Well, good morning to everyone.
If you would open your Bibles with me to the book of Ephesians,
chapter one. Ephesians one. Before we begin, let's bow together
before our Lord. Our Father, we bow before you
this morning in worship, in awe and adoration of who you are
and what by your mercy grace and wisdom you have done for
your people. Father, I pray this morning that
you would give each one of us here a heart of true worship,
that we might bow at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ and
worship him. Truly, he is worthy of all of
our worship, but cause us to be able to worship. to the praise
of the glory of your grace, to honor and glorify our Savior,
and for our good. There's nothing better for us
than to worship God our Savior. And what we pray for ourselves,
we pray for your people, whoever they meet today. God bless your
word, cause it to go forth in power, to bring glory to your
name, to instruct and to save, to comfort, to feed your people. Father, we thank you for giving
us a place where we can come, meet together in peace and harmony
and love and to worship, to preach the gospel of Christ our Savior.
And Father, I pray that you would protect this place, the heart
of this congregation for many, many, many years to come. Give
us the wisdom to protect this place, to protect the gospel
that's preached here, to endeavor to have the unity of the saints,
that with one purpose, one heart, one desire to hear Christ preached,
that would be our preeminent goal. Father, we ask this for
your glory, that you not leave yourself without a witness. We ask, Father, that you do this
for our good, for the good of our children, for the good of
our community. Bless your word as it's preached here. Father,
we're thankful for your blessing, your spiritual blessing, the
blessings, the physical blessings you blessed this congregation
with are without number. But Father, we're also a poor
and a needy people. There's so many right now who
are going through difficult times of heartache, sickness, and sorrow. Father, I pray you'd be with
your people, that you'd heal, that you'd comfort. We're thankful
that Julie's come through this surgery, Father, pray you continue
to heal her, strengthen her. Father, others, those that we
know of, those who are suffering in silence, you know, we pray
you comfort the hearts of your people with your presence. All
these things we ask and we give thanks in that name which is
above every name, the name of Christ our Savior, amen. Ephesians chapter one, our text
this morning is verse seven, I've titled the lesson, The Blessing
of Election. In these past weeks, we've been
looking, going through this chapter, looking at all the different
spiritual blessings that God has given His people that Paul
lists here in this chapter. And the first thing he told us
is all these blessings are in Christ. So if you need any blessing
from God, you need anything at all from God, you go to the Lord
Jesus Christ and beg Him for it because they're all in Him.
We've looked at the blessing of election. What a blessing
that is. Nobody could be saved without
God's electing love. He chose to save sinners who
could never deserve it. We looked at the blessing of
predestination. The father predetermined to make
a sinful people to be just like his son, our Lord Jesus Christ. That's a greater blessing than
we'll realize until we're with him in glory. We've looked at
the blessing of acceptance. The father doesn't just grudgingly
accept his people, he gladly accepts his people in his son
because his son made them to be perfect. Now this morning
I want to look at the blessing of redemption. I have four points
on this blessing of redemption I hope will drive this point
home to our hearts. And number one is this, just
like all these spiritual blessings, redemption is in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Verse seven, in whom? We have redemption through his
blood. The forgiveness of sins according
to the riches of his grace. This redemption is in Christ. Redemption is found in Christ
because he's the one that accomplished all of it for his people. He
accomplished redemption for his people by his sacrifice for their
sins. Now redemption is all in Christ
because Christ is our redemption. is not a thing. Redemption is
a person. First Corinthians 1.30, but of
him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Christ is our
redemption. So all redemption is found in
him. He personally is our redemption. Now, if you need to be redeemed
from your sin, I tell you what, go to Christ. He redeems sinners. He's exactly who you need. Now,
the fact that we need to be redeemed tells me we have a debt, a debt
that we cannot pay. The best example I could think
of is a pawn shop. You know, a person is short on
cash, so they take some valuable that belongs to them, And they
go down there and give it to the pawn shop. And the pawn shop
gives them some money for it. Now, in a certain number of days,
however many days it is determined, you can come back and redeem
your valuable. You can buy it back from the
pawn shop. But if you don't, if you don't come back in a certain
number of days, they're going to sell it to somebody else,
and it's lost to you forever. You and I have a price on our
head. And we did this thing. So if somebody takes something
down to the pawn shop and pawns it so they can get some money,
they did that willingly. You and I have put a price on our
heads willingly. We've sold ourselves in bondage
to sin. We've sold ourselves in sin,
and God's justice says, now there's a price for that. The price is
death for sin. Well, now the debt can be paid,
but the only way the debt can be paid is with perfect, pure,
sinless blood. And you and I don't have that.
So we cannot pay the debt, and God's justice rightly demands
our second death, our death in hell, because we've got a price
we cannot pay. So the Lord Jesus came, and he
redeemed his people from God's justice. You know, the person
we have to be saved from is God. And God sent his son to save
us from God. He sent his son to redeem us
from God's justice by paying the price for his people. Christ
paid the debt for the sin of God's elect by the sacrifice
of himself, of all that he is. He paid the debt with his own
precious blood. He had the only pure, sinless
blood that's ever been on the face of this earth. and he gave
that blood to redeem his people, to pay a price that they owed
because of their sin. Now that's a blessing. This is
the blessing of redemption. I don't have to pay the debt
if Christ paid it for me. And we talk about the Lord paying,
redeeming his people with his blood. That doesn't just mean
the blood that's in the veins of the Savior. When scripture
talks about blood, it signifies death. He didn't just give a
pint of blood. He gave all of his blood, his
life's blood, so that Christ died for the sin of his people. He took the sin of God's elect
and he made it his. I didn't commit any of it, but
the guilt of that sin and the shame of that sin and the debt
of that sin became his and he did what we couldn't do. He paid
it. He paid it with His blood. He paid it with His death because
God's justice demands death for sin. Now this is the blessing
of redemption. If Christ died for me, I can
never die. God's justice, not only does
it not demand my death, God's justice demands my life if Christ
died for me. Now that's a blessing, isn't
it? Not only does God's grace demand my eternal life. God's
justice does. If Christ died for me. All right. Number two, redemption means
that the sins of God's elect are forgiven. Paul says in whom
we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. Now the sins of God's elect are
forgiven for this reason. Christ took the sin of his people
away. Once Christ took the sin of His
people away, you can't charge God's elect with anything. Because Christ took it all away. There's nothing, there's no sin
left to charge God's people with. Because Christ took it away.
Now what a blessing this is. Even God the Father, who sees
everything, and knows everything, and is everywhere all at one
time, can't see any sin to charge me with if Christ redeemed me. Because he took my sin away and
the Father forgives my sin because it's gone. Christ redeemed me,
Christ paid the debt for it. And the very clear picture that
we have of that in the Old Testament is the scapegoat on the Day of
Atonement. The high priest would symbolically
transfer the sin of the people onto the head of that scapegoat.
He lay his hands on the head of that scapegoat and confessed
the sin of the people. The sin of Israel was symbolically
transferred to that scapegoat. And then the priest gave the
scapegoat to a fit man. And that fit man took that leash
and started walking out into the wilderness, out beyond the
horizon where nobody could see him, and then he kept walking
some more. And he left that goat out in the wilderness and he
returned. When he came back to the camp,
the goat wasn't with him. See, the picture is he left the
sin of God's people out there in the wilderness and it didn't
come back with him. It's gone forever, never to be
seen again. And that's what's happened in
the redemption of God's people. The father literally, not figuratively,
Not pretending, not in a picture, but literally transferred the
sin of God's people from them to Christ. And the Lord Jesus is both the
high priest, he's the scapegoat, and he's the fit man. He's all
of them at once. When Christ became sin for his
people, he took it away. so that it will never be seen
again. It'll never be heard from again. Now, since there's no sin left
that can condemn God's people, the father in justice, this is
right for him to do. He forgives the sin of his people
because there's no reason left to punish them. Christ took their
sin away. By his blood, he made it to not
exist anymore. So the blessing of redemption
is the father in justice forgives the sin of his people. All right. Number three, redemption
is an act of God's grace. Paul says here, it's, it's according
to the riches of his grace. Now the redemption of a sinner
has got to be by grace, doesn't it? I mean, this is what human
religion and what the, The nature of a spiritually dead man cannot
figure out. Redemption cannot be earned by
you and me. Redemption cannot be earned by
a sinner. So if a sinner, I mean a sinner
now, who all they can do is sin, everything they think is sin,
everything they want to sin, their nature is sin. If that
sinner's gonna be redeemed from a debt he cannot pay, it's got
to be by grace, doesn't it? A sinner can't do anything to
deserve forgiveness. Everything a sinner does deserves
God's wrath, not his forgiveness. A dead sinner doesn't have any
ability to pay the price that's on our head. So redemption has
got to be by grace. And God sent his son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, to pay the redemption price of his people. Because
he's the only one who can pay the price. Because of the riches
of His grace, He is able to redeem His people from a sin debt that's
so large we can't calculate it. It's infinite. And even though
it's infinite, by the riches of His grace, Christ our Savior
can still pay the debt and redeem His people. You know, I don't
care how great we think our sin is. It's greater than what we
think, I promise you that. But when the Lord gives us some
glimpse of our sin, and we become so fearful, knowing, because
of our sin, what we deserve, how we deserve God's wrath, you
take heart, and you take comfort in this. The Lord Jesus Christ
can pay the debt in full. Because where sin abounded, grace
did much more abound. And since our redemption, the
redemption of God's people is by grace, God gives this blessing
of redemption to his people freely. Now, we talk about redemption
being free. Well, that doesn't mean redemption
doesn't cost anything. I mean, you have something that
doesn't cost anything. I mean, that pretty much has to mean
it's not worth anything, doesn't it? Pretty much. The redemption
of God's people is not free in the sense it doesn't cost anything.
No, the redemption of God's elect cost the Lord Jesus everything. It cost him his life's blood. It cost him the sacrifice, the
offering of his soul. He shall make his soul an offering
for sin. Body and soul, he offered himself
as a sacrifice to God. It cost Him untold suffering
bodily and of heart and soul. Can you imagine the suffering?
The Father and the Son are one. Back there in Proverbs 8, the
Savior talked about how when only God existed, how He was
daily the delight of His Father. The only thing He'd experienced
of His Father is His delight, His love, His presence. and the
suffering of his soul was the father is the one that plunged
the sword of justice into the heart of his fellow. The father
killed his son, all the suffering, the shame that he had to endure,
not just his shame and his humiliation before men, although that had
to be so horrible, I mean horrible to be naked and to be suffering
and while you're naked and suffering to be mocked. Oh, the. The humiliation
of that is just horrible, isn't it? But what about the shame,
the humiliation of the holy son of God to be made sin before
his father? Have his father turn his back on him to be naked spiritually
before his father. But he endured all that. He paid
that price. so he could give redemption to
his people freely. Look back at Romans chapter three.
When we talk about the Lord giving salvation, giving redemption
to his people freely, it means this, without a cause found in
us, without any work done by us to deserve it, but Christ
did all the work to earn it. Romans chapter three, verse 23. For all have sinned, and come
short of the glory of God. All have a debt that they cannot
pay, but being justified freely by his grace through the redemption
that's in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for
the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance
of God. To declare, I say at this time, his righteousness,
that he might be just and the justifier. of him which believeth
in Jesus. Now where's boasting then? Where's
boasting in your works, in your morality, in your goodness? It's
excluded. By what law? The law of works?
Nay, but by the law of faith. If we trust Christ, we're going
to boast in him, not in our works. That's what Paul's saying. Therefore
we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of
the law. See, that's giving redemption
to God's people freely. And it's an act of God's grace
that Christ would pay the debt for his people so they don't
have to pay it. All right, here's the last thing.
Redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ is complete. Complete redemption. Now, like
I said earlier, the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ had to
redeem his people That tells me his people had a price on
their head. A price that they could not pay.
We've sold ourselves under sin. We've sold ourselves into bondage
to the law. We've sold ourselves under God's
justice and God's justice demands payment in full. Christ came
to make that payment. That's redemption. He came to
make that payment. But redemption also means this.
Redemption means there had to be a captivity. There had to
be a captivity to the law. Redemption means there had to
be slavery, slavery to sin. Now, many times in the Old Testament,
you just go back and look up a few, many times in the Old
Testament, when the Lord would remind his people how he set
them free from Egypt, he'd remind them, remember when you were
slaves down there in Egypt and I came? And when he talked about
setting them free, he didn't say, I set you free. from the
house of the bondman. He said this, I redeemed you
from the house of the bondman. I redeemed you. Redemption has
something to do with being set free from slavery. Now you and
I are slaves. We're held captive. We're held
captive to the law. And a true captive can't set
himself free. You know, the law demands our
physical death, doesn't it, because of sin. You're captive to the
law. You and I are. Just try to stop
the death of this body. You can't do it. You know why
you can't? We're captive to the law. We're slaves to sin. And you think, oh, I'm not a
slave. I'm free. Wait a minute. Try to stop sinning for just
the next second. As soon as I said try to stop
sinning, some horrible, sinful thought flew through your mind
because of the nature of sin. You know why we can't stop sinning?
We're slaves to sin. Every time it whistles, we come. Every time. We're defenseless
because we're slaves. We can't set ourselves free from
our master because a slave has no power and the master has it
all. If we could have set ourselves
free from this awful slavery, bondage to sin, we would have
done it a long time ago. I mean, you who believe, you
didn't wake up this morning thinking, how am I going to sin today?
You woke up thinking, I'm determined not to. I wanted to come worship
the Lord. I just, I don't. And you can't
help it. We can't set ourselves free.
We're captives. But Almighty God, now He requires,
we're slaves to law. He requires it to be obeyed.
We can't obey it. He requires a perfect righteousness
with no sin, and we can't produce it. We're helpless, aren't we? So Christ had to come and redeem
his people from the house of the bondman. He set his people
free by redeeming them. And Christ set his people free
in every single way that you can imagine. In every way we're
held captive, he redeemed his people from the house of the
bondman. In every way that we're a slave, Christ redeemed his
people from the house of the bondman. And let me give you
just a few. First, Christ has redeemed his
people from bondage to the law. Christ has redeemed you. If Christ
died for you, you don't have to do what the law says anymore. Don't even, Chip and I were talking
about this before service, don't even look back to the law to
see how you're supposed to live, how you're supposed to conduct
yourself. No, you don't have to do what the law says at all.
The believer has absolutely no relationship with the law. You
want to see how to conduct yourself, look to Christ. If you want to
see how to conduct yourself, do what you first did when God
saved you, look to Christ. You keep looking to him. Let
me show you that. Galatians chapter four. Believers are not required to
keep the law because they've already kept it. In Christ, our
representative. And Christ has made his people,
they're not slaves, they're sons. Galatians four, verse four. Well,
look at verse three. He said, even so we, when we
were children, we're in bondage under the elements of the world.
But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his
son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that
were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you're sons, God
has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying,
Abba Father, wherefore thou art no more a servant. You're not
a slave anymore, but you're a son, you're a daughter. And if a son,
then an heir of God through Christ. God's people were born in bondage
to sin. That's our nature. But Christ
has redeemed those people from the house of the bottom and made
them his sons and daughters. And you think of a king of old. Well, you know, the prince and
the princesses, they're not inactive, are they? No, they were. They
do things. They do things in the service
of their king, of their father. But they serve the father out
of love. They don't do it because they
have to. They're not serving because they're trying to get
a reward. That's what a servant does. I remember when I was working,
well, I mean, you know, it's a good thing on Friday they gave
me a paycheck. Because I don't think I'd have been back Monday
if they didn't. I mean, I wasn't just there out
of the goodness of my heart. I was there to earn a living
for my family. I did what I did so I could get that paycheck
on Friday. A servant serves because they want a reward. A son serves
because he loves his father. You know why a slave serves?
Why a slave just scurries around to do what their master tells
them to do? They don't want to get whipped. We're sons of the Father. We
serve the Father out of love, not because we're afraid of punishment
now. Christ took our punishment for us. There's no more weapons
left. There's no more punishment left. There's no more wrath left
in the Father. And that makes God's people serve
him out of love, out of thanksgiving, because we love our Father, because
we love our Savior. You just can't paint the difference
between a slave and a son. They're motivation far enough
apart. Christ has redeemed his people from bondage to the law. You don't have to do what the
law says anymore. Just serve out of love. Whatever
it is that's in your heart out of love, do it. That's our motivation. Not threats. Not punishment.
Not trying to avoid punishment. Love. All right, second, Christ
has redeemed his people from the curse of the law. Look across
the page, Galatians 3, 13. Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it's written,
cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Now, the curse of
the law is this. The law requires death for sin. The law requires not just a physical
death, but eternal death in hell for those who do not believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. And I tell you why hell is eternal. It's because our suffering, no
matter how long we suffer, will never pay for even one sin, not
even one, because we don't have the pure blood, the perfect blood. We don't have anything that we
can offer God as a sacrifice that will please him. So hell
is eternal. And I tell you, I don't really
like to think about hell just personally. The horror of that
is just more than I can really think about it. I try not to
talk about it other than how scripture talks about it, but
never in a way that would threaten anybody or scare anybody. You better not do that or God
sends you to hell. God's a let. have absolutely no reason to
worry about the second death. They have no reason to worry
about suffering in hell like that, because Christ, our substitute,
already suffered hell for us. He suffered it on Calvary's tree. He suffered that curse of death.
So his people never will. Then thirdly, look at Titus chapter
two. Christ has redeemed his people from the iniquity, from the sin
that defiles us, the filth of it, and the sin, the iniquity
that would damn us. Titus 2 verse 14, who gave himself for us that
he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works. Christ has redeemed his people
from iniquity. purified them. He's washed them
so that they're free from the stink and the stain of sin and
made them pure. And here's the last thing I want
to show you. Look at Romans chapter eight. One day our bodies are going
to be redeemed. Not just our souls, our bodies
so that we don't dwell in a body of sin anymore. Romans 8, verse
23. And not only they, but ourselves
also, which have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves,
grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit. Namely, this is what we're waiting
for, the redemption of our body. Now the Savior's redeemed his
people, body and soul. Our souls have been redeemed
from sin. You who believe Christ right
here where you sit, your soul has been redeemed from sin, purified,
redeemed from all iniquity. But our bodies aren't, are they?
Our bodies aren't redeemed yet. We still live in a body of sin.
And when the Lord returns, he's gonna change all that. He's gonna
give his people a sinless body that matches their sinless soul,
and our redemption will be complete. Our redemption is drawn nigh.
It's coming soon. It's coming soon when our body
and soul will be redeemed. And so forever will we be with
the Lord. It'll be here for you knowing.
It'll be here for you knowing. I always like The Sundays, when
Brother Eric's class comes out of here, they're some of my favorite
people. I just, I like being with them. I like being around
them. I know you'd rather Eric be here, but I like it when you're
out here. You know, when I say it's going to be here before
you know it, you're all thinking about some of us gray hair, aren't
you? Kendon yesterday, I'm sure, that's
what it seems like to me. I mean, it really does. It'll
be here before you know it. And when it gets here, that the
Lord will have redeemed our bodies so that we don't live in a body
of sin anymore. We can't imagine, but that's
a blessing. And I look forward to it, don't
you? All right, Lord bless you.