for singing of the redemption that we have been
given by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible that
you have brought with you this morning, would
you lift your Bible up? This Bible that you hold
in your hands today is a marvelous, marvelous
book. It was written in a different time and
culture. And yet it is the timeless and cross
-cultural revelation of God. Our task as students
of the Bible is to interpret it in light of its
geography, its history, its cultures, its languages,
so that we can understand what the meaning was
in the original context. I saw an example recently
of the importance of this. In fact, it was in
the St. Paul newspaper a few weeks ago, months
ago now, when the legislature was in session.
There was a gentleman from Roseville, as a matter
of fact, who was very concerned about a bill
that was before the legislature dealing with
the rights of replacement workers during a strike.
Do you remember that bill? It got some notoriety
in the newspaper, but this particular individual
was quite concerned about it, and so he printed
the whole bill and underlined throughout the
bill those parts of it that he was concerned
about. And then at the very end, in bold letters,
the advertisement in the newspaper said, this
is what the Bible says. And so then he quoted
three verses from the Bible. One from Colossians
4. about Master's gift to your servants, that
which is just and equal. And then he quoted a
verse from 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. In Timothy
it says this, not given to wine, no striker.
Not greedy of filthy lucre, and so on. And he
underlined, no striker, and did the same thing
with the verse in Titus chapter 1, no striker.
Well, now someone who read that advertisement
might think the Bible had a lot to say about
collective bargaining and that employees are
never to strike. As a matter of fact, the first
century culture knew very little about collective
bargaining and about unions. And the word striker,
while it was very good for the English of King
James Day, doesn't mean a whole lot today at
least. in translating that particular word from
the Greek New Testament, it means someone who's
not pugnacious, not someone who's prone to be
a fighter, as it lists here the qualifications
of an elder. We have to be careful interpreting
the Bible, that we do so in light of its culture
and its languages. The Bible describes God's
salvation in terms that are familiar to first
century Jews and Romans. So when you and I come
to a term that describes salvation, we need to
be sure we understand what it meant to those
people. Such is the term redemption. When we
think of redemption these days, we think of green
stamps or some sort of thing. But redemption
in those days had an entirely different meaning.
One of God's good gifts to us is the gift of
redemption. And if you and I will understand
what it means, it will change the way that we
look at our lives. The meaning of redemption
is built upon the common practice of slavery
in the ancient world. Well, someone says, what
has slavery got to do with me? Well, you stick
with me and I think you may find out. We'll soon
see. We need some background on slavery as it
was practiced in the ancient world to help set
our minds in the direction of redemption. Slavery
was practiced by people as far back as the time
of Abraham, as far as the Bible records for us.
Abraham had a slave. His name is recorded for
us. In fact, in Genesis, the name Eliezer. Hagar
was a slave to Abram's wife, Sarah. They had
slaves in those days. However, we need to keep
in mind that slaves in that particular period
were more like members of the family than like
the image of the slave that you and I often think
of. We also observe slavery in the more traditional
sense as we think of it, in the bondage of the
people of Israel and Egypt. They were in a cruel
slavery and were required to perform the tasks
of the Egyptians and there was no compassion
for them. When the Israelites were delivered
and established their nation, they were forbidden
by God's law to make slaves of their own brethren.
But a Jewish person could sell his labor to make
restitution for what he had done or to pay back
a debt that he owed. But one who did sell his
labor had to be released from that bondage. on
the year of Jubilee, which was every 50 years
in their calendar, or every seven years during
the Sabbath year. And so it was not a perpetual
bondage. The Israelites also had foreign slaves
from other people, from the Canaanites, for example,
from whom they took the land. It was a practice
that began in the day of Joshua and continued
on. But these people too, though they were foreign,
gentile slaves, were protected by the laws of
Israel and were generally well treated. In the
New Testament day, the Romans had many slaves.
In fact, some people believe that there were
more slaves in the city of Rome by far than there
were free people. Most of the slaves in the Roman
period were fairly well treated and in some respects
were even better off in their living conditions
than free men. But you can see that slavery was
a part of the whole world mindset in those days.
Redemption had to do with that practice of slavery.
Redemption was the act on the part of a suitable
and willing person to purchase a slave and to
release that slave from his bondage. It involved
paying the price necessary to procure freedom
for the slave. That was redemption. Now the concept
of spiritual redemption is based upon these ideas.
The heart of the issue is not the relative freedom
or the manner of treatment that the slave had.
The heart of the issue is ownership. You see,
a slave, whether well treated or cruelly treated,
did not belong to himself. He belonged to his
master. And because of that, he had absolutely
no rights. He may be well treated and extended
kindnesses by his master, or may be cruelly treated.
But whichever, the important thing is the issue
of ownership. He did not belong to himself. It
is very hard for you and me to understand what
that would be like. This is totally foreign to
anything that we're familiar with today. not
to belong to ourselves. The Bible says that you
and I spiritually are slaves by our birth into
the race of Adam. Open your Bible please to Romans
chapter 6. The Apostle is here writing to people
who have already been liberated but he points
back to their former slavery. in the way that
he talks. Look in Romans chapter 6 and verse
6. He says, Knowing this, that our old self was
crucified with him, that our body of sin might
be done away with, that we should no longer be
slaves to sin. Look at verse 17. But thanks be
to God that though you were slaves of sin. Verse
19. In the middle of the verse he says, for just
as you presented your members as slaves to impurity
and to lawlessness. Then again in verse 20, for
when you were slaves of sin. So make no mistake
about it, spiritually speaking, No person belongs
to himself. We may enjoy political freedom. We
may point to a declaration of independence and
to a constitution, to a bill of rights. And we
say we are a free people. And that may be true
politically, but it is not true spiritually.
For we, by our birth into the race of Adam, are
slaves of sin. And we do not belong to ourselves,
we belong to sin. Sin is a cruel taskmaster.
Sin enforces obedience upon the corrupted will
of the human race. And it results in impurity
in the life and lawlessness. slaves of sin. Peter
says in 2 Peter 2 .19 that the slavery is to
corruption. It is not a slavery that leads to
something better, a higher standard. It is a
slavery that leads downward, away from God, and
to corruption. And Paul says at the end of this
very chapter in Romans chapter 6, that it leads
to eternal death. The wages of sin, this slave
taskmaster, the wages that we are paid is death,
separation from God for all of eternity. Now
in the New Testament, redemption is the purchase
price for slaves resulting in their release from
their former ownership into a new relationship.
Dr. R .D. Knudsen writing in Encyclopedia of
the Bible says the heart of the biblical message
of redemption is the deliverance of the people
of God from the bondage of sin by the perfect,
substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ and
their consequent restoration to God and His heavenly
kingdom. A Redeemer is one who possesses the
right or who exercises the right of redemption.
The Bible presents Christ as the Redeemer of
God's elect. The purchase price for our Deliverance
from slavery to sin was the death of Jesus Christ.
The offering of Himself as a bloody sacrifice
to purchase us out of the slave relationship
to sin. To purchase us out of that, that we might
be again related to God. The emphasis upon this
purchase price in redemption, which Peter says
is like the blood of a lamb pointing back to
the Passover lamb of God. The purchase price,
the emphasis of that is not upon to whom the
price was paid. That has been an argument in
theology for centuries. And some say that the
price was paid to the devil. That was a teaching
in the early church which was refuted. It is
still a teaching today among the Seventh Day
Adventists. The emphasis of the Bible though
is not upon to whom the price was paid, but upon
the sufficiency of the price itself. The price
that was paid for us is entirely sufficient to
release us from all obligation to our former
owner and to give us a complete relationship
to our new master, God Himself. Now, the difficulty
that you and I have in this whole matter of redemption
is not in intellectually grasping it. Most of
us understand that redemption is being purchased
and then released. The difficulty that we have
is in emotionally feeling it because we have
such a hard time identifying with the idea that
we don't own ourselves. And if we don't feel
it, if it doesn't touch our emotions, that we
have been released from slavery by the price
of Christ's blood and related to God as our new
master. If we do not feel that, it will not move
our wills to live differently. The difficulty
we have is not in understanding what redemption
means, it is in feeling in our souls that we
have been redeemed. Part of that is because we
not only fail to realize the magnificence of
the redemption, but we also fail to fully grasp
the desperate hopelessness of our position before
we were redeemed. Such is the case of a woman
that Henry Morehouse told about. Henry Morehouse
was a British evangelist who died in 1880 at
just 40 years of age. The first half of his life
was spent in wickedness and sin, but becoming
a Christian at age 21, he determined by God's
grace that he would serve God with all of his
heart. He became a preacher. He was well known
for passing out tracts on the streets, for being
a street preacher and an evangelist. a great
personal witness. Henry Morehouse told the story
of a woman who came to him and said, I can't
see how a person who has broken just one of the
commandments can be as bad as another who has
broken five or even all of them. You see, she
had a hard time understanding the desperate condition
that she was in. She felt herself to be a fairly
righteous individual. Broken maybe one or two
commandments. But that surely isn't as bad as
breaking five or all of them. Morehouse says,
I advised her that God had actually given only
one law, which consists of ten different parts.
Look at this watch of mine. If you counted all
its cogs, you would find many. If you ruined
only one, you might leave the other parts in
perfect condition, and yet this would be a broken
watch and no longer run." He says the woman still
couldn't see the point, so I said, suppose you
were hanging over a precipice, suspended by a
chain with ten links. If a man took a hammer
and smashed every link, where would you go? Well,
to the bottom of the canyon of course, she said.
Well, if he severed only one link, what would
happen? Why, that would be just as bad. I would
still fall and be killed. And he says, suddenly
she grasped the truth that whosoever shall keep
the whole law and yet offend in one point, he
is guilty of all. Do we understand the hopelessness
of our situation before Christ redeemed us? Do
we understand the desperate situation, the eternal
hell that was surely ours when we were slaves
to sin? Let me build a picture this way for you.
Let's suppose that you were fired from your job
without cause. You say, well, that does sound
familiar. Well, for some people it does. But
let's suppose that beyond that you couldn't secure
another job. And because of that you fell behind
in your house payments and you faced immediate
foreclosure. To complicate things, you had borrowed
on your credit cards up to the maximum. And you
were receiving daily telephone calls from collection
agencies demanding payment for the utilities,
the credit cards, and all of the other loans
that you'd accumulated. You had no job, and you
could not find one. And to top it off, you had
educational loans, some of you know about. And
then the final straw, somebody sues you. because
of maybe falling in the driveway or something
like that and they win the judgment and there
is a judgment of five million dollars put on
your head five million bucks that you have to
come up with because your insurance doesn't cover
that sort of thing that's hard to Put yourself
in that situation to try to imagine it, but just
do it for a second Just think of the load think
of the position that you would be in You would
feel like never getting a job again You would
probably desire to go on welfare in Hennepin
County You would want to do something where you
wouldn't have to pay off all of those debts There's
no way that you can pay off five million dollars
in a lifetime if you had your job back What are
you going to do? And then and then let's just
suppose That someone that you had never met before
Came to you one day And that person handed you
a check for five million dollars so that you
could pay the judgment against you. And then
that person said, give me all of the bills for
the credit cards and the utilities and all of
those things. And hand me the mortgage book for
your house with all of those payments in there
still. And I'm going to pay all of them. And
by the way, I'm offering you a job in my company
starting tomorrow. And beyond that, beyond that,
I'm going to give you the privilege of writing
all of your future checks on my personal account.
And there's no limit to what you can write. It's
just all yours. That'd be pretty neat, wouldn't
it? Now, if the first was hard to imagine, the
second's even harder, right? But that's something.
I mean, that is just the poorest picture of what
Jesus did for us. We do not feel our redemption.
Because we don't understand what slavery is.
Oh, if today your heart can begin to feel that
you are no longer owned by sin, then this message
today will have accomplished something. I don't
expect you to learn afresh what redemption is
all about. You probably already know that. But
oh, if you can begin to feel it in your soul
what God's done for you. If you can begin to
grasp emotionally that you have been purchased
with a price of the blood of Christ so that you
could be freed from sin's mastery. and then released
from that old slave relationship. And now you've
been rightly related to God in a brand new relationship
that gives you everything that you need in this
world and for eternity. If you can just begin
to feel that, God's done a work in your heart.
Because it is when we feel that. That we will
begin to make the kinds of decisions in light
of it that will make a difference in our lives
Because you see the way that we live our lives
in our culture is that we have our rights I'm
my own man I Can do what I want to do We believe
that we own ourselves We've already seen that
in fact for the unsaved sin is the honor And
we who are saved feel fail to realize that we
have a new master who now owns us That master
is Jesus Christ The implications of redemption
are many I just want to focus on one this morning
and It's this, because we are a redeemed people,
we do not belong to ourselves, but to God who
purchased us. Open your Bible again to 1 Corinthians
chapter 6. Paul is here dealing with the unfortunate
and sinful practice of immorality. religious
ritual immorality, which was a part of the worship
of the pagan people in Corinth. And some of the
Christians kind of hung on to these old patterns.
And so he says to them in 1 Corinthians 6 and
verse 18, flee immorality. Every other sin that
a man commits, is against the body, but the immoral
man sins against his own body. Or do you not
know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit
who is in you, whom you have from God and that
you are not your own? For you have been bought
with a price. You are not your own. You have
been bought with a price. Leon Morris, writing
in his book, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross,
says, The redeemed are paradoxically slaves,
the slaves of God, for they were bought with
a price. Believers are not brought by Christ
into a liberty of selfish ease. Rather, since
they have been bought by God at terrible cost,
they have become God's slaves to do His will."
Is that the way that you look at the Christian
life? It is that we have become God's slaves
to do His will. Service for Him is not just a
duty, but it is a delight. a delight, but it
is a duty. It is an obligation on our part because
He owns us. His ownership means that He owns
all the rights to our lives. Ah, somebody says,
I have a right to choose my own friends. I have
a right to earn money and to spend it. I have
a right to control what belongs to me. I have
the right to expect fairness in the way that
I'm treated. I have a right to my own opinion,
says someone else. I have a right to choose what
I want to do and where I want to go. I have a
right to be healthy and happy and prosperous
and to achieve the American dream. In fact, none
of those are rights that we have. For a slave
does not have any rights of his own. You say,
wait a minute, I can choose my own friends. No.
Only as they are friends who please the Lord.
Up as somebody says I have the right to earn
money and to spend it Only as the Lord allows
you in freedom of conscience to spend it But
I have a right to control what belongs to me
Only if you see yourself as a steward and Understand
that God has given you all of those things in
your hands, but I have a right to Expect fairness
in the way that I'm treated by other people.
Did your master have that right and exercise
it? Was he treated fairly by other people? Or
did he learn to suffer unjustly? But I have the
right to my own opinions. only as those opinions
are molded by the Spirit of God who dwells your
body. But I have a right to choose what I want
to do and where I want to go if it's the Lord's
will. But I have a right to the American dream
if God chooses to give that to you. You also
have the right to be poor and to never see the
dream. You know a lot of the frustrations, the
conflicts, the tensions, the worry that you and
I have in our lives is created because we hang
on to the rights that we think we have. And we
argue with others about them and we argue with
God about them. And we say, yes, but I have my
rights. The fact is that we are not our own and
we have been purchased with a price. He purchased
all of our rights. And the greatest position
that you and I can come to in life, the happiest
way that you and I can live is to open our hands
And to say, Lord, I don't cling any longer to
what isn't mine anyway. And I give you the rights.
And I yield to you for whatever you choose to
bring to me. For I am your servant. And I am
not my own. For I've been bought with a price.
The ramifications of redemption go far beyond
this. But if I am not my own, but Christ's, it
means that I must be responsible about the way
that I treat my body. That's Paul's meaning here
in 1 Corinthians 6. I must be responsible about
my attitude concerning material possessions.
I must be responsible about the decisions about
my future because I'm not my own. If I'm not
my own but Christ's, then I should know that
I will one day give an account to Him who is
my master. If I am not my own but Christ's, it
means that I can learn to live free from fear
and anxiety. because he will always take good
care of his property. I met an interesting man
this last week. I would judge, though I didn't
ask him, that he would be a man in his mid -60s.
He told me that when he had been a driver of
an 18 -wheeler for 30 years, He was forced into
retirement at 55 years of age. He'd been a Christian
all of his life. Forced into retirement, he accepted
that as God's will. He said, Lord, if you will
let me live, I am going to serve you with the
rest of my life in some way. And so to get prepared
to do that, in his case, he decided to go to
seminary. And he did for two or three years,
went to seminary. And for the last number of
years now, he has been a volunteer chaplain in
one of the largest hospitals in Los Angeles.
And several days out of the week, he goes down
to the hospital as a volunteer He's not paid
to do this. And he just goes visiting people
who are in need in the hospital. And he said,
you know, I've had the opportunity to lead many
people to Christ. And he said, I want you to
know that today there are two people in glory
who were AIDS patients in that hospital. And
it was my privilege to lead them to faith in
Jesus. Now there's a man who has learned what
it is to say, Lord, here are my rights. And at
55, though my job is taken away from me, you
direct me. I'm your slave. I'm not my own. You
bought me. Direct my life. Lord, use me as you
will. That man is so filled with joy and excitement
and enthusiasm about living. I'd delight to be
around. That's how I want to grow old. I hope
that's how you want to grow old as well. Recognizing
that we are a redeemed people and we're not our
own. Let's pray. Sing with me again the chorus
that we sang earlier. Jesus, name above all names,
Beautiful Savior, Glorious Lord Emmanuel, God
is with us. Blessed Redeemer, Living One. Blessed
Redeemer, we have a hard time, Lord, feeling
that we are redeemed, because we don't understand
the first century context of that word. But oh,
may our hearts warm to it, begin to probe within
us and cause us to feel afresh that we are not
our own, that we've been purchased, and move
our wills so that we will let go of what isn't
really ours anyway. so that we will yield our
rights to you and learn to live at peace and
in joy, knowing that you will take good care
of what's yours. Release us from the anxiety
and the frustration, the conflicts and the stress
that come because of our worrying about rights.
and teach us to live in the freedom of your servants.
In Jesus' name, Amen. God bless you.