Hi, I'm Karen, and the Scripture passage for today is Ephesians 1, 3 through 14, and it's on page 1156 in the Bibles and the Chairs in front of you. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he shows us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding, and he made known to us the mystery of his will according to the good pleasure which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and earth together under one head even Christ. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who was a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory, the word of the Lord. Well, let's turn our focus now to Ephesians chapter 1. If you still have your Bibles, bring them back open again to that chapter that Karen read for you a moment ago, Ephesians 1, we're going to talk today about redemption, what an appropriate subject after talking about the Saturday service, because what we were doing yesterday, thanks to the Lord, was helping redeem things that are broken. And so as you think about redemption, remind yourself of why we're studying that subject. We are in a series of messages right now on the book of Ephesians. We're looking at a series that I've called deep stuff. Two weeks ago, we talked about predestination. Last week, Matt Reiman talked about adoption, and today's subject is redemption. We're going to focus on Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 7. When we talk about redemption, I want you to know that we're at the very heart of the gospel. In fact, Martin Lloyd Jones, who is a fairly well-known figure to many of you said that when it comes to redemption, we are face-to-face here with the core of what it means to be a child of God. We are face-to-face with the core of the gospel when we talk about redemption. But I suspect that many of you might not know what the word redemption means. I mean, predestination, that makes sense just because of the look of the word. And then adoption, most everybody knows what adoption is. But redemption is one of those kind of spiritual words that needs a little bit of fleshing out. So how can I help you to get a hold of redemption? Well, one thing I could do, if you are my age or older, I could talk to you about my experience as a kid when I would go to the grocery store with my mom. One of my favorite experiences when I was a kid growing up is going to the grocery store and at the end of the shopping expedition, as many of you know, you go pay for your groceries and back in that day they would give you SNH green stamps. How many of you remember the SNH green stamps? Okay, a lot of you do. They would give you all these SNH green stamps and then my mom was very faithful. She would put the stamps in her pocketbook and bring them home and then it was my job to paste them into these booklets that we had in our house. We had tons of booklets filled with SNH green stamps and once you had enough of these booklets filled out with stamps, you would take them, well, in our case, we lived in this little town in South Carolina. We had to drive 30 miles to Spartanburg, South Carolina to the SNH green stamp redemption center. I'm not kidding you. It was a redemption center. We would go in this little building and inside the building would be filled. It would be filled with products and appliances and gifts of all kinds and my mom would take these booklets to the counter. They would count the number of booklets that were filled with stamps and then they would say, you have, you know, X number of stamps go pick out something worth that amount and she would go pick out a blender or a set of glasses or whatever it happened to be and we'd bring it home and that's what redemption meant to me as a kid. And it's not far off because the word redemption means to deliver something out of captivity. These products, these blenders and gifts and so on were in captivity in this building called the redemption center and we paid the certain price and got to deliver those things into our own home. Well, that's one way to look at redemption and it's accurate. Another way, if you're younger and maybe don't get on with the green stamp idea is think of the word ransom. Everybody knows ransom. We have a kid in our church named ransom, limber even. Everyone knows what the concept of ransom is. You pay money to deliver a hostage out of captivity. Maybe you saw the movie ransom back in the 90s starring Mel Gibson directed by Ron Howard. Maybe you've heard about in the news recently the topic of whether it's right to negotiate for hostages taken by Al-Qaeda, whether it's right to ransom them out of their captivity. So this is a very current and modern concept. That also is very close to the meaning of ransom. The word for redeem, I mean redemption. The word for redeem comes from a Greek word, luo, which means to loosen or to release or open something that's closed and you see it throughout the Old Testament, this concept of redemption, you see it whenever there was someone who paid a price to ransom somebody out of slavery, right? Also, you could ransom someone out of death row if he or she was sentenced to die for a crime. You also see it in the book of Ruth, the Old Testament book of Ruth, where 23 times the word redeem is mentioned because Boaz redeems Ruth. He buys her property and is able to take her as his wife and deliver her from her estate of widowhood. So you get the idea that this word redeem means to deliver out of some kind of unhappy condition, some kind of bondage, be it imprisonment, slavery, poverty or whatever, but here's the thing, it's at great cost to yourself. To redeem someone else means to deliver that person out of that condition at great cost to yourself. And in verse 7, we find out that that's exactly what Jesus did for his people. Says in verse 7 of our text, in him that is Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace. So I'd like to tell you three things this morning about redemption. Number one, it's an accomplished fact, two, it's an ongoing process and three, it's a future hope. So let's start with the accomplished fact. If you are trusting in Jesus Christ this morning for your salvation, that is, if you've turned from sin and trusted in Christ and what he did for you on the cross, then redemption is something that's an accomplished fact in your case. It's already happened and you can bank on it. Look at verse 7 again. In him we have, you see that word in him, we have redemption in Christ through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. We don't may have, we don't hope to have, we don't one day we'll have, we have it. It's an accomplished fact. Now why is that important to know? Well, it's important to know because sometimes we who are followers of Christ don't feel very redeemed. Sometimes we who believe in Jesus and are seeking to follow him and know him better don't feel very forgiven, am I right? I'm right because that's the way I experience life many times and I'm sure you're like me. Sometimes we look at ourselves and we see nothing but flaws and sins and mess ups and mistakes and failures and we wonder how in the world can God love such a one as me? I'm such a miserable example of a Christian. Well see, that's why you have to preach the gospel to yourself daily, if not hourly, if not minute by minute, and remind yourself that you've been redeemed through the death of Jesus. Now if you struggle with not feeling redeemed, let me give you the key that I hope will help you. It's the first two little words in the verse 7 in him. It says in him we have redemption. These two little words must not be skipped over, they're really the most important words almost in that verse in me or rather in him we have redemption. Let me help you understand the significance of in him. My son Michael is graduating from Florida State University in December and until recently he and I have had a joint checking account. Now he didn't make a lot of money during his college years and so he would often go to the bank and look at his balance and say, lo and behold, I've got money. Where did it come from? Well it came from mom and dad, that's where it came from. We deposited money in our joint checking account and then Michael was able to enjoy the fruit of our labor. He was able to access the funds that someone else put in his account because it's a joint account. In a certain sense he and I or rather he is in me so that my labor, my work, my money is able to benefit him. My deposits were credited to his account. Now this is very similar to your relationship with Christ if you're a believer in Jesus. See here's the way it works, as Jesus was living his life. As he was obeying his parents, you know, Jesus spent 33 years here on earth. He was an obedient kid, he was a godly teenager, he was a moral upstanding obedient man who followed after God perfectly and as Jesus lived his life and then as he went obediently to the cross and as he was dying on the cross, as he was lying in the grave, as his spirit was ascending into heaven as his body rose again from the dead three days after his death, you were in him the whole time, the whole time he was obeying God, the whole time he was suffering for our sins, you and I were in him. It's all through this passage that you've heard read this morning, those two little words in him. Look at verse one, Paul in a possible of Christ Jesus to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, verse three, he has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, verse three, verse four, rather he chose us in him before the creation of the world, verse six, in the one he loves, verse seven, in him, verse nine, in Christ, verse 11, in him we were also chosen and it's in verse 12 and verse 13 and again in verse 13, in Christ, do you see it, do you get it? What's it mean? It means that you are so united Christ through your faith in him, his death and resurrection, that everything that Jesus did right, God figures you did and at the same time everything you ever did wrong, God figures Jesus did. The righteousness of Jesus was objectively, truly, completely and permanently transferred over to you so that it's your righteousness and your sins of omission, things you should have done that you didn't do and your sins of commission, things you did that you shouldn't have done, your mistakes, your selfishness, your disobedience, all that stuff, all that junk were truly, objectively and completely transferred over to Christ on the cross and punished once for all so that your penalty was paid by Jesus, your sins are gone, fully atone for, fully covered, guilt for your sins has disappeared, why because you've been ransomed, ransomed out of your slavery to sin and misery, redeemed through Jesus's blood. Now folks that means several things practically speaking. It means you've been delivered or set free from the penalty of sin which is death, you've been set free from the pollution of sin which is its uncleanness or its impurity, you've been set free from the power of sin which to someone who is an unbeliever is absolutely in control of that person. You've been set free from the pointed finger of sin which is guilt and condemnation, why you've been redeemed or set free or delivered from the curse of the law, the Bible says, what is the curse of the law? Well let me borrow from a famous book in literature, the curse of the law is that scarlet A that is pinned to your chest that labeled you as an adulterer or it's that scarlet F that described you and defined you as a failure or it's that scarlet M that said you were a murderer or that scarlet L that labeled you a liar, you name it, whatever your scarlet letter was and I suspect all of us have a bunch of them, all of those letters all of those things for which we would have been justly condemned by God had we died in an unregistered state all of those scarlet letters they announced to God and to everybody else that you were a hell bound sinner without hope. And Galatians 313 said Christ redeemed you from that, from that curse of the law he became a curse for you, he became that adulterer you were, he became that murderer you were, he became that liar you were, he became that failure you were on the cross and he was punished for us justly because the Bible says that God made him who had no sin to become sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. That's the gospel, like the hymn says that we sing sometimes bearing shame and scoffing rude in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood, hallelujah, what a savior, that's our savior, that's redemption, that's what Jesus did for us in becoming the curse that we used to be. Friend, believe that and it will change your life and I'll tell you how in a few minutes. But not only is it an accomplished fact if you are a Christian in Christ today but secondly we want to see how redemption is an ongoing process, it's an ongoing process because you see even though Christ has set you free once and for all from the sin, from the penalty, the pain, the pollution, the power of sin and the curse of all even though Jesus has set you free, we need redemption every day. Why? Because for some strange reason we seem to be geniuses at figuring out ways to put ourselves back under bondage. We seem to be geniuses, it's hard to explain isn't it? Why would we who have been freed from things that only made us miserable find clever ways of going back to living the life we used to live and finding value in the things that we used to find value in? We're so much like the children of Israel, aren't we? You remember the Israelites were delivered out of Egypt. They were ransomed out of their slavery for 400 years, they were slaves in Egypt. God parted the Red Sea for them. He fed them with mana out of heaven, he opened up water out of the rock, he gave them friends and families and traditions and feasts and a tabernacle and priests, he gave them daily reminders of his love and care, a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, and yet what did the Israelites say we want to go back to Egypt? You and I do that regularly. Lord I want to go back to bondage, I want to get under my idol again. We talk sometimes here at UPC about idolatry. It's important to talk about it because that's really what spoils the whole message of redemption that I've been talking about in our daily experience. What's an idol and idol is anything other than God in the center of your life to which you look again and again as something that you must have or else you'll be devastated. It's something to which you look as something that you must experience or else you think life is not going to work. An idol is that person in your life or that thing or that experience that you think will give you that ultimate sense of well-being, that feeling of having arrived, that feeling of I'm okay now, I've got worth and life makes sense and I've got what it takes. It might be money, it might be success, it might be your intelligence, it could be a boyfriend or girlfriend or a spouse, it might be sex or intelligence or might be playing a certain video game over and over again and getting better at it than anybody else. It might be a great body. Now as we age, that becomes a big issue guys and women. I was looking in the mirror the other day and I said to myself, you know, I didn't used to look that way. I didn't used to look that way. I had hair. You know, idolatry, I find is very, very tempting in that area. It could be a drink or a drug or the honor of other people. It might be your ministry, could be an idol, could be much, much more than all those things. But I'm telling you right now, the pursuit of any one of those things as though it were the missing link, as though it were the thing that will finally make you happy. It will finally give you worth. It will bring you into the inner circle, you know, and people will find you more appealing and more popular. It will finally heal the wounds that you've been carrying in your soul. I'm telling you that if you chase after that idol, it's just as much going to be a form of slavery as the sins that you used to indulge in. False gods and counterfeit saviors are reaching out there, beckoning hands to us each and every day saying, come on, they'll never know. Just one more time. It's not going to hurt you, it's really not bad. You can have me and Jesus too. But those voices are lying to you. They are lying to you because they come from the enemy who hates you. And he only wants you to be enslaved again. He hates the doctrine of redemption more than anything else because it's all about the cross and it's all about freedom. Your idols are going to rob you of joy. At first you will use it and then your idol will end up using you. And you don't want that. That's why redemption has to be this ongoing process. You continually need redemption because your heart always is threatened by the enslavement of idols. It's like I said a couple of weeks ago, you might remember this bad grammatical quote, you never don't need Jesus. You never get to the place where you don't need Jesus anymore. You never get to the place where you don't need the gospel and to remind yourself of it because Jesus wants to do the same thing in you that he's doing out in creation. And that's making you new. It's making you new. He wants that for you. So daily, hourly, cling to the crucified. Remind yourself that he is your redeemer, he is your way truth in life. Those idols are not those things. Get into community with a few other people who love you to whom you can tell your idols to, to whom you can confess your idols. Go to a counselor who can help you identify your idols and put them to death. Do whatever you've got to do. Don't play around with your idols. Friends, get serious about your idolatry. It's choking spiritual life in you. It's robbing you of all God wants to give you in the gospel. And it's a battle. It is long and it is hard. Gradually, if you keep up the fight, your idols will lose their attractiveness. Redemption is an accomplished fact. It's this ongoing process. That's where the Holy Spirit comes in, by the way, I didn't mention his name. But he is the one who wants to renew you and give you the grace you need. So if you fail, listen, let me speak to those of you who you've given in. You've caved in and you feel like, man, I just don't want to keep fighting. I want you to know how much God loves you, how much he's just willing to pick you up and patch you on the back and get you back on the playing field. So don't grow weary. Don't get despondent as though God's grace runs out. It doesn't. His grace is greater than all your sin. It is your future hope. It's accomplished fact. It's an ongoing process. But redemption is your future hope. Look with me at verse 14. As we wrap up here, verse 14 speaks of the Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of His glory. Now you see why I, why I entitle my sermon now and later. There's a now aspect to redemption and there's a later aspect to redemption. Verse 14 says that one day we will be fully redeemed. There is a redemption still to come. Over in chapter 4, Paul is going to call it the day of redemption. It's the day when Jesus Christ returns and puts everything to right. He'll give you a new glorified body. He will wipe away all your tears. He will satisfy all your earnings and your dreams. He'll give you your inheritance and he'll welcome you to live upon the new earth, a place of indescribable beauty, of endless adventure, of perfect community, and of intimate friendship with the triune God. That's your future hope. That is your certain expectation if you're in Christ this morning. So you've been redeemed. You are being redeemed and one day you will be redeemed. Believe this and it'll change your life, how? Let me mention two ways. One, it'll take away your fear and replace it with confidence. Some of us live in fear, fear of punishment, fear of failure, fear, a slavish form of fear of God that is not biblical. The doctrine of redemption means that your sins have already been punished on the cross Jesus has paid your debt and full and all you've got to look forward to is reward. So redemption means you can be confident as a child of God rather than fearful and secondly it can take your self-absorption and replace it with love and concern for other people. Some of us followers of Christ are self-absorbed, self-centered. We're just thinking about ourselves, how we look, what we should and shouldn't say. Whether we're good enough, whether we're better or worse than Christian X and so and so. All those things are symptoms of pride and self-righteousness. We're trying to find our standing in our own eyes or in the eyes of others or in the eyes of God in things that we do instead of what God has already done for us. So we need to be secure in our identity in Christ, right? That's the root of our love for other people. We're so secure in God's love for us that we can move out of ourselves, forget about ourselves and focus on the needs and the problems of other people. One of my favorite TV shows growing up was The Andy Griffith Show. Some of you love those reruns I suspect, some of you remember those days? Do you remember Otis? Otis was the town drunk and Otis lived inside this prison cell where Andy Griffith was the sheriff and the funny thing about this prison cell was that it was not very securely locked because Otis could reach out his hand to the wall right adjacent to the cell, pick out the key and open up the cell and walk on out and that's what he did. He would just walk out of the cell when he was sober and when he got all drunk again he would come back in and live inside the cell. Some of you as God's followers are living inside the cell, enslaved to idolatry, enslaved to worry, fear, self-absorption and the doctrine of redemption says reach your hand out, grab the key, the truth of redemption and turn the key and unlock it and walk out into the light of the gospel, walk out into the love of God and into freedom. I ask you, I beg you, if you're inside that cell take the key, open up the door, live freely as God's children. Father we ask you to take this passage of scripture and make it a part of our experience. We don't want to just understand the doctrine of redemption, we want to live the doctrine of redemption. Lord I confess to you that I'm just like Otis, sometimes I choose to live inside the cell, I follow after an idol, even though I know it's only going to disappoint me, it's a sister in that won't hold water. So Lord help me, help my brothers and sisters to live redeemed day in and day out. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.