Kaleo San Diego Church > Sermons

We Have Redemption

David Fairchild
Feb 21, 2010
Series: Ephesians

Ephesians 1:7-8: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight”

Each week we’ve been looking at the mosaic of the gospel by focusing on one particular tile so that when we back up we can appreciate the splendor of this glorious good news.

The last couple of weeks we’ve been speaking about doctrinal words that carry quite a bit of baggage and are not very popular to discuss in polite conversation. Because of our fear of disagreement and possible division, churches have taken a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on these words and this has led to confusion about what the gospel really is.

But there’s another danger in unpacking words and ideas that may be worse than controversial subjects. That danger is familiarity. There are some words and truths that are used so often that we lose our wonder of them. Gospel, grace, salvation, forgiveness, and redemption can be tossed around so often in our vocabulary that we nod our heads, say “amen” and smile because we’ve heard it a thousand times. We feel like because the word is familiar to us, the truth must be as well. I’m guessing you’ve been in situations where you felt like you should know what a word meant but were too afraid to ask because everyone would look at you like, “You don’t know what that means?” Therein lies the problem with familiar words. The problem is that they are…familiar.

I’m convinced that what we need isn’t the constant acquisition of new truths to bring us closer to Christ, but rather a deeper understanding and appreciation for those truths that we already believe.

So this morning we’re going to spend our time talking about a very familiar word. It’s the word redemption. Let’s read the passage.

Ephesians 1:7-8: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight”

This is one of the most precious words for a Christian because it speaks to us about our salvation. It’s a word that we hold dear. But it is also a word that many of us struggle to define. We usually think of redemption as salvation and salvation as redemption. I find I run into this kind of definition problem quite a bit when my daughter asks me to define a word like “nuance” and I tell her, “well it’s like distinction” for her only to ask, “what is distinction?” and I’m left saying, “something distinct or nuanced.”

Redemption is a major part of story telling both in book form as well as film. Everyone loves redemptive stories.

This is why I love the classic hero narratives of comic books. I’m happy more and more comics are being made into film because it shows us something of our cultural need for a rescuer, a redeemer, a hero.

To be fair, our view of hero redeemers has changed over time. Our culture is intolerant of the strong, sure, morally upright heroes that fight for truth and justice. Instead, we like more complex, conflicted heroes who are unsure about themselves.

We can’t identify with Superman any more, but we can identify with Wolverine. We won’t tolerate G.I. Joe, but we love Jack Bauer. Dark, moody, confused, tormented heroes who don’t want to be heroes but always seem to save the day are the heroes we love. Though our type of hero has changed, our fascination and seeming need for a hero hasn’t.

I love movies like Gladiator, Rob Roy, Last of the Mohicans, 300, and of course the most manly of man movies, Braveheart. The reason I love these films, besides the use of swords and accents, is that they hit a nerve for men that is deeper than kilts and bagpipes. They tell stories of a bride who has been wronged and a husband’s love that drives him to great lengths, even the risk and loss of life, to restore the honor of his bride or to redeem her from her captors by saving her.

We love the story where a wife is held as ransom until the husband gives himself up for the sake of his love and is willing to forfeit his life for hers. We have a preexistent need for this story to be true. We are ready-made for this fiction, even in fairytales, because in their myth they point to truth. These stories point us to a greater story about true deliverance, true redemption, and true salvation.

Paul says that we already “have redemption…” Paul seems to think that this truth is so important, so powerful that we would join Him in worship as we hear his words.

What is Redemption?

This word doesn’t begin in the New Testament. If you would have asked a devout Israelite in the Old Testament period if they were redeemed, they would have said emphatically, “Yes!” If you were to ask them how they knew they were redeemed, they would have sat you down and taken you through a long and exciting story—the story of the exodus.

The exodus story provides us with the key to understand the cross and the meaning of redemption.

It’s a story of a people that God chose out of all nations to be His people. A people that God promised would eventually bring forth a son to bless all the nations. But these people looked nothing like a blessing.

In Exodus, these people are enslaved by a cruel master, Pharaoh, who subjugated them and forced them into labor for Egypt’s construction projects. They were enslaved in every way imaginable.

They had no rights as citizens. They were impoverished. God had blessed them by growing their numbers and this only brought fear to Pharaoh who passed a law that every male, Jewish baby that was born was to be killed by being thrown into the Nile and drowned. They were spiritually enslaved because they weren’t allowed to freely worship their God and serve Him.

They were beat down, under great burdens, in despair, and were slaves through and through. There was no hope for salvation. They were weak, helpless, and miserable.

Some of you might identify with their suffering. Perhaps not physically, but emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. You know what it is like to suffer and feel the suffocating effects of misery that holds out no hope that things will ever change.

Others may not see themselves in this story at all. You feel young, strong, full of hope in your future, happy, and therefore can’t relate to their plight. You feel no great burden or despair, no slavery. In fact, you feel free.

Redemption means to be delivered out of slavery and if that’s the case, for some of us this morning we don’t actually believe we need a redeemer. We’re okay with saying we need a Savior, someone who can forgive our sins in some vague way. But to say you need a Redeemer implies you are a slave.

For Those Who Think they’re Free

No one likes to see themselves as slaves. Everyone wants to believe they are free. Free to make their way. Free from someone telling them what to do. Freedom is our great cultural idol. We worship freedom in our country. The great irony is that the more we worship freedom, the more enslaved we become.

In our freedom we consume the most medication for depression than any country.
In our freedom we have more prisoners in jail than any other country. One out of every 18 men is behind bars in our country. We are only 5% of the world’s population but have 23.4% of the world’s imprisoned.
In our freedom we have the highest serious drug use by four times any country.
In our sexual freedom we keep the abortion mills running at full capacity.
In our freedom we have the highest divorce rate of any other country.
In our freedom we have the highest obesity rate of any country.
In our freedom we have the most personal debt per capita than any country.

You see, we’re slaves. What’s sad is that we don’t even know it.

Everyone lives for something, and whatever you live for, you’re a slave to. This is why Jesus says that you can’t serve two masters; you will hate the one and love the other. This is why you can’t serve God and money (Matt. 6:24).

And we’re all trying to redeem ourselves from our slavery.

If beauty becomes your master, the end result of trying to redeem yourself with beauty is the cutting of your flesh by your priest called the plastic surgeon.

If work becomes your master you’ll end up sacrificing your family on the altar of success to please your god.

If sex becomes your master, the end result will be child sacrifice for your sin called an abortion to appease your god.

If relationships become your master, the end result is a sacrifice of your true self and bound servitude to your god.

We all worship. We all serve some god. We have an ultimate that defines us and that we cling to when everything falls apart. Whatever that is, that is your master. Kierkegaard says “sin is building your self-worth on anything else but God.” He is supposed to be your ultimate and until He is, you’ll always be under the rule of a cruel master.

And this is more than just a subjective, existential experience. Jesus’ words are sharp. He says in John 8:

John 8:34: “Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.’”

In our culture, freedom has become an idol that we worship through our various forms of sin. This means we’re all slaves. No one is born free. We are born enslaved. We are born in bondage because we are born in sin. We don’t become a sinner when we sin, we are sinners and because we’re slaves we sin.

But we’re far more than sufferers, we’re sinners. We need freedom from our captivity to sin. We need freedom from our captivity by Satan.

For Those Who Feel Enslaved

I realize that the majority of us here this morning probably aren’t struggling with the truth that we’re sinners and need a Savior. I think the bigger issue we’re facing is our feeling of sin being inevitable and our captivity never changing. We’ve grown accustomed to our slavery. Whatever sin traps you, there is hopelessness that you will always be a slave to that sin, that it will always master you.

The Israelite Experience with Slavery

The Israelites knew what this felt like. I want you put yourself in their story.

They were in slavery 430 years. This is almost twice as long as we’ve been a country. Think about that. Think about how many generations grew up into slavery. How many of them woke each morning, looked down and their hands and feet and saw the scars of their captivity. Each day, the same thing, rise early, eat only enough that you can work, and then go work under the Egyptian sun as you pack mud and straw into bricks.

They would tell stories of how they used to be free. Maybe they would dare to talk about their God coming one day to free them. But 430 years passed and they were still slaves. The fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers were born into and died slaves. Their children and their children’s children were born into slavery and would die slaves.

Can you imagine the hopelessness? Their backs being broken under the burden of their slavery. Their identity being formed by all they knew and experienced. There was no hope for freedom. All they could do is weep and mourn, but eventually they would succumb to the numbness of feeling like it will never end.

It’s like being a prisoner for life, you start by hating the walls, then you accept them, then you begin to depend on them. This is being institutionalized. You can’t imagine it any other way.

I want you to imagine the horror when the families heard that Pharaoh passed a law stating that every male Jew that was born would be strangled and thrown into the Nile. Can you even fathom how the mother would feel for 9 months? Not knowing if she would rejoice or mourn. The day she was supposed to be joyful would be a day of great fear. What about the mothers who did have boys, only to have them ripped from their hands and killed before their eyes and thrown away like trash. Her need to hold that child and the emptiness that she would feel.

Do you understand why any talk of redemption just seemed cruel?

Slavery Seems Inevitable

In Exodus we’re told that God heard their cries and acted upon His covenant promise for His people. God chose a Christ figure by the name of Moses to bring good news and great joy to His people by proclaiming that God was going to set them free and give them the Promised Land. How did they respond?

Exodus 6:7-9: “‘I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. 8 I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.’ 9 Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”

Because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery, they didn’t listen. Some of you are here this morning and the choices you have made and the slavery that you are feeling makes any talk of redemption seem ridiculous. You want it more than anything, but your spirit has been broken by your slavery. You’ve come to expect your sin. You’ve come to accept that you won’t change. You’ve lost the shock and horror of it all. The years have worn grooves into your wrists that perfectly fit your shackles. It’s like it’s become you.

God worked miracles to demonstrate His power over the false gods of Egypt. In a beautiful sequence, god begins with their Nile god by turning the river into blood. He attacks their sun god by blotting it out and causing darkness. He’s showing that He is sovereign over both.

Eventually God turns their cruelty on themselves and tells Pharaoh that if he doesn’t let His people go so that can worship Him, He would strike down every firstborn child of Egypt. Pharaoh didn’t listen.

So God instructed the Israelites to sacrifice a perfect lamb and sprinkle the blood over their wooden doorpost. God sent an angel of judgment and any home that was not protected by the blood would lose their firstborn son. Pharaoh finally gave in and His righteous justice and power were displayed for His people. God wanted them to remember how He set them free.

The Jews packed their things and left Egypt to follow their God. God was doing more than freeing slaves, He was reclaiming worshippers.

As they were about to come to the Red Sea, they looked and saw Pharaoh’s army was sent after them to chase them down and kill them.

Fear of Freedom

Exodus 14:10-12: “When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the LORD. 11 They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt, “Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians”? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.’”

Some of us would rather live in slavery than face the unknown of freedom. We would rather go back to the prison of our sin than face the death of sin that brings us life.

Our idols and slavery causes us to become institutionalized. Many would rather serve idols that die to self and receive freedom. Fear keeps us in bondage, familiarity keeps us in bondage. To be redeemed is new and can feel frightening. The old is comfortable.

Slavery also causes a kind of insanity and loss of perspective.

The Insanity of Slavery

Numbers 11:4-6: “Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, ‘Oh that we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.’”

How could they say this cost them nothing? They paid for it with the death of their children and the stripes on their back. We are blind to sin. We think it costs us nothing. It costs us everything that is most precious. The mothers watched their babies being strangled and thrown into the river. That’s what the slavery of sin does to us; it costs us everything good, right and true, and we fail to see that we’re paying for it with everything while we think it’s free.

But God was committed to reclaiming His people. He was doing more than freeing slaves, He was reclaiming worshippers. He wants to do more than forgive us of our sins, He wants us to be free to worship Him with our hearts and find the joy we’ve been searching for.

Exodus 14:26-28: “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.’ 27 So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the LORD threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. 28 The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained.”

The assumed victory march of Satan over Jesus to the cross is like the pursuit of the Israelites into the sea. As Pharaoh’s army pursued them to the edge of the sea, they began to taste victory. They saw no possibility for the Jews to be rescued. The people were afraid because they saw no way out. All seemed utterly lost. They were weak, defenseless and unable to rescue themselves. They had no hope to be delivered from their coming death.

I’m certain that when Jesus was taken by night and betrayed by His friend, Satan took pleasure. I’m sure that when Jesus was flogged and beaten, Satan took great delight in the spectacle. And when Jesus was led to Calvary, carrying His heavy wooden cross upon His bruised, bloodied and opened back, all the powers of evil, all the demonic forces, all of Satan’s host were applauding what appeared to be the sure victory of Satan over the chosen One of God. This was Satan’s victory march.

But like Pharaoh’s army, God was leading Satan by his nose to defeat. Just as Moses stretched out His arms to close the raging sea of justice upon their enemies, so Jesus stretched out His arms to bring down the justice of God’s righteous wrath. Except, this time it wasn’t simply an enemy that would be swallowed up in death. The Son of God would close the walls of water upon Himself and bear the punishment our slavery deserved.

Jesus triumphed over our slavery by becoming a slave for us. Jesus defeated our enemies by becoming the enemy of God and standing in our place.

This was God’s display of His greatest power. This was the greatest reversal ever known to mankind. Jesus triumphed over Satan. In fact, Colossians 2 says this:

Colossians 2:13-15: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

This is an incredible statement of Jesus’ victory at His crucifixion. In ancient cultures, when a general would win a victory for His empire by defeating the kingdom’s enemy, a parade would be thrown and the king of the defeated enemy would be stripped naked, beaten and bruised, and a procession would lead him with shouts of joy and praise would fill the city as this once powerful foe was humiliated and put to shame for all to see.

We were dead, hopeless and shackled to a cruel warden. And in the great reversal, Jesus, the Son of God, the beloved of the Father, the Holy One, took our record of wrong in His own hands and with His hands he clung tightly as the nails pierced His wrists, and still He held on.

Our Scars/His Scars

And as you look at the scars that remind you of your past slavery, don’t despair. Don’t let that shape your identity. You’re not a slave; you’re free.

Jesus’ scars remain and He calls us to look upon them. They stand as emblems of His grace. His scars bring joy, not despair, because His scars remind Him of His great sacrifice and victory for us.

This is why Paul says: “according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.” God is a rich God of grace and His might grace is lavished upon us, poured out for us.

Alexander the Great Story

Alexander the Great had a general who was about to get married. He came to Alexander and told him the news and also said that he needed money for the dowry and to pay for the wedding. Alexander said, "Sure, how much do you need?" The general asked for an enormous sum of money, and those watching were stunned by the amount. Instead of Alexander grimacing, he got this radiant look and lit up. With incredible delight he said to the man, "Of course, go to my treasurer and he'll give you all that you've asked for." Those watching came up to him afterwards and asked, "Why did you give him so much money, and why were you delighted to do it?" Alexander responded with a smile and said, "This man has done me a great honor. By asking for such a ridiculous sum, he shows that he believes that I am fabulously wealthy and incredibly generous."

By God giving us the riches of His grace and lavishing it upon us, He shows us that He’s not only fabulously wealthy, but incredibly generous.

Our response to God’s mighty saving act is worship. The first song in Scripture is about redemption (Exodus 15). God’s mighty acts to redeem, to save, are the grounds of worship. This is why Paul expresses this doctrine in an extended outburst of praise.