Redeemed
- Jake Chambers
- Feb 21, 2010
- Series: Ephesians
Redeemed
Jake Chambers
In him we have redemption 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. Ephesians 1:7-8
We have talked in recent weeks of how the first fourteen verses of Ephesians are about our blessed God and the gospel that flows out of his character. We have spoken of how verses three through fourteen were one sentence in the original Greek. A great run on sentence of praise and worship. Today we are right in the middle of these first fourteen verses and what do we find at the crux of the gospel? We find the blood of Jesus Christ. These first fourteen verses are a mosaic of the gospel and we have been going slowly through it to study the different tiles or images of a greater mosaic. Today we pull down the tiles of redemption, forgiveness and grace all by Christ blood and see how incomplete the mosaic that makes up the gospel would be without these tiles, and how if we don’t understand the beauty of these pieces of the gospel we will miss out on so much freedom, joy and worship.
John 5:39 What many people do not know about the Bible is that the whole Bible points to the gospel. The whole bible is all about Jesus. There is a fad today in many churches and Christian movements of churches bringing in Rabbis to teach us the Old Testament. It is trendy now for Christian pastors to major in rabbinical studies and to exegete scripture through the lens of a Jewish rabbi. There is one major problem in this. Jews do not believe in Jesus!! They missed the coming of the Messiah. They do not understand that the entire Old Testament is about Jesus and his gospel.
I don’t want to talk about Jewish history, I want to talk about Jesus. Not about tassels and traditions, but about Jesus. The bible is pointless if we miss Jesus and the gospel. Everything is meaningless if we miss Jesus and the gospel.
The story of Exodus is a story of redemption and it is a story about Jesus. I hope today to look at this story and pray that we would see Jesus, the cross and ourselves in this story. As God’s chosen people, this is our story.
The Israelites, God’s chosen nation, were slaves to Egypt for over four hundred years. They literally broke their backs and poured out blood, sweat and tears for one tyrant ruler after another. We are talking about generations of slavery, torture and hopelessness. They knew their grandparents were slaves and they knew their grandkids would be slaves. Imagine the utter hopelessness here. This is a people with no chance of freedom, no way of escape and no moments of relief. They would have realized after generations of slavery that outside of a miraculous rescuer and redeemer that they would be in slavery forever.
This is our story. We are slaves to sin and death. We are part of generations and generations who are under the tyrant ruler Satan. Pharaoh is a tyrant ruler that foreshadows Satan. We talked a few weeks ago about our free will and how we are free to choose, but because of our sinful nature we always choose to worship ourselves. We always choose slavery to sin and death. If you do not think that we are slaves to sin and death, then take a test. Don’t ever sin and don’t ever die. If you can do that than you do not need anyone to rescue you from slavery. The problem is none of us can pass that test. We are a slave to sin and death. We know our bodies are dying because even us, a room full of people mostly in their twenties, are a room full of people whose bodies are already slaves to death. The older we get the more we will realize this. Aches and pains and injuries from nothing will start happening.
But God does not leave the Israelites in slavery. He sends Moses in a basket on a river to be adopted by the people enslaving his people. Moses becomes a prince of Egypt and is offered safety, comfort and authority to rule for his lifetime but he will leave his throne when he sees his people being mistreated in slavery. He will be chased away and his very life threatened. But Moses will return and he will confront Pharaoh and demand his people be let go. God will perform a number of signs, miracles, and plagues as a warning for Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. The first plague will be water turned to blood. The last plague before God’s wrath is unleashed is darkness over the land for three days.
Jesus is the greater Moses. Moses is placed in a basket in a river and Jesus is placed in a basket in a barn. Moses left his place as prince to free his people; Jesus leaves his place as King to free his people. Moses' first plague is turning water into blood; Jesus' first miracle is turning water into wine. Moses warns with a series of miraculous plagues and Jesus warns with a series of signs and miracles. Moses' last plague is darkness for three days and Jesus takes on the last plague by being in the tomb for three days. In addition, on the cross Jesus shows his power by having total darkness eclipse the earth in the middle of the day during the crucifixion.
In the story of Exodus, Pharaoh lets the people go only after an angel of death wipes out the firstborn son from every family in Egypt. But God will spare his people's firstborn son. The blood of the lamb will spare them. Everyone in Egypt deserved God’s wrath but God, in his goodness, chose to spare some. He chose to spare the ones who broke a perfect lamb and painted their doorway with the lamb’s blood. This is the historic Jewish Passover. God’s wrath passed over those who had the blood on their doorway.
Jesus is the greater Passover lamb. God’s wrath is coming but for those who have Christ’s blood his wrath will pass over them. This is what it means that we have redemption through his blood.
The Israelites then ran from Egypt. They were led by Moses out of Egypt, out of slavery, redeemed by God.
The blood of the lamb has purchased our redemption. Sin and death are our slave masters, but Christ has paid the ransom for us! It is through his blood. It is not through our blood, sweat or tears it is all through his blood. Jesus paid our ransom and Jesus is the greater lamb, he is the greater Moses who leads us out of slavery, he is our Rescuer and our Redeemer!
Now there is something awesome that happens with the parting of the Red Sea but I want us to skip that for now and we will return to it.
So the Egyptians were freed and redeemed. They were in the desert heading towards the Promised Land. They celebrated and worshiped Christ. And God brings them his law. You see God brings his loving law to the ones that are redeemed and chosen. This is huge. We do not obey God so he will redeem and choose us, we obey God because we are his redeemed and chosen ones. This is the gospel. This is Ephesians. This is why the first three chapters of Ephesians are forming our identity in the gospel and magnifying who God is. It is after we understand who we are in Christ that we are free to walk in step with him. It is an understanding that “we have redemption.” This is who we are in Christ. We are free and redeemed people. Our behavior flows out of our belief. This is huge.
But what starts to happen to this rescued and redeemed people? They start whining. They take their eyes off their redeemer and the Promised Land. Some of them even start longing to return to slavery. How shortsighted!
This is us. We have been redeemed and rescued and are being led by Jesus and the Spirit to a promised land, and yet we keep tripping up and looking back at our slavery. This is why it is imperative that we gospel one another. We cannot flirt with slavery. It is never loving to minimize slavery. It does not matter how gentle, kind or loving walking someone towards slavery seems, it is always cruel to push someone towards slavery. If we minimize sin, we minimize the blood of the lamb and we push people back towards slavery. This is evil. Do not be slave traders!
You see for the Israelites they knew nothing but slavery. They had scars and aches from their slavery. It had formed their entire identity for ages and ages. Their family members, friends, and race were all slaves. They are struggling to see themselves as really free. To see them selves as redeemed. They are even longing to return to slavery and are blinded to the destruction caused by their slavery (Numbers 11:5).
We are like this. We are a generation of slaves preceded and followed by generations of slaves. We have scars from our sin. Some of us still have fresh wounds from our sin. We may believe that our wounds and our sin are so dark, so evil, so unforgivable and unredeemable that we can never be healed. We may believe that these wounds are our identity. We long to return to slavery and have forgotten all the destruction sin caused.
But we must see that we have been freed. That our wounds have been healed and that we do not need to hide our scars but embrace them as part or God’s great redemption story. They are trophies of his healing, rescuing and redeeming power. You see, someone else was scarred too. And though he is perfect and though he is God, he has chosen to leave his scars. His scars tell a story of redemption and rescue. If you feel overwhelmed by your scars and wounds, I urge you to look at the wounded and scarred one.
Maybe you have not come to Jesus. Maybe you are like the Israelites in Exodus 6:9. Maybe you hear this promise for redemption, but because of your broken spirit and the harsh slavery to sin, you don’t believe this is for you. Please hear me when I say that Jesus became broken so that your spirit would not have to be, that Jesus took the lashings of slavery so you could be free. You have a rescuer, and redemption is offered to you this day. Know that you can never earn this redemption, but you can receive it. You may have fresh wounds even now, but Jesus Christ has become scarred in order to heal the scarred ones. His wounds have paid our ransom, his wounds are mighty enough to heal ours.
None of us gets out of Egypt without scars but these scars are now marks of redemption, reminding us of all that he has freed us from! Church embrace your redemption story. If you don’t know Christ his blood is the balm that can heal your wounds and you too can have a story of redemption and freedom in Christ!!!
We see in Ephesians that our God is rich in grace. I want us to see what happened to the Israelites. They stopped believing that this was true about their God. They stopped seeing that Manna and the desert was God lavishing grace on them. But God was lavishing grace on them, wasn’t he? He was providing for them, not in ways they could understand or plan, out but with Manna from heaven. Some of us question God’s grace. God provides for us in miraculous ways and we complain because it is not how we would have him provide. We are looking for steak, but God in his grace, gives us Manna. We don’t see that the steak has food poisoning.
Church, God is always lavishing us with grace because he is so rich in grace. Repent of thinking you know what grace should look like. The Israelites take their eyes off of the Promised Land and forget about their redeemer. Keep your eyes on the Promised Land. This is not it. There is a perfect place promised to us. Keep that goal ahead of you. And remember your redeemer who lavishes you with grace. Admit that if you do not know everything. You are not God and therefore have no real idea of what is the most gracious thing for your life. Often we even think our idols being fed would be grace. This is ridiculous. Repent of your man-centered view and worship the one who is rich in grace and actually knows what is gracious for his people. God is constantly lavishing us with grace. Believe that, and worship him for it.
I want to go back now to the Red Sea. There is something wild going on here. Moses and the Israelites are free for a little while. After the Passover, Pharaoh demands the Israelites get the heck out of town. But as they are leaving his heart hardens once again. Pharaoh and his armies are marching after these helpless Israelites. The Israelites come up to the Red Sea and they panic, cry out and even turn on Moses. They see their doom. Pharaoh is charging with his armies fully loaded, angry and prepared for violence.
I want to show you that this is like Jesus charging that hill to Calvary. Jesus' followers scatter, panic and deny Jesus as he is arrested, questioned, mocked, beaten and chased to the cross. His dedicated disciples turn on him. Satan, the greater Pharaoh, and his army of demons are charging up Calvary chasing Jesus to the cross in their anger and pride. They smell blood and it fuels their evil laughter and violent spirit. Like the blood lust fueling Pharaoh, Satan the great dragon is breathing fire and tasting a final victory over Jesus. Just as Pharaoh is motivated by all his potential slaves, Satan and the gates of hell are partying at the idea of the death of the one with the power to free his slaves. Pharaoh believes all God’s people will be his slaves and Satan believes all of God’s people will be his slaves.
In the story of Exodus, though, something crazy happens. God parts the Red Sea. And we have to know the Israelites must have been freaking out at what was happening. God was lavishing grace on them but they must have been sweating bullets and wondering what was going on. But they cross the sea and Pharaoh and the Egyptians chase after them.
The Red Sea has been parted for us. It is the way of the cross. Jesus says pick up your cross and follow me. It is not what we would plan or what we thought freedom might look like. We must confess we are nervous like the Israelites were as they followed Moses across a parted sea. But we must follow the one freeing us!
Moses crosses the sea, and Jesus charges Calvary and Jesus puts himself on the cross. He takes the nails in his wrists and the crown of thorns and endures excruciating pain. Christ dies on that day and Satan and his demons must have believed that all that they were working for had finally been accomplished. But they were arrogant and had forgotten of the Passover in Exodus. They had forgotten that there is redemption by the blood of the Lamb. And where they thought they had made their greatest victory, they were in fact crushed. The very people Satan was trying to enslave had now had their freedom purchased.
In Exodus, the Red Sea does not stay open for the Egyptians but closes in on them and swallows them whole. Pharaoh and his army are utterly destroyed in the moment they thought they were about to overtake. They were destroyed, and the Israelites now had redemption and freedom! Satan and his demons in the very moment they thought they had won were utterly destroyed. Christ, purchasing the freedom of all they longed to enslave, by his blood on the cross. And unlike the firstborn sons of the Egyptians who were slain to release the Israelites, the only begotten Son of God is slain but he will not remain in the grave. Jesus dies to cover his people with his blood but then rises to lead them to the Promised Land. He lives to show his people how to live as Christians! How to live free from sin and free from death. Follow Jesus Christ the one who shed his blood for your redemption and rose again to lead you to the Promised Land. This is our God! This is the one who is rich in grace. The one who lavishes us with his grace! Praise be to Jesus forever and ever.
Kaleo, Christ died to free us from slavery. We have redemption by his blood. We don’t need to earn it, search for it, or try harder to get it. We have it. Let us love and follow our Rescuer and Redeemer and praise him for the grace he is lavishing on us. Let us never long for our shackles but keep our eyes and hearts moving towards the Promised Land. Let us never forget all our God has done to free us. Let us remind each other of our freedom, and tell the world of the one who has freed us. Amen.
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