Redemption

Redemption

                                                                 Isaiah 43:1-7

                                                               Romans 5:12-21

Well, we are half way through our mini-series of our overview of the bible.

A couple of weeks ago, James preached through creation, in which we were reminded that God created allthings, when he spoke them into being……

…..God said let there be light….and there was light

……God said let there be sky….and there was sky

…….God said let there be sun, moon and stars…….and there was sun, moon and stars

……..God said let there be man and woman……and there was man and woman……

And after God spoke and after God created, he looked at the work he had done and he said, this is good….this is very good.

God created this world and it was good……….it is good, God’s creation is good.

And yet as we heard last week, God’s creation didn’t stay good.

We looked last week from Genesis chapter 3, and saw that this good world that God created has fallen under the curse of sin.

Adam, our human representative believed in the lies of the devil, disobeyed God, sinned and as a result sin entered the world, death was the consequence and ever since this world, this good world that God created, has been under the curse of sin.

The land itself has been under a curse, as thorns and thistles rage, the ground is hard to cultivate, relationships are difficult, and sadly worst of all, the relationship between God and man has been broken, as God sent Adam and Eve out of his paradise- separated.

A holy God could simply not walk with a sinful people.

But praise be to God, as we heard a little from last week, that was not the end of the story.

God had a plan to reverse the curse

God had a plan to restore that relationship between us and Him

God had a plan to restore his creation back to how he first made it, not just so that it was as good as it was at the beginning , but even better.

And that restoration project of God has already started in the work and person of Jesus, and it has started through the work of Redemption.

And it is this theme of redemption that we are going to look at today.

Many of us are familiar with the meaning of redemption.

I am sure most of us have been in debt to someone of something at some stage in our life.

If you have a mortgage, you are in debt.

When you bought your house, the bank gave you a loan (known as a mortgage) and then you began to pay off your mortgage over the next 30 years, with a bit of interest on top.

After 30 years of making payments to the bank, you finally have no more debt to pay….

……..you become mortgage free, you no longer owe the back anything, you have been redeemed.

You are no longer a slave to the back, no longer a slave to the mortgage payments, you are free from that weight around your neck.

In biblical terms when we talk about redemption, we are talking about being set free from something, we are talking about being set free to something….and often…..just like a mortgage, that freedom comes through a price being paid.

This idea of redemption, being freed from slavery is an easy concept for us to grasp when consider the time when God’s people lived in Egypt, because they were literally salves of Egypt. Slave drivers were beating them into making the pyramids, the Pharaoh was there master and they were under his iron fist rule.

And so when God miraculously freed His people from the Egyptian rule, and brought them to the desert, where they could freely worship Him…it was obvious that God had set them free from slavery, and it was obvious that God had set them free from the slavery of Egypt so that they could freely worship Him on the mountain in the desert.

However, when it comes to our own sin, redemption, being set free, may be a harder concept for us to grasp, because we may not truly believe that ever since the fall, we have been born into the slavery of sin.

And however bad the slavery of the Egyptians was, the slavery of sin is much worse, because, if this sin, isn’t accounted for, it will always lead to eternal death.

Some theologians call this “born into slavery of sin” as total depravity, and some brothers and sisters struggle with this truth, and in some ways we should struggle with this truth……but it is true……because the biblical evidence is overwhelming

In Psalm 51, David through the Holy Spirit confessed that he was born as a sinner.

Romans 3 makes if very clear that no-one is righteous, not one, all of us our sinners.

Just look at Romans 5:12 with me:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

It says here that through our human representative- Adam, sin entered the world and spread to all people.

In other words because Adam sinned, we are all now tainted with that same brush, we are all sinners, it is just part of our fallen nature.

Friends, if today you acknowledge that you are under the curse of sin, that is God’s wonderful gift of grace to you.

If you don’t acknowledge that you are under the curse of sin, then you cannot receive God’s greater gift of grace to you- Redemption.

Look at Romans 5:15 with me:

¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.

What this verse is saying and the actually the whole of this passage is saying this:

Through one man, by the way I believe he was a real, literal man- Adam: since Adam is compared to another real literal man- Jesus- the second Adam, but that is by the by…..it is saying though the sin of one man- Adam, sin spread to all of God’s creation, and all people……… and that sucks…..and possibly may seem unfair…….or may be a little extreme,

but then it says, if you think that the sin ran deep and wide, then clearly the grace of God runs wider and deeper, because unlike sin, which entered and spread through the disobedience of one man……Jesus was then able to take all those sins, of all those people who confess Him as Lord and saviour and take all the sins of the world onto his shoulders, and through the one great act obedience was able to pay the price for all of them, every single one of them, so that people could be redeemed back to God, so people could be free from the consequence of their sin, free from eternal death, free to eternal life.

Friends, through the sacrifice of Jesus, we have redemption now…..our sins have been forgiven now……we have the holy spirit residing in our hearts now….We have been purchased by the blood of Jesus now….we are part of God’s family now…..we are part of God’s new humanity now in Christ Jesus,

as 2 Corinthians 5:17 says,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Yes we will continue to struggle with sin until we are fully restored, but now, we are no longer condemned by our sin, we no longer live by sin, but we live according to the spirit, we have a new master- Jesus, and we have been freed from our sin to walk in the freedom of His spirit.

Finally, I want to finish with this……

As I mentioned at the start, Redemption involves being set free from something, and it often involves paying a price.

Have you ever thought to whom Jesus was paying the debt to, when he sacrificed himself on the cross for your sins?

Some people think that Jesus was paying the debt to the devil, but that simply can’t be true, since that would give the devil too much credit and would actually have to acknowledge that the devil demands true justice, which he simply doesn’t.

No, when Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins, he was paying the debt we owe to God for our sins.

Friends what a great thing to remember that we are all in debt to God.

God has given us everything, everything, the breathe in our lungs, the food on our table, it all comes from him.

Interestingly when people tried to bargain with God as shown in the scriptures, it was always ark ward, it was like someone trying to go to a gun fight with a pocket knife, they never really had any bargaining chips.

God reminded Isaiah that his lips needed to be purified before He even spoke to God.

God told Job to gird up his lions like a man as he approached God

God reminded Jeremiah that is was He gave people ears to hear and mouths to speak in the first place.

Friends, we must be very careful if we start demanding things from God, he owes us nothing, and we deserve nothing good from God. We cannot bargain our good works or pure hearts with God.

Friends, when it comes to sin, we are all born into debt to God.

Because of our human representative- Adam we are all born owing God for our sin.

God made is clear that sin must be paid for with death, he made that clear to Adam, he made is clear to Moses, he made that clear to us.

And friends, we can never repay that debt we owe to God because of our sin, we can never do enough good works, give enough money to charity, say enough prayers, sing enough songs, no we can never repay what we owe God…….but praise be to God, Jesus paid it all for us when he died the death we deserved.

Jesus truly did Redeem us.

Friends, let me encourage you to live in that freedom today.

Live a life that our saviour showed us to live.

A life that is free to serve others.

A life that is free to sacrifice for others

A life that is free from seeking the praise of men, but only seeking the favour of God

A life that is free from the greed of this world.

A life that is free to forgive just as God forgave us

A life that is free to love the unlovable

A life that is free from holding grudges

A life that is free to serve God

A life that is free to say “Here I am Lord- use me”

Let us pray