You Are Redeemed - Part 1

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. God places high value on having a relationship with us, so much so that He sacrificed His own Son to make it possible. Today's podcast is a lesson on redemption as we learn about the encouraging message from the cross. Would you turn, please, to Ephesians chapter 1? Let's begin reading in verse 3 and read through verse 7. Ephesians chapter 1, beginning in verse 3.

And listen to me carefully. Until you and I understand the message of the cross, we will never understand who God is and what He's like. Because so much of what God revealed about Himself, He revealed about Himself, of course, through Jesus Christ, and so much of what He revealed of Himself through Christ becomes evident and manifest to us when we see what Jesus Christ did at Calvary. There are two Greek words primarily in the Scriptures. About a hundred and sometimes in the Old Testament there is a word referring to redemption, but in the New Testament where I want us to primarily look at for today, there are two words.

One of those words, lutron, is the word we come to in Matthew chapter 20 when the Bible says that Jesus Christ gave Himself His life, a ransom, a lutron for many. The other word is a word that means to buy out of the market. And it is the word from which we get agriculture originally and the word which meant the marketplace, and it is the word which means to buy out of the marketplace so that redemption in the mind of those who were reading these epistles, they understood what Paul meant when he talked about Jesus Christ being a redeemer, because this is the way they would operate in those days in the slave markets. And then when the buyer purchased the slave for so much money, he gave the money and it was called redeeming the slave, that is buying that slave for himself. And therefore the slave was no longer a slave to the other master but now becomes a slave to a new master. Likewise, oftentimes someone who maybe greatly admired a slave, maybe it was a woman or a man, they would redeem that slave that is paid the purchase price and then say to the slave, you're free.

I don't want you to serve me. I redeemed you out of the slave market in order to free you that you may live your life as a normal human being. And so when Paul talked about redeeming, he talked about releasing from bondage, that is buying out of the slave market a person whose life had been one of slavery and drudgery with no future and no hope.

Their only real hope of release was dying. So in using the term redeem, they understood exactly what he meant. So I want you to see today that one of the encouraging messages of the cross is that you and I are present tense now redeemed. That is Almighty God by an act within Himself has determined to pay the purchase price, the ransom for you and for me, thereby releasing us from our old life of bondage and enslavement to sin and freeing us to become the person He desires that we be.

And He paid a ransom in order to free us. So when we talk about the fact that we have been redeemed, we're simply saying that somebody paid the price to free us from the slave market and now we are free to become and to be and to do as God would have us to do. The more you and I understand what God has done for us, several things are going to happen. The more we're going to understand who He is and what He's like, the more love and devotion and service we're going to want to give to Him, not motivated out of someone compelling us to do it or putting a guilt trip upon us, but motivated out of the fact that we are His redeemed sons and daughters.

But there's some facets of this that I want us to see because you and I need to see it for ourselves. If you've never received Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, what you're going to discover today is this. There is absolutely no possible way for you to be made acceptable in the eyes of God unless, first of all, you have been redeemed by Him. So I want you to see that redemption is absolutely essential to salvation. And when you and I understand what He's done for us, we're going to be warning, desiring, intensely desiring to serve the Lord and to obey Him.

And we'll be more apt to be able to share with someone else more accurately what our Lord has done. So the first thing I want us to see here is this, and that is man's need of redemption. Because He says He has loosed us from something, freed us from something, bought us out of something unto Himself. Now, why does man need to be redeemed? If you'll turn to Romans chapter 6 for just a moment, and while you're turning there, let me remind you that in the Garden of Eden, God had created a perfect environment for two perfect people, and then He allowed them to be tested, and they yielded and rebelled against God by simply saying we want to know more than we ought to know.

We want to do what we ought not to do. They sinned against God, and the very spring, the fountainhead of the whole human race was poisoned, so the Bible says all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no not one, so all of us are deliberately, willfully sinners against God. Now with that being true, what we forget is this. Somebody says, oh yes, everybody sins.

Now watch this. People joke about sin. They joke about preachers preaching about sin. They joke about being sinners. They joke about sinning.

But let me show you how Satan has used their joking attitude and their ignorance to enslave them. The very nature of sin is that sin enslaves the one who partakes of it. It isn't a matter of me doing something wrong, transgressing a law over here, or violating a principle over here. When we sin against God, the Bible says that you and I become slaves to sin, and so you see oftentimes the person who is a slave says, man, I don't want to do that religion bit. I want to be able to do just like I please. I want to go where I want to go, do what I want to do anytime I please, and I don't want to have to bow down to anybody, and what that person does not realize is he's simply spouting Satan's lie because the man who's doing the talking is a slave to his own sensual drives. Now listen, Romans chapter 6, look at these verses, beginning in verse 16.

Let's go back to 14. Here's the hint. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace. That is, once you've been saved, which the implication is, before you came under grace, you came under the dominion of sin and its power.

Look in verse 16 now. Know you not, that is, don't you know that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servant you are to whom you obey, whether of sin unto God, death, or of obedience unto righteousness. So what he's saying is we can only serve one of two, either sin which has its ultimate consequence in eternal death, or righteousness or Jesus Christ which has its ultimate consequence in eternal life. All of us are either serving the Lord Jesus Christ or we're serving a sin or those human and sensual drives of the flesh, we become servants of sin. So when a man sins against God, what he must realize is this.

He's not simply just committing some isolated act. He is becoming enslaved by his drives, enslaved by her habits, enslaved because the nature of sin is to bind us up and to make us unfit, useless, miserable, wretched, failures, and ultimately suffering eternal consequences of death. Now what he's saying here when he describes Jesus Christ as the redeemer is this, that God Almighty looking upon mankind, seeing man enslaved in sin, knew because of his justice, now watch this, because of his justice and his righteousness and his holiness, God had to do something in order to save man and at the same time still remain holy. So what is he going to do about saving mankind if he's made the law that every man who sins is going to suffer eternal punishment? How is God going to save man when every man is a sinner by nature, every man is a sinner by action?

What can God do to redeem and that is to buy out, to release and liberate from this bondage and imprisonment those whom he loves and bring them back to himself and free them unto himself? Well, the second thing I want you to notice here is God's provision for our redemption and I want you to follow closely and look at several verses here with me if you will. Turn if you will to Genesis chapter 3 and I want to show you something very interesting. In the Garden of Eden you'll recall that Adam and Eve having sinned, the scripture says that God made them coats of skins to cover their shame. Now to have a coat of skin you've got to have an animal. To have an animal skin you must have killed that animal, shed its blood. Well it's interesting when you begin to look first of all at his provision, when you begin to look at the prophecy that God gave of his redemption of mankind who heard the first prophetic word about Jesus Christ coming as Aradema.

It is interesting and probably surprising when you and I begin to see that. If you'll notice in verse 14 of Genesis chapter 3, the Lord is talking to the devil and the Lord God said to the serpent Satan, because you've done this, that is you have intervened and caused rebellion among Adam and Eve, because you've done this thing you are cursed above all the cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go and thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Now listen, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head, thou shall bruise his heel. Now listen, a woman doesn't have seed which is a little prophetic bird's eye view of what about Jesus Christ? That he is virgin born.

He had to be virgin born in order to be man's redeemer. Now watch this, he says I'll put enmity between thee and the woman's seed, which is speaking of Christ. That is he shall bruise thy head Satan and ultimately destroy you, but you're going to bruise his heel, you're going to injure him. So the first prophetic word of a coming redeemer was not given to Adam and Eve, but it was given to Satan himself. God said to Satan, the one who is to come is going to bruise your head. That means you're going to get wiped out.

You're going to bruise his heel, he's going to be injured. Then one of the most beautiful verses in the scripture, almost overlooked in Galatians chapter four, if you'll turn there for a moment, Galatians chapter four, one of the most significant verses in the Bible when it comes to seeing God as the sovereign over the whole universe. One of these verses in Galatians chapter four, when you read this and you go all the way back to Genesis chapter three, and then you begin to look at history.

You look at the Egyptian civilization, the Babylonian civilization, the Assyrian civilization. When you look at the Greeks and the Romans, the whole Western world and all that we have today, when this verse of scripture states what it states, there is a whole world of history and literature and politics and geography and linguistics. The whole world is wrapped up and centered around verse four of Galatians four.

Look to see what he says. He says, but when the fullness of time has come, that is in God's timetable, when the fullness of time was completed, God did something. He sent his son made of a woman that is from a woman made under the law to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons or that is become the children of God.

And let me explain what that means. That simply means that in God's timetable at a given time designated by him and prepared by him when the world was right in the fullness of time, that is in the very split second of history when those men from the east saw the star maybe weeks and months ahead of time and came to the place of Bethlehem where Jesus Christ was born. I'm going to tell you, my friend, that was prepared from the beginning of time before the foundation of the world from the Garden of Eden when he said to Satan, Satan, one is coming who will bruise your head.

You will injure his heel, but he'll bruise your head. God set in motion the stars in the universe, the earth and all of its orbit. Every single thing God set in motion to bring about one thing, and that is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, as he says, to redeem those of us who were under the curse of the law. Now what does he mean by living under the curse of the law? If you recall before Moses came along, there was no Ten Commandments. There was a law in the heart of man. God gave to mankind the Ten Commandments, not to save man by, but to show mankind the standard of God, the righteousness and the holiness of God. But he gave to mankind a law that did not bring about salvation, but showed man his inadequacy to live up to the law. Who among us has, can, will, ever will be able to live up to the Ten Commandments? The Bible says that if you've broken one, you've violated all of them, and so all of us are guilty of breaking the Ten Commandments. Those commandments were given to us to show us our inadequacy to live up to God's righteous and holy standards.

So all of us have been born under the law. That is, understanding that we cannot match up to God's requirement. So the law was not given to save man, but to show him that he needs more than his own self-effort. So from the very beginning back there, they were to cut the throat of the sheep, offer them as a sacrifice, and God gave to them the law, that when a man comes confessing his sin, bringing an untarnished, unblemished sheep, gives it to the priest, the sins are confessed, the sins are repented of, then God would forgive that man of his sin on the basis, listen, on the basis that he obeyed God by providing the sheep, shedding the blood, and trusting in what God said, when the blood is shed and sins are confessed, sins will then be forgiven. The book of Hebrews says that all of the shedding of all of the blood, the sheep, the goat, the bulls, and all of that, was a foreshadowing of that which was to come. All of that was a symbol.

All of that was a type. All of that was a prophecy of that which was to come. And you recall when Jesus Christ showed up at the Jordan River, one day in the first chapter of John, look at that if you will, verse 36, the Bible says that Jesus showed up upon the scene, and John the Baptist, who had been preaching and baptizing, said when he saw him, in verse 36, and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he said, Behold, look, he said, the Lamb of God, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Jesus Christ came into this world, he said, to give his life a what?

A ransom, a price, a purchase price for many, that is for all of us. So that all down through history, God has been preparing in prophetical images and types, as well as in the Word, that there would come a time when the Redeemer would come that could redeem man of his sins. For example, in the temple, when Jesus Christ was crucified, you recall the Bible says there was a veil that separated man from the Holy of Holies. Up until this time, the high priest once a year could go into the Holy of Holies and atone for the sin of all of the nation of Israel by sprinkling blood upon the mercy seat, the horns of the altar. When Jesus Christ was crucified, the Bible says that veil was rent, not from bottom to top, men could have done that, but it was rent from top to bottom. God rent the veil, which means that God was now releasing mankind from the enslavement of sin through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, whose life blood atoned and was adequate payment to redeem every man everywhere from the slave markets of sin.