Redemption Through His Blood

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March 24/2024 | Ephesians 1:7-10 | Expository sermon by Shayne Poirier

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.
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Well, if you would, turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 7.
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Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 7 thus far. In our study we have been considering the multiple facets of what it means to be, as Paul says in verse 3, blessed with every blessing in the heavenly places.
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And as we've done this, we've been examining each of these blessings in turn. If you haven't picked up on that yet, that's what we've been up to, looking at each of these spiritual blessings that we find in Jesus Christ.
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And by way of a very brief review, you'll remember that a month ago we began this series by gazing upon the profound riches that we find in Jesus Christ.
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That was in verses 1 and 2, where, if I can remind you, Christian man or Christian woman, that you and I are not guilty criminals in the courtroom of God, but that we are saints in the stunning kingdom of God and recipients of God's grace and peace.
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Whether we feel it or not, in Christ we stand, or now we sit, before God as a present possessor of all the blessings that can be found in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Once we were all poor, but in Christ we have all been made rich.
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But more than that, the week following that, we rejoiced in the doctrine of election.
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And we looked in verses 3 and 4 at that great truth. The reason why we are here today.
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Such a sweet sight. I want to stop talking about it. It's good to see you. But the reason we are here today with our
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Bibles open on our laps and singing the praises of God is not because we chose
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God at some time in the past, but because God in eternity past, before the foundation of the world, chose us in Christ.
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We looked at that doctrine. Praise be to God. And then last week, our brother
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Neil took us through the precious doctrine of adoption in verses 5 and 6.
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And we looked at how we were not sons and daughters, but we have in Christ become the father's sons and daughters.
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We were homeless, hopeless, but now in Christ we are sons and daughters of the living
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God. And this week, as we'll see in just a moment, we're going to consider the spiritual blessing.
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The next spiritual blessing that Paul enumerates. And that is, in verses 7 through 10, the reality of our eternal redemption in Jesus Christ.
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And what an awesome truth that is. Redemption. That we have been redeemed by the
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Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. It is an amazing thing. It is a profound thing.
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Our brother Frank Parker often talks about how the word awesome is overused. We speak about going for a coffee and donut, and the donut was awesome.
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There are no awesome donuts, but there is an awesome doctrine known as the doctrine of redemption.
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And what an awesome thing it is to behold. And yet this doctrine of redemption that we hear often about, that we speak often of, it is a doctrine that we often reference.
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We sing it. We sing, there is a redeemer. Jesus, God's own son.
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We read about it. We see it on the covers of books. We buy t -shirts that announce to the world that we are, in uppercase letters, redeemed.
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The doctrine of redemption is often referenced. And yet I would suggest that it is a doctrine that is referenced oft, but understood rarely.
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Much to the detriment of the household of God, and much to our detriment. Now, what do
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I mean by that? That we see this idea of redemption, and we understand it from afar, but do we fully understand it?
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Earlier this week, as I mentioned, our family was in Arizona, and we took a treacherous journey up through Flagstaff and to the
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Grand Canyon. And it's interesting, we traveled to Arizona so that we could go back to snow.
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And I had the opportunity, standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, looking down some 4 ,000 feet to the canyon floor, standing on the southern rim.
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And there below us, as we looked down, you could just make out at the very bottom, anyone who's been to the
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Grand Canyon, you might be familiar with this, at the very bottom, this snaky body of water.
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And you think to yourself, is it possible that that small river, that little thing running through the valley, is the 300 foot wide, mighty
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Colorado River? And it begins to attack your mind, overwhelm your mind, with just the sheer magnitude of what it is that is before you.
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That it is unbelievable to stand at the top of the Grand Canyon and to see it in every direction.
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And as I stood there, I appreciated anew that it is one thing to look at the
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Grand Canyon in a two -dimensional image on my phone, where I can zoom in and see the river at home or in my
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VRBO. And it is a totally different thing to drive the four hours up to 7 ,000 feet and to get out of your car and to walk to Mather Point and to look down and to see the
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Grand Canyon. To see the depths of the Grand Canyon one mile below your feet and to feel the warm sun on your face and to hear the breeze come through the canyon and meet your cheeks.
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To look at a masterpiece that only God could make. And I would suggest to you that the difference between that two -dimensional view on my phone and the three -dimensional view in person is very similar to our experience of the doctrine of redemption.
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Many of us have a two -dimensional view of redemption. And my aim today, with God's help, relying solely on God's help, is to give us a three -dimensional view of this doctrine that is redemption.
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This doctrine that I would suggest far surpasses the beauty of any natural wonder of the world.
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I want to take you to a place that is far more beautiful, far more stunning than the
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Grand Canyon. And I believe that we will see this, that when we see this, that we will see that to be redeemed in Christ consists of far more than anything that we have dreamed or imagined.
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That the Christian, that you, dear Christian, have been redeemed.
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And the gravity of that truth, when rightly understood, must pull us from this earthbound condition that we often find ourselves in and draw us to the foot of God's throne to rejoice before Him forever, that we have been redeemed.
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And so with that introduction, let's look at Ephesians 1 and verse 7.
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And we will read verses 7 through 10. This is the inspired word of the living and true
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God. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which
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He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which
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He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.
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With the time that we have together today, I want to examine three key aspects that we find in this passage that fall under the greater umbrella of what it means to be partakers in Christ's redemption.
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We'll look, you'll see it in the inside of your bulletin, we'll look at redemption proper. What does it mean, at the most fundamental level, to be redeemed?
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We will look at forgiveness and the relationship of the forgiveness of our sins to our status as redeemed children of God.
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And then we'll look at revelation, what it means that as redeemed saints, God has now given us wisdom and insight to behold something that has never been seen until the cross of Christ.
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So the first aspect that we'll look at is this idea of redemption or redemption proper.
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And we find that in Ephesians 1 in verse 7a, the beginning of verse 7, where it says, in Him we have redemption through His blood.
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We have redemption through His blood. Here in verse 7, Paul roots our redemption in Christ with these words, in Him.
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Now, if you haven't noticed already, as we've been making our way through Ephesians, that Paul wants us to see, he hopes for the
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Ephesians and for us to see that every spiritual blessing that we enjoy in this life, and that we will enjoy for all of eternity, finds its genesis, finds its making, finds its happening now in Jesus Christ.
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Paul's theology is stunningly Christocentric. And so our theology should be equally
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Christocentric. And I want you to trace this back with me. In Ephesians chapter 1 in verse 1, at the very beginning,
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Paul speaks about how we are saints to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.
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In chapter 1 in verse 4 again, we're told that we were chosen in Him, that is, in Christ, before the foundation of the world.
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In verse 5, that we were adopted. Our brother preached on this last week.
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Adopted through whom? That we were adopted as sons through Jesus Christ.
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And in verse 6, that we have been blessed. If you're reading the ESV, you'll see the uppercase
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B, in the beloved. That is a reference to a divine person that we have been blessed in Jesus Christ.
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And the same must be said of our redemption. That if anyone has or ever will be redeemed.
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If you're sitting here in this room today going, how in the world can I be redeemed? There is only one name given under heaven by which we must be redeemed.
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That is the name Jesus Christ. And Paul wants us to get this, to get it through my thick skull and your slightly thinner skull.
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That all the Christian, all of the Christian life is about Jesus Christ. This is the difference between modern deists, those who believe in a
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God. And we can meet many of them on the streets. Those who say, of course, I believe in God.
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And the question is, what do you make of Jesus Christ to Paul and to the redeemed
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Christian? The foundation of redemption is this, that Jesus Christ is everything.
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He must be everything to you and everything to me. Because he's everything to Paul and he's everything in scripture and he's everything in redemption.
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Now, if someone were to approach you on the street today and ask you, what is redemption?
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What does it mean to be redeemed? If one of my children is not listening to the sermon today and comes and says, what was this redemption talk all about?
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How would you answer them? It's a bit of a loaded question. And I think that is because the word redemption is not only pregnant with meaning, but it is like a door to another world.
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I think of our brother Alex and your love for the Chronicles of Narnia. And those who are familiar with the
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Chronicles of Narnia, how the Pevensies find a wardrobe. And through that wardrobe they enter another world.
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The doctrine of redemption is like that wardrobe. It is three short syllables.
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And yet when we enter into a closer study of it, we enter into another world.
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And that is the world of the Bible. Because you cannot understand fully the doctrine of redemption.
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You cannot have a three -dimensional view of the doctrine of redemption without having a full understanding of the history of redemption that is
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Sacred Scripture. Now, I'm not going to take us through a full meta -narrative of Scripture.
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I'm not going to bless you with that today. But what we will do is we're going to look at where Paul starts.
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And we're going to take some glancing looks back at this doctrine of redemption through redemptive history in Scripture.
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So that we can understand as saints what it means. The sweet and precious truth that we in this room are
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Christians are redeemed. And so let's start with where Paul starts in verse 7 where he says,
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In him we have redemption through his blood. Now that word that Paul uses for redemption in the original language, it would not be a familiar word to us obviously, but was a familiar word to the
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Ephesians. And in many ways it was more familiar to them, this concept of redemption, this principle of redemption, than it is to us today.
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And a good case in point is this. In our everyday experience, when we redeem something, what is it that we redeem?
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I think of making an order online and it asks, Do you have a promo code? A promo code to redeem?
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To save a few cents on my book order? Or to go to Superstore? I'm not sure if they still do this with the wall of coupons.
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And to choose the coupons that you are going to use to redeem at the cash register. Almost everything of our everyday ordinary lives, when it comes to redemption, has to do with saving a few cents, or a few dollars, on some items that we are buying.
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But to the Ephesians, in Bible times, in first century
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Ephesus, you didn't redeem cents through an app or a coupon. You redeemed people.
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And you redeemed people often at great personal expense. Because the
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Greek word that Paul uses here referred to a payment or a ransom that was made for those who had been kidnapped, enslaved, or held in some other form of bondage.
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In this time and culture, it was not uncommon. We see people today, maybe an interjecting thought, we see people today who are in massive amounts of debt.
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And you inquire and you wonder, How can a person possibly have that many credit cards and that much debt and yet still get another one?
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And in the time of Ephesus, what would happen is individuals or whole families would accrue enough debt that they would be sold into slavery to pay back that debt.
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And it was almost universally understood that an enslaved person's family bore the special obligation to pay a ransom or a redemption price to free their enslaved relative.
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And the only problem with that, it sounds good in practice, but the only problem was that this obligation was sometimes ignored, oftentimes ignored by family members or the redemption price was just altogether unattainable to poor families.
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And so people remained enslaved. We see this when we read the book of Philemon and Onesimus, his slave.
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People remained enslaved for years, sometimes for their whole lives. And as a result, slavery was a widespread cultural practice in the first century.
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And so the Ephesians understood slavery. They understood what it meant to be a bond servant, to borrow money, to owe that money, to not be able to repay that money and then to be taken in and owned as a servant.
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More than that, the conception of liberty, their conception of liberty in first century
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Ephesus was very different from ours. Freedom for them wasn't the right to speak our minds without consequence.
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We should fiercely defend that right. But that was not freedom in their mind. To them, freedom was to not belong to another person as their property.
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And therefore, when Paul speaks about redemption, he speaks to the Ephesians in this term, in these terms.
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To be redeemed was to be bought out of slavery and to be made truly free.
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But Paul has more in mind than just this. Many theologians, in fact, see that Paul in his
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Jewish mind was not just making a reference to first century practices, but he was looking back all the way to the beginning.
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Looking back even to Genesis and to Exodus. And like I said, I think a proper understanding of this doctrine of redemption requires a full
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Bible view. There is a whole other world in this word.
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So we'll look at just a few references. If you turn with me to Exodus chapter 6 and verse 6.
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We'll read Exodus verses 6 and 7. Here we see the redeemer heart of God toward his chosen people.
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That as Paul is speaking about redemption, he's speaking about a cultural practice now. Yes, but something far beyond that.
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In Exodus 6, 6, God tells Moses, say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the
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Lord and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and I will deliver you from slavery to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.
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I will take you. Look what it means to be redeemed. I will take you to be my people and I will be your
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God and you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out from under the burdens of the
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Egyptians. If we were to fast forward a bit further on, you don't have to turn there, but to Leviticus 25.
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There, Moses lays out, inspired by the Holy Spirit, what it means for a kinsman redeemer to come to the aid of the poor, to their poor brothers and to other poor people, to pay the ransom price, to redeem their people from slavery.
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Fast forward a little bit further to the book of Ruth. For those kids who were here when
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I did a kid sermon on Ruth in our first year, you might remember the saying, what is Ruth about?
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Ruth is about redemption. And the story of Ruth is exactly about that, about a kinsman redeemer,
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Boaz, who redeems not even an Israelite, but a pagan Gentile named Ruth.
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And in Paul's mind and in many theologians' minds, I think it should be in our minds that man Boaz is a shadow, a foreshadowing of who
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Christ was to be to our people as a kinsman redeemer.
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To be redeemed, as Paul has it before the
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Ephesians, is this, it is to be bought out of bondage, to be bought out of slavery, but not just to be bought out of bondage and then sent out into the world to wander aimlessly.
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But as it says in this verse, if I can just hearken back to Exodus 6, you don't have to turn there, but to be redeemed with God's mighty outstretched arm is to be taken to be among his people, where he is our
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God. And we shall know that he is the Lord our God, who has brought us from under the burden of the
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Egyptians, or in our case, the enemy, the serpent, Satan himself.
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Now Paul lays this out, that in Christ we have redemption. We have this freedom, but he tells us there the cost, that in him we have redemption through his blood.
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Now it's interesting, in the history books there is, I didn't know people kept track of this, but people keep track of everything
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I think, that there is actually an account of what is considered the greatest ransom that was ever paid.
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The greatest ransom that was ever paid was to free the last emperor of the
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Incas. I'm going to butcher his name, but it was Atahalupa, something along those lines, who was taken by the
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Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro. This was in 1532 -1533 in Peru.
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And the Inca tribe, they brought all of their gold together, and all of their silver together to redeem their emperor, their emperor of the
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Incas. And in modern worth, it was calculated then, and recalculated according to our standards of living today, it was something along the lines of 1 .5
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billion dollars to redeem one man, the ruler of the emperors, the last emperor, sorry, of the
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Incas. Now, historians who have kept that account have made one grave error, that there was a redemption that was worth far more than 1 .5
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billion dollars in today's currency. And that is that in time, according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, God the
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Father sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to pour out His blood, not to ransom one person or ten people, but to ransom all of the people that He would call to Himself.
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And that in fact, the greatest redemption price that has been paid, it was not paid in money, but it was paid in blood, and it was paid in the blood of Jesus Christ.
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Again, to borrow from the Old Testament illusions of redemption, in Exodus 21, verses 28 to 30, there's a note about one of the civil laws within Israel, that when an ox was to gore a man or a woman to death, the ox was to be stoned, and its flesh was not to be eaten, but the owner of the ox was not to be liable.
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But if the ox was known to gore people, and would gore a person, then not only would they stone the ox, but they would stone the owner of the ox as well.
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And the principle was that that was a ransom for the life of that person.
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And in Exodus 21, verse 30, if a ransom is imposed on him, then he shall give for the redemption of his life whatever is imposed on him.
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And so instead of him dying, he could pay a ransom. But the idea was this.
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An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. And we, as men and women in this world, we are guilty.
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We have blood guilt. Blood on our hands. Because we have not murdered one man.
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We have not stolen, I'm sure we have stolen, some small thing from the store, from a friend.
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But our crime is cosmic treason against a holy and a righteous
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God. And we are accountable to Him. And the principle is this.
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That Hebrews 9 .22 says it, that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
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That the punishment, God's just wrath, God's just punishment, God's justice in itself demands blood.
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And nothing else can do. Nothing else can do for those who have sinned against a holy and a righteous
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God. But Mark 10 .45 says, for even the Son of Man came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
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That is the same word that we see here, in the same root of the word that Paul uses for the word redemption.
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That we have sinned. That is why we were enslaved. That's why we were enslaved to sin.
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That's why the condemnation of death hung over our heads. And redemption could not be in silver and gold.
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It could not be in 1 .5 billion dollars. It had to be in blood. And it had to be in the blood of God's own
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Son, Jesus Christ. In 1 Peter 1, verses 18 and 19, we read this.
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Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without spot or blemish.
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Now there has been a great debate, and I've dipped into this debate from time to time.
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I'm going to dip into it at least one more time. And that is the question, who was this ransom paid to?
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Where did this ransom go? You've probably heard me speak about the ransom theory, that some people have the view that the ransom that God paid was paid to the devil.
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The Chronicles of Narnia, as good as it is, C .S. Lewis had a view of the ransom theory.
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And so if you picture Aslan dying, not to satisfy his own just wrath, but to pay off the white witch, that is the ransom theory in play.
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That Satan has something against God. He has something that belongs to God.
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And that God, in order to get it back, has to pay Satan for it. That is the furthest thing from the truth that we can find.
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Job 41, in verse 11, as we're learning about the immutable nature of God, in Job 41, 11, the question is asked, who has first given?
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God says, who has first given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.
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That no ransom was needed to be paid to Satan. But then who was the ransom paid to?
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Psalm 49, in verse 7 says, truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life.
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For the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice and that he should live on forever and never see the pit.
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The debt was not owed to Satan. The debt was not owed to man.
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The debt was owed to God. And so the ransom then had to be paid to God.
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And the only one who could pay the ransom to God was God. If the ransom was owed to a man, a man could pay it.
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If a ransom was owed to an angel, then I suppose an angel could pay it. That's where the
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Jehovah's Witnesses go wrong. But if we're to atone for sin before a holy and righteous
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God, the ransom must be paid to God by God. And this creates then for us a whole new standing as Christians who have been redeemed.
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As redeemed Christians. We have not simply been redeemed now to do whatever it is that we wish.
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Imagine this for a moment, that a slave is redeemed and sent out into the world and say, do whatever you want.
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Have all the fun you want to see or to do. See all the things you want to see. Whatever your heart desires, go and do that.
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No. But the Christian who has been redeemed has a new master that you have been bought out of bondage from sin and death.
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And Colossians 1 .13 and 14 says, he has delivered us from the domain of darkness.
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What, to live in no man's land between two borders? But no, but he has redeemed us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
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We have a new master and a good master. Let me tell you, all of the people in the world who have made their own desires, their own hearts, their own persons to be their
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God, they serve the cruelest master in the world. To serve yourself is to serve
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Satan and to be under his bondage. But to be truly free is to serve in God's courts as his servant, as his child, and as his friend.
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Not only that, we have a new master, but we have a new mission. In 1
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Corinthians 6 .19 and 20, we're told you are not your own for you were bought with a price, so glorify
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God in your body. And there is a new means, not by submitting ourselves as slaves to sin, but we present ourselves as slaves of righteousness.
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In Romans 6, but thanks be to God, you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you are committed and have been set free from sin, having become slaves of righteousness.
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John Bunyan said, holiness and liberty are joined together. Indeed, our call to liberty is a call to holiness.
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We've been freed to live the life that we were created to live. And if God has paid such a high price, the blood of his own son, to redeem you, he will not cast you aside as worthless when you stumble and when you fall.
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And that ought to give us such great assurance that you can say before God, in Christ, that I am redeemed and I belong to God.
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I am not my own, but I belong to him and he will by no means never cast me aside.
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But redemption is far more than simply being bought back. I want us to look at the next aspect of this in the second part of verse 7.
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Through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.
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Forgiveness. When a person was held in bondage or slavery, what often kept them there was the massive debt that hung above their heads.
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As long as they were in debt, they were in slavery. But here we see that Christ has not only offered us forgiveness, sorry, excuse me, freedom.
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I'm giving you a hint as to where I'm going. He not only offered us freedom, but praise be to God, he has lavished upon us.
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That's the biblical word, lavished upon us a full and a free forgiveness.
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In the second part of verse 7, when Paul deals with this concept of forgiveness, he understood that freedom necessarily required forgiveness.
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If there's one thing that our redemption needs to run on. If I were to give you a brand new
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Tesla in the parking lot and say, congratulations, you get a new Tesla. And then you would hop in the car and push the start button.
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I say, all you need is a battery. Well, that Tesla is almost worthless.
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And I know the battery is way too expensive. You'll just have to sell the Tesla parts. But our redemption needs forgiveness to run on.
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And here he outlines what it is that we have, that how we have all been forgiven of our trespasses.
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It is through the blood of Christ that as Christians, we have been forgiven all of our trespasses through the blood of Jesus Christ in our redemption.
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Colossians 2 .13 says, and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
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God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our sins, all our trespasses.
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And I want you to see this with me. That we have forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches, you know how we said, we see this word riches in Ephesians quite often, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.
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In God's wisdom, in God's insight, in God's divine understanding,
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God could not give us the bare minimum of forgiveness. God could not offer us your sin plus one in terms of forgiveness.
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But that God has lavished upon us a rich forgiveness, a full forgiveness, a forgiveness that offers full justification for even you and even me, though we are vile, though we are wretched, though we are undeserving sinners.
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It is an account that can never be exhausted. Charles Hodge says on this, it is the overflowing abundance of unmerited love, inexhaustible in God and freely accessible through Christ.
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Abundance, inexhaustible, freely accessible. Let me ask you, when you think about the forgiveness that you have in Jesus Christ, do you sometimes like I do feel that you're just one more sin away from being put out?
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That God looks at you and says, certainly I will not forgive him.
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That he is beyond the ability to be forgiven. And I want to say to you,
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I want to address the believers in this room first, that whatever sin you bring to God, that he brings a greater forgiveness.
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That he brings a richer forgiveness. And we know it's at times so difficult to comprehend a
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God who is prepared to forgive us for all that we truly are. Not who we are in this room, not who we are at home when we have guests over and people are watching, but who
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I am in the solitary nature of my own heart and conscience and life.
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Can God forgive that man that only I know and not even fully? John MacArthur, he brings up in one of his commentaries a
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Shakespeare play, King Richard III, if you're familiar with that Shakespeare play. It was on the life of the tyrannical king,
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Richard III. And there's a line in that playwright that I think every
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Christian can relate to. I believe it's King Richard who says, my conscience hath a thousand several tongues.
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Now by several, Shakespeare means a separate or an independent. So my conscience has a thousand independent tongues.
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And he says, and every tongue brings a several tale, an independent tale.
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And every tale condemns me for a villain.
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And William Shakespeare, who wrote that, I think has a gleaning into how every man or woman, believer or unbeliever, thinks and feels.
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That in my conscience, when my conscience begins telling tales, every individual independent tale, it speaks to me and to you as this, you are the villain.
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I am the villain. I am the greatest villain in my own story. I am my own worst enemy and so are you.
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We are the greatest enemies in the storylines of our lives. It's not our demanding jobs.
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It's not our spouses. It's not something that happened to me on the way here. It's not that I don't have enough money in my bank account.
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My greatest enemy is me. It has always been me. It will always be me.
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When I am on my dying day, on my deathbed, if the Lord grants me a deathbed, the last, the final greatest enemy, apart from the devil and death itself, will be me on that deathbed.
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And what Jesus Christ has for us is this, forgiveness.
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That he has lavished upon us in grace. In Romans 7, Paul asks the question,
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Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And the next verse he answers,
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Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh
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I serve the law of sin. That we have forgiveness. Thanks be to God that we are redeemed and that we are forgiven.
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I love what the Puritans, they have so much to say on this topic. One Puritan says, Sins are so remitted.
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This is a brother of ours, if anyone's familiar with a brother named Elias, who was part of this church in the early days.
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He was compiling a book of what he called the pithy Puritans. And I think I need to send him this quote.
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Tom Adams, I can't remember his first name. He said, sins are so remitted. It is as if they have never been committed.
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That your forgiveness is so significant. That it is as if you lived the righteous life that Christ lived.
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And why is that? Because another Puritan chimes in from the other side of the fence. He says, he hides our unrighteousness with his righteousness.
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He covers our disobedience with his obedience. He shadows, what a wonderful thought.
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He shadows our death with his death. So that the wrath of God cannot find us.
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That we are covered in Christ. And the wrath of God cannot find us. Because in every nook and cranny that it seeks to go, it finds and has found only
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Jesus Christ in our place. As he poured out his blood for us. Christian, as rotten as you feel.
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As rotten as I feel so often. You are redeemed and you are forgiven in Christ.
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And unbelievers, maybe you don't know if you're an unbeliever or not.
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Some of you in this room, you have very little interest in Christ. Everything I've said up to this point, you're taking with a grain of salt.
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Psychologists and self -help gurus have helped you get to the place where you feel like sin isn't your biggest problem.
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That maybe it's your genes. It's your genetic makeup.
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Or perhaps it's your environment. Or perhaps it was your parents.
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Or your church. Or some other external factor outside of yourself.
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I want you to make no mistake about this. The reason why you are miserable, and you are a miserable unbeliever, is because of your sin.
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And it is because of your individual accountability before God for that sin.
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You have not made mistakes in life. Your biggest issue is not an addiction or a disease.
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It is rebellion against God. And if we were to follow every root of dysfunction in your life, every vine or every branch of dysfunction in your life to the root, what we would find is that the root is planted in a soil of your own putrid and vile sin.
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And every intellectually honest person, even if you don't have
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Christ, every intellectually honest person understands this. That your greatest problem is sin.
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And the reason why you live with guilt and fear of death and so many other disorders of personality and life is because you know that you are accountable to God for that sin.
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And some of you need to hear this. You don't need psychotherapy to deal with your feelings of guilt.
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You don't need another self -help book to affirm your lifestyle of truth suppression.
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You don't need another podcast to excuse your misdeeds. You need a come -to -Jesus moment where you can find redemption.
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That is being brought out of the misery of your slavery to sin. And forgiveness from the debt of that sin.
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Subjective and objective forgiveness. And the only person that you can come to, the only one that you can come to is
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Christ. And you will continue to seek and to wander and to be miserable until you come to Christ on his terms.
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There's a story I love to share with people who are not Christians because I think it's a compelling and a challenging argument for how it is that we are to respond as sinners to a holy
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God. In Luke 18, verse 10, two men came into the temple to pray.
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One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, it says, standing by himself prayed, thus
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God I thank you that I am not like the other man. Other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
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I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get. But there was the other man in that temple.
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The other man, that tax collector, standing far off, were told would not lift up his eyes to heaven but beat his breast saying,
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God be merciful to me, a sinner. The reason why
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I love to bring this text to people who are not Christians is because at least for the first half of the story they think,
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Ah, you're the Pharisee. You're the self -righteous one. You're the one that thinks you have everything there is to offer.
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Until we get to the second part of the story when we turn the tables and we see that no, to be a
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Christian is not to have it figured out. To be a Christian is not to jump through all the hoops.
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To go beyond this. To be one who is right with God is not to keep the seven sacraments of the
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Roman Catholic Church, the five covenants of the Mormon Church, the five pillars of Islam.
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But it is to come before God as a tax collector, as an outsider, as one who does not deserve forgiveness.
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And it's to say, Oh God, have mercy on me, a sinner. And to find that mercy in Jesus.
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As I said at the beginning, everything has to be about Jesus Christ.
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And for you who are an unbeliever in this room, you know you're not right with God. Your starting point is not therapy.
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It's not another book of chapters. It's alone before God, beating your chest, saying,
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I need Jesus Christ. I can have no other. So we find redemption in Christ.
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We find forgiveness in Christ. And then lastly, we find revelation in Christ.
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In verses 9 and 10, He has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which
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He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.
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It's interesting if you look at church history, when the Christian faith came onto the scene, when truly just another chapter of revelation came about that spawned the
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Christian church. One of the challenges that a lot of the contemporaries had with Christianity is everything new is bad and everything old is good.
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And so how can Christianity, which is new, at least in our eyes, be good?
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And there's a story in the very early church of a man who wrote a letter.
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We don't know who the man was, but he wrote a letter to another person named Diognetus. And he asked three questions, or he answered three questions that Diognetus had.
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And the questions that were asked were this. Who is this God that you worship? Why do you love each other the way that you do?
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And why did Christianity appear now and not formerly?
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Many people don't know how to answer that question. Some people might say to you, well, Christianity is a relatively new religion, is it not?
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Why did it appear in the first century AD and not formerly?
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And we can turn them to Ephesians chapter one, verses nine and 10, and say this.
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That there was a mystery, the mystery of God's will that he set forth in Christ.
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And it was not until the fullness of time that that mystery was fully revealed.
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And dear friends, there are a lot of Christians, professing Christians in the broader evangelical church that still speak as if there's some mystery that is to be discovered and it can only be discovered through some mystical experience.
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That is not the mystery we are talking about. But it is the mystery of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the fullness of it at the fullness of time made known to us.
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And so there is not a mystery kept from us, but this was a mystery kept for us in the gospel.
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In the Reformation study Bible, that was looked after by R .C. Sproul, it says that Christ, he came to unite all things in his managerial or stewardship role.
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That this idea of the plan, if you look in verse 10, as a plan for the fullness of time, that can be translated not only as a plan, but as an administration or as a steward, an oikonomia, which has to deal with, oikos means house.
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And so an administration of God's house. And this administration, this stewardship, at the right time came through Jesus Christ.
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It says, appears to the household of the cosmos, which has become fragmented in this array.
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And Christ, who is a faithful household manager, has come to put the fragmented house back together, especially the splintered relationships in the family of that household.
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So that letter to Diognetus, who is this God you worship? Why do you love each other so much? And why was this mystery kept a secret?
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Or why did Christianity appear now and not formerly? Those last two are perfectly related.
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That here we have now the full revelation of God. At the fullness of time, at the crux of history, at the coming of Christ, he gave us now the full revelation of God to unite all things in heaven and on earth, and including in this church,
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Jew and Gentile, brown eyes and blue eyes, white skin and black skin, and every color in between.
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Not segregated into individual races, into different parties, but one in Christ, brought together through the gospel of Christ.
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Matthew Henry says, Blessings were made known to believers by the Lord showing to them the mystery of his sovereign will and the methods of redemption and salvation.
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Christ united the first two parties, God and man in his person, and satisfied for that wrong which caused the separation.
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And we are made one with God and one amongst ourselves.
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This is not a mystery kept from us that we need to seek out through some esoteric means.
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It is a mystery kept for us. It's a mystery to reflect on as we bring a new member into this local church.
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That God is bringing people from all over to belong to one body, and that body is the church of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And he has made known to us the mystery of his will.
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I recall a time when I was fairly new to a job. I think I had been in this particular job.
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I changed careers in 2009 and had been in this workplace for about two or three months, and our supervisor went away.
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And for whatever reason she said, I'm going to put you in charge. And I said, that's great. What do
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I need to do? And she said, don't burn the place down. That was the only instruction
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I got. And I thought to myself, how am I going to faithfully discharge my duties in this privileged place with the only instruction being, don't burn the place down.
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That is not the place of the Christian. But we have been redeemed. We have been forgiven.
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God has told us all about himself. He has given us everything that we need for life and godliness.
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He has inspired for us a word that has been perfectly preserved. If you doubt, if you doubt the veracity of what is in this book, and you think you have something better, talk to me afterwards.
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I won't beat you up with the truth, but I will deliver it gently and compellingly that we have the most reliable book in the world, in these sacred scriptures, in our hands.
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That God has spoken to us. We have a God to know and to love. We have a savior.
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I was saying to Sam, I was really nervous leading up to this sermon because I said, in many ways,
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I'm just preaching stuff that all of you already know. And yet, isn't it a comfort that we can go to a thousand different places in our
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New Testament, and we can see the same gospel over and over and over again.
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And that's why you might say, boy, you know, so often the message seems the same when they preach.
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And it's because the gospel comes back to us, revealed the mystery of God's will over and over and over again.
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Why, dear friends? Because we need to believe it still. Because we need to be reminded of it still.
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Because we, like Paul is demonstrating in Ephesians, need to be more and more about Jesus Christ.
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That we would be radically Christocentric. That people would say about us,
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I heard about one friend, and they said, I don't really like this guy. They didn't know that I was close to this individual.
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I don't really like that person. All he does is talk about Jesus. Well, all this book talks about, in many respects, like Spurgeon said, all roads, they don't all lead to Rome, but all roads lead to Christ.
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And every road in our lives should lead to Jesus Christ. Because we are redeemed in Him.
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On January 1st, 1863, anyone know what's significant about that date?
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January 1st, 1863, as the American Civil War was coming to an end, President Abraham Lincoln made what is known as the
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Emancipation Proclamation. Where he freed all the slaves. And so if you were enslaved, the doors were open, you can go.
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You are free. And the younger slaves, the teens and the early twenties, they had dreamed of this freedom and they were gone.
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And they were free. But the older slaves, it's a tough time.
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The older slaves, they had grown so accustomed to being slaves.
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So accustomed to being slaves that every time they would see their masters on the street, one historian says, they would tremble with fear that today was the day that their master would reclaim them.
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That they did not know what to do with their freedom. And some of us as Christians, we need to understand this.
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That the eternal Emancipation Proclamation has been announced.
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And it's not Abraham Lincoln. It's not the President of the United States. It's not the Pope. It is
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God himself. And that we are free indeed in Christ.
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And then we now are to live as free men and women in Christ. Not for ourselves, but for him.
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Ephesians 5 .1 says, For freedom, Christ has set us free.
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And you need to know this. Stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
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You are free. And a few verses later he says, For you were called to freedom, brothers.
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Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
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We've been bought with a price. Let us glorify God in our bodies. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.
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If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church, or our
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Instagram at Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca