Alright, now we've been looking
at, in verses 3 through 6, we looked in detail at five spiritual
blessings that God gave to His people before the foundation
of the world. We saw election in Christ. We saw holiness in
Christ. We saw that He predestinated
His elect. And then He predestinated them
unto the adoption of children. And we saw that He accepted His
children in the Beloved before the foundation of the world.
That's where He's carrying us to. And then He made this world. He made this world. And today
we're going to start seeing how that He chose to manifest this
mystery of His will to those that He elected, to those He
chose in Christ. And the way He did choose to
do it was by the fall, by us falling in sin and His Son coming
forth. and His Son redeeming us and
revealing the Gospel in our hearts and calling us and gathering
us together in Him. We're just going to look at verse
7 this morning. The title is, In Whom We Have
Redemption. And here's verse 7. It says,
In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of
sin according to the riches of His grace. Now we see first of
all here, we see the Redeemer Himself. He says, in whom? In whom? And then we see who
are redeemed. He says, we. We. And then we see redemption and
its price. Redeemed through His blood. Redemption through His blood.
And then fourthly, we see the fruit of redemption. Forgiveness
of sins. And then fifthly, we see the
source of all of this, the riches of His grace. Alright, let's
look at the Redeemer Himself. He says here, in whom. Now, before
we begin talking about any of the work that Christ accomplished,
it's a must that we always make sure that everybody understands
who it is we're talking about. Who is this one we're talking
about? That's very important because Paul warned of some who
teach another Jesus. Another Jesus. So it's important
to know who is this Jesus? Who is this one? Well, the Jesus
we're speaking of here is God. He's God. Jesus is God. The second person in the Trinity.
That's who He is. Neither is there salvation in
any other, for there is none other name given among men whereby
we must be saved." Now some preach a Jesus who's not God. Some will
speak of a Jesus who's not God. But Jesus Christ is God. He's
the Son of God, equal with the Father, equal with the Holy Spirit.
He declared in Revelation 22.16. Now listen to this. He said,
I am the root and the offspring of David. He said, I'm the root
of David and I'm the offspring of David. When he said, I'm the
root of David, he meant I'm David's God. I'm the one who gave David
life. I'm David's Savior, the root,
the vine from whom David had life. And when he said the offspring
of David, he means he came through David's family. He's the son
of David. He came through his lineage as
man. So, made of the seed of David
according to the flesh, the Scripture said. So He's both David's everlasting
Father, His God, and He's the Son of David. Jesus is God and
man. That's who we're talking about.
And that's so important to understand, and here's why. Because it's
His Godhead, His eternal Godhead, because He's eternal. It's His
eternal Godhead that makes His work eternal, that makes the
redemption He accomplished to be eternal redemption. So that's
very important. If somebody comes to your house
and they knock on your door and they want to talk about Jesus,
you ask them this. It's the first question you ask
them. You ask them, say, is Jesus Christ the Son of David? And
when they answer yes, you say, how then did the Lord Jesus Christ
call, how then did David call him Lord? How then did, if he's
the son of David, why did David call him Lord? The answer to
that is because He's David's God. He's David's Savior, that's
why. And when our Lord asked that
question to some, nobody was able to answer Him a word. And
from that day forward, they didn't ask Him any more questions. Because
to answer that question, you've got to confess He's God come
in the flesh. Alright now, so first, in whom
means Jesus Christ the God-man? Man and one person. God and man
in one person. Now let's look who we refers
to. In whom we have redemption. And
we're not going to stay here too long because I just preached
the love of election not too long ago. And the we that's spoken
of here are the elect. It says there in verse 3, He
hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.
That's who He came to redeem. Now some teach the doctrine that's
known as universal atonement, universal redemption. And they
say Christ made redemption available to all sinners without exception. That's what they're teaching.
Most who teach universal redemption say Christ didn't actually redeem
anybody, but that He merely made it possible for all men to be
redeemed. Others say, they try to sort
of mingle truth and lies, and others say that there's a difference
in the words redemption through and redemption by. And they say
all sinners were redeemed by Christ. but the elect will redeem
through Christ. And that's just another one of
those loopholes men come up with. That's a lie too. Universal atonement
is not just a minor point where somebody differs with us. It's
not just a minor point. Atonement is the gospel. Particular
redemption is what we preach. That's the gospel. Universal
atonement makes Christ to have died in vain. That's what it does because it
declares that there's some for whom Christ died that's going
to perish in hell. That means His blood's vain.
He shed His blood in vain. And it also declares that it
exalts the sinner because what they're saying is ultimately
the deciding factor or what makes His blood effectual is you making
your decision for Him and letting Him save you. And so it exalts
the sinner. And I detest any teaching whatsoever
that declares that my Redeemer, my God, my Savior is a failure,
that His blood was vain, that He shed His blood in vain. And
I detest any doctrine that exalts a sinner and puts the power of
salvation in the hands of a sinner. Christ don't need our help. We
need His help. Salvation is of the Lord. We
need Him to do everything for us. He doesn't need our help.
Now that's just the truth of the matter. The truth that's
declared in this book is called what we call particular redemption
or limited atonement. And that means that Christ came
to where we are and that He died for the elect. He died for a
particular number of people, for a limited number of people
given to Him before the world began. The we here are those
people. That's His elect. And He died
for His elect and His elect only. Our being in Christ before the
foundation of the world is why Christ came to redeem us. It's
why He came to where we are. It's not that our faith or anything
of that nature puts us in Christ after He redeemed us. It's not
that our redemption made us to be the bride of Christ. That's
not the case. We were His before He came. He
came because we were His. J.C. Philpott gave an illustration
I like. I think it's who gave this. I
can't remember now. I read a lot of folks. But he
gave this illustration. He said, you take a king and
he marries his son to a pure virgin. And then she's carried
off by thieves. Carried off. And they tie her
up and they hold her for ransom. There's a price that's got to
be paid to redeem her. Well, while she's in that state,
she's still the son's wife and she's still the king's daughter
while she's in that state. So when he comes to rescue her,
he knows who he's going to save. It's his bride, it's his wife,
he's going to save her. And when he comes and conquers
her enemies and pays all the price demanded and redeems her
to himself, she's still his wife the same as she was before he
came. Now she just knows how much... She knows more now how
He loves her because of what He did for her. Well, that's
the way it is with Christ. God's people were His before
He came to this world. We were His bride. We fell in
sin. We were taken captive. We were
held for ransom. And He came, and when He came,
He knew who He was coming for. God saves on purpose. He don't
send His Son to save and then just hope somebody will believe
Him. He chose a people. He's done
all this in order, in His order, before the foundation of the
world. When Christ, when He was about to be born, it was announced,
His name shall be Jesus. for He shall save His people
from their sins. And then when He came and walked
this earth, He said, I lay down My life for the sheep. And He
looked at some men and He said, you are not My sheep. That clearly,
that's the Lord Himself saying, I didn't die for everybody. So,
whenever the Lord says He was stricken for my people, for the
transgressions of my people, He was stricken. That's who He's
talking about. When preachers try to take the offense out of
the cross, they make the cross of no effect, period. Make it
of no effect, period. I don't want somebody just to
believe a lie just for the sake of getting them to believe something.
I want you to believe the truth. When you believe, I want you
to believe the truth. Alright, so there's the second thing is
the elect is who we are. The third thing here, let's look
at redemption itself and let's look at the price. It says, in
whom we have redemption through His blood. Redemption is a spiritual
deliverance by the payment of a ransom price. There's power
in His blood. It's a powerful deliverance.
Redemption is a spiritual deliverance by the payment of a ransom price. All mankind sinned in Adam. He
represented everybody. He was a figure of the last Adam
of Christ. And all men died in Adam. So
whatever Christ does, Adam was a picture of Christ in that representation,
in that federal headship. So whatever Christ does, that's
what His people are going to do. So He comes to where we are
because we fell in sin. Now, it was in God's purpose.
It was not out of God's purpose for Adam to sin. But the sin
was not God's fault. The sin was Adam's fault. Sin's
our fault. It's not God's fault. Then this
is what the Lord said about it. Which of my creditors is it to
whom I have sold you? In other words, God's saying,
did I get myself into debt so that I had to sell you, my sons,
to a creditor to work off my debt? Is that what happened?
No, that's not what happened. He said, behold, for your iniquities,
you've sold yourself. We incurred this mountain of
debt that we can't pay. This debt, the creditor is the
law. The creditor is the law. And
what we owe the law is death. And we can't pay it. We can't
pay it and live. We can't do it. God's just and
he won't show mercy at the expense of his justice. The ransom price
has got to be paid. It's got to be paid. The ransom
price His people owe has got to be paid. Therefore, sin held
us in bondage. It held us in bondage. Bondage
to the law, legally, and then too, we were in bondage in our
sin nature. But God couldn't come and teach
us in our heart and deliver us from the bondage of our sin nature
until He had a surety that would pay for that pay that redemption
price. And He had one from the foundation
of the world. He had one. That's why all those
Old Testament saints were saved when as yet He hadn't come forth
yet. Because He was coming forth to die for them. And so God didn't
look to them for the payment, He looked to His Son. And so
when his son came, he paid it. Now it's paid. He paid it. I
remember that bondage. Some of you sitting here now,
you don't know what we're talking about. You think, what is bondage?
What are you talking about spiritual bondage? Because you think, I
don't feel like I'm in bondage. You don't feel like you're in
bondage because that's all you've ever known is bondage. I remember
exactly what that was like. You think about Adam in the garden.
Here's a man who has perfect communion with God. And he's
walking around, and he's talking with God, and he's worshiping
God, and he's got fellowship with God because he had no sin
in him, and God can commune with him. God can have fellowship
with him. He was free then. He was completely free from all
sin, from death, from any payment he owed. He was free. That's
freedom. But then you can tell what happened
inwardly to Adam as soon as he transgressed. And this is another
thing too. He didn't have the law. Adam
didn't have the law. And I think obviously it was
quite a while later before God gave the law. Because it says,
out of the ground made the Lord to grow every tree. He made them
to grow out of the ground, including the tree of good and evil. Now,
unless God just snapped his fingers and made them just shoot up overnight,
that took some time before there was a tree for God to say, I
don't eat of that tree. And so all that time with no
law between them. They had fellowship with one
another and could worship with one another. Why? Because the
law wasn't made for a righteous man. A righteous man don't have
to have law to worship God. He worships in love with his
father, with his creator, with his God. So there was not even
any law, but the second Adam ate of that tree, he broke the
law. He broke it. Now the law's got
something to say to him. And the second that happened,
I'm trying to explain to you this bondage of sin, just the
bondage of our sin nature. The second that happened, we
can look at what he did and tell what happened within him. The
second he broke that law, his conscience was seized with guilt. It was seized with guilt. He
had walked around before and he didn't even have any clothes
on, and Eve didn't have any clothes on, and they weren't ashamed
because they had no conscience of sin. It was nothing to think
evil at all. But now when sin enters in, He
feels guilty. He feels uncomfortable about
himself. He's got this ambition now to
be constantly trying to make himself into something he's not,
or to change what he is right now. That's what motivates most
people in this world, is an ambition to try to be something they're
not, try to change themselves from what they are. That's sin.
That's just sin. It's what it is. At the core
of it, that's what it is. And a moment before, he had all
this communion and all this joy with God. And now, as soon as
he eats, now, when he hears the voice of God in the garden, he
wants to sulk away into the darkness and hide himself away from God.
And I remember it. I remember. I've been thinking
a lot about it lately, trying to put myself in the shoes of
those who sit here and hear, who are unregenerate, who have
no idea what this spiritual bondage is. I've been trying to remember
what it was like for me. I can remember just so well,
I could be in a room full of people, everybody's talking loud,
we're having a big time, and I'm just sitting there talking,
carrying on with everybody. And somebody that I knew to be
godly walks in that room, and they start talking about God.
They start speaking about God. And I can remember just something
within me just being aggravated. I didn't, I just didn't want
somebody bringing up the name of God and start talking about
God. And I can remember start, you
start looking around and trying to figure out how can I ease
out of this room without them being noticed. Why? Because I
had that conscience of guilt, and God reminds me of it. When
I hear about it, it reminds me of it. And I had that inward
enmity against God, it just aggravated me to hear about it. I would
recall, not that I'd do anything violent, I just, it just, I didn't
like it. I didn't like it. And I would
try to get out of that room because when I heard somebody speak about
God, I heard the voice of God. And I was trying my best to sulk
off into the darkness and hide just like Adam did in the garden.
That's what I'm talking about when I talk about spiritual bondage. I had no idea I was in spiritual
bondage. I thought that the person who
was calling themselves a servant of righteousness, I thought they're
the ones that are deceived. They're the ones that are in
bondage. That looks like bondage to me. I'm free. That's what
I thought. I'm free. I had no idea what
it was. So, before he can free us from
that sin nature, though, this whole legal thing's got to be
taken care of. This debt's got to be paid. It's got to be paid.
Any man that tries to say he's not a sinner, think of how many
times we've sinned. I mean, if you just think of
acts and you just think of the sins you know about, that's enough. But when you think about the
fact that there's a mountain of sins that we don't even know,
we don't even recognize we've sinned, spiritual, we breathe
sin. We just breathe sin. And to know
that God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret
thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. That tells
you we need a Redeemer. We need a Redeemer. Well, so
Christ came to redeem us from the curse of the law, but what's
the price He's got to pay? What's the price He's got to
pay to pay that ransom, to give us that spiritual deliverance
from this bondage and from all this debt we owe? It's His blood. Redemption through His blood. You see, the law demanded our
life. And without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sin. He's got to shed His blood. He's
got to lay down His life. The church of God is called the
church which He purchased with His own blood. He purchased it. He bought it. Look over at 1
Peter 1. See, you're right there. 1 Peter
1, verse 18. 1 Peter 1.18, Forasmuch as you know that you
were not redeemed with corruptible things, you were not redeemed
with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation
received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious
blood of Christ." With the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before
the foundation of the world. God ordained him to this, and
he agreed to this before the foundation of the world, but
was manifest in these last times for you. Now, if God ordained
him to go and die and pay a debt for somebody, That means before
the foundation of the world, there was somebody to pay that
debt for. And God knew what was going to happen before the world.
And so His Son agreed. He foreordained Him. He agreed
to come forth and pay this debt for His people. You see how election
and redemption go together? You've got to have a people to
agree to redeem. And He agreed to redeem them.
But that's what makes it so beautiful, this thing of redemption, because
even after we fell in sin, Robert, back there in the back, said
how easy it is for us to hate somebody. You know, they just
offend us a little bit. We just hate them. We're done
with them. It's over for them. But we sinned against God. We
sinned against Him. I mean, sinned against Him. And
yet, He came forth and laid down His life. While as yet, we were
sinners. Scarcely for a righteous man would one die. Even a good
man somebody would die for. But He committed His love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ came forth and
died for us. That means His love couldn't
be, it couldn't be changed. It couldn't be, because it was
not set on us because of anything in us anyway. It was by His grace
and it couldn't be changed. That makes this thing so beautiful
that He would come forth and save us even after we sinned. And you think how much greater
the last Adam is over the first Adam. They both began holy. They both began holy. But Adam
was holy as a full-grown man. As a full-grown man in a sinless
world. But Christ as an infant. As an infant in a sin-filled
world. And so He grows up. He's got
to be sinless. If he's going to be the one that's
going to pay this debt, he's got to have no debt of his own.
If you're up to your eyeballs in credit card debt and you can't
pay your credit card debt, you've got nothing to pay it with, and
you volunteer to pay somebody else's debt, but you don't have
any money to pay their debt with, the credit card company is going
to laugh at you. So this one that's paying, the law said he's
got to be spotless. He's got to have something he
can pay with. He's got to be spotless, perfect. And so he
endures a contradiction of sinners against himself all his life,
growing up. And he grows up just like you
grow up. And he grows up. Satan tempted
him repeatedly. And then the law looked at him
for 33 years and examined him inside and out for 33 years and
said, this is a fit man. He's holy. He's spotless. He's
harmless. He's undefiled. He's separate
from sinners. This is a holy man right here.
And God even moved Pilate to say it before the multitudes.
Pilate stood up and said, I find no fault in this man. There's
no fault in him. And so the law said, He's fit. He's fit. And then our great
Redeemer showed us why He was so fit to lay down His life for
us. He showed us because the very
spirit of the law, as we've been talking about, is that love,
that faith that works by love. Love. And out of trusting His
Father, that once justice was satisfied, the Father would raise
Him from the dead. and believe in Him, believe in
His Father perfectly, and loving His Father and His brethren perfectly,
being faithful to them perfectly. He showed us why He's the perfection
of that law. Then He willingly went and submitted
Himself to the Father to be made sin for us. And so, He bears
all the wrath. He bears everything we owe. And through His blood, through
His death, through Him paying the debt that we owe through
His blood, we have redemption through His blood. Now notice
those words, we have redemption. We have redemption. It's not
something that takes place whenever you believe. It's not something
that you make effectual by believing. No, no. We have nothing to do
with making Christ's work effectual. Nothing. The sinner has nothing
to do with that. Christ accomplished the work Himself on the cross.
He did. And when Christ laid it down
His life for the sheep, Christ paid that price in full so that
those for whom He died are redeemed. God's law is satisfied. Justice
is upheld. God can be just to show them
mercy now. Everything's done. This was the
purpose for which He made the world. If we miss this, we go
through life not even knowing why the world was made. Really? That was the thing for which
God made the world. To manifest who He is, to manifest
that He's a holy God, and a just God, and a long-suffering God,
and a merciful God, and a God that will no wise clear the guilty. This is who He is. If He'd have
done it as soon as the world was made, He wouldn't have manifested
His long-suffering. But by waiting all that time,
He shows how long-suffering He is. And if He would have done
it without sending forth Christ to die in the room instead of
His people, we would have never seen His perfections of mercy. But the way He did it, He manifest
all His perfection. He did it the way He did it because
that was the way to do it. That was the wise way. That was
the good way. And it was the only way to redeem
His people from sin. By His own blood He entered in
once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for
us. It pleased the Lord to bruise
Him. That means it satisfied Him. It made satisfaction. Made
satisfaction. And He hath, past tense, redeemed
us from the curse of the law. He made a curse for us. God manifests to you satisfied.
He raised Him. He raised Him from the dead.
And so now, justice being satisfied, the law being satisfied, Christ
can come to His child and He can say to Satan... I like how
one of the... a couple of the old men called
Satan. They said, Satan's not really the master. He's just
a warden. He's just a warden. God's the
master. He comes and He says, now loose
Him and let Him go. Everything's paid for. Be free
to go. And the warden's got to loose Him. And the Spirit enters
in and gives us faith to behold what He's done. And this is what
happened. I remember this so well. I sat
on the back pew. And I'm going to tell you what's
hard work. It's hard work to make it look like that you're
listening while at the same time you're trying to block out everything
that's being said. That's hard work. Because every
now and then you accidentally let something get in. And you
can't keep God out anyway. But I sat there and I can remember
over the course of time something strange happened. Something strange
started happening. I was just sitting. I'm not going
to believe this gospel. I'm not going to believe it.
My grandfather was preaching. I said, I don't care. I'm not
believing it. I am not believing it. And my joy, that joy I loved,
that joy that I thought was joy, it started to become sinful to
me. And that word that grieved me,
that was no joy to me at all, that word started to sound pleasant
to me. And this was the strange thing. I can't explain this other
than to say it like this. It started being pleasant to
me down inside me, down in my heart. It started being pleasant
to me. My freedom started becoming bondage to me. The more I heard
it, the more my freedom that I was loving, man, I was free
as a bird. But it started becoming bondage
to me. And what I looked at and thought was bondage, being a
servant of righteousness, that started to look like freedom
to me. And I became aware of my sin.
And this is how I became aware of it. I started seeing that
I'm sinning in everything I do. And I started to see it in light
of the fact that my sin is against God. And there was, I didn't
know what to call it or anything, but what it was, there was a
reverence there for God that wasn't there before. Because
I started seeing my sin was against Him. I've explained it to people
like this before, and I knew the doctrine before. I could
argue doctrine with folks inside and out. But if they wanted to
be a free will, Arminian, universal works religionist, it didn't
matter to me. The difference was, I didn't have the love of
God in my heart. I didn't have the love of God.
But now when the love of God came in my heart, when I heard
somebody talking against Him, now you're talking against my
Father. Now you're talking against my Redeemer. Now you're talking
about the One who loved me and gave Himself for me. And it just
more and more came on me like this. And I began to believe
the things that Christ accomplished were done for me. I began to
sit there before I'd hear the word election. And it's just
like somebody come in talking about God. I'd hear the word
election and I just recalled inside me. And then I started
hearing it and I started thinking, I think I might be one. I think
I might be one He chose. I think I might be one He chose.
I found myself mourning then over the fact that He had to
go to the cross and bear my sin. And this is what's really weird.
I was crying that He had to go to the cross and bear my sin
for me. Because I put Him there. And
at the same time, I was crying tears of joy that He did it.
That He did it. Because He redeemed me. Because
He redeemed me. Well, here's the fruit. Let's
hurry here. The forgiveness of sin. The forgiveness
of sin. I'll just read you a few scriptures.
Having forgiven you all trespasses. That means past, present, and
future. All trespasses. Titus 2.14 says, He gave Himself
for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity. All iniquity. Romans 5.19 says, We've been
justified by His blood. We'll be saved from wrath through
His through Him. Forgiveness of sins by His blood,
pardon given, righteousness imputed, justification by His blood, fit
to come into God's presence. Have communion with God now.
And here's the source of it all. According to the riches of His
grace. You see how it's plural? Riches. Do you have trouble with
assurance, believer? Do you have trouble with it?
This is what God told me to tell you. This is what my master has
sent me to declare. He said, comfort ye, comfort
ye my people. And he says, cry unto her and
tell her that her warfare is accomplished, that I have your
iniquities pardoned and you've received of the Lord's hand double
for all your sins." Double for all your sins. And here he says,
riches of His grace. This is for us, these riches.
This is for us to use. So the next time that you got
that sin, it's just bothering you and it's bothering you and
bothering you, just think. Double riches. He gave me two
riches for that sin. And you've got two or three sins
that just nagging you and bothering you and bothering you. You've
got two bothering you, you think, He gave me four riches of grace
in place of that sin. You say, well all I am is sin.
I'm just sinning, sinning, sinning, sinning. And just no. Riches,
riches, riches, riches. I've rewarded them double. I've
given them everything. Riches, riches, riches of His
glory. He says, I remember your sin
no more. And He says, and I've given it to you that in the ages
to come I might show you the exceeding riches of My grace.
You mean I haven't seen riches yet? He said, I'm going to show
you the exceeding riches. One day we're going to have communion
better than what Adam had. They sung a new song, saying,
Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof,
for Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood
out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. So now,
believer, this is what he tells us. He says, You're bought with
a price. Therefore, glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. Amen.