighty truths at this time of the year when people are thinking about the

Messiah. The great work was not accomplished in that manger. It was accomplished some 33 years later on the cross.

We thank you, Lord Jesus, for what you suffered. We don't even know what it was, all about it.

But we thank you that you loved us enough and you loved the Father enough to obey him and go to the cross for him and for us.

We can never thank you enough for all that that accomplished but we do thank you in our meager human way.

As magnified before your throne this morning by the Holy Spirit, we thank you for our salvation in our life, in our purpose.

The fact that just being here today together was so much a part of our purpose as opposed to the people all over this world who are doing their own thing today, lost in darkness and selfishness and unhappiness.

Thank you for the joy you've given us in Christ Jesus. May you bless the meal we're about to have together in our time of fellowship.