Embracing Redemption: Living in the Freedom of Christ

I love being able to worship together and celebrate this day because this day is why we are Christians and this is the whole reason that we have dedicated our lives to serving God. We serve a God who is alive, alive today. A God who speaks, a God who hears us. A God who wants to bring us life and happiness and joy and victory and peace. A God who is concerned with the things that we go through.

This is the God that we serve. This is why we serve him. Because of today. Yes. So today I want to tell you a little bit about this man, Jesus, and what he did for me and what he did for you. You see, Jesus was a man that lived over 2000 years ago. It was historically documented that he was a man that changed the course of history.

He was born in this mysterious, miraculous way to a young virgin named Mary. The account of his conception and birth wasn’t just miraculous, but was a fulfillment of the prophets of old. There are hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament that Jesus fulfilled. He was the Son of God that came to the Earth. Jesus grew, and He learned of his Father in Heaven, and He learned from his earthly father.

He taught in the temple as a boy. He learned obedience. He became a builder of both wood and of men. And when he was 30 years old, he began to teach and to preach about his father in heaven and about the kingdom of God that is available to us now. He cared about the poor and he healed the sick.

His love was endless and available to all. He taught lessons of faith and kindness in God’s ability to make things from our most humble offerings. Jesus rejected the hypocrisy of religion of the day, and He taught a higher law, the law of love, which made a lot of people angry. He had three years of preaching to the masses, teaching his disciples and perform miracles after miracle after miracle, raising the dead and healing the sick.

And it all culminated at this week of Passover, the Jewish feast that celebrated the Atonement and the freedom of Israel. There were hundreds of thousands of people that were coming to Jerusalem to celebrate this feast, and the news of his miracles spread and wide. And when he rode into route to Jerusalem on what we celebrate now is Palm Sunday.

The crowds celebrated him and sang Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But over the next two days, Jesus overturned some tables. He tussled with the religious and he continued to teach his disciples and prepare them for what was to come. On the first night of Passover, Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples and He foretold of his betrayal by one of them.

And their denial of him. He instituted the Lord’s Supper with communion for a remembrance of what he would do. Now, though, the disciples didn’t really have a clue what was going on. They listened and ate as he instructed. Jesus knew that it was the night that he would fulfill the full purpose of God. He took His disciples and He went to the Garden of Gethsemani, full of anguish and distress.

He prayed to his father. My father, If it’s possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. You see, Jesus knew what he was about to face. He knew the anguish, the pain and the distress that was coming. But he also knew why. He also saw the end. He knew that although it would be agonizing, the end was life for all mankind.

He took his disciples, and in the middle of the night, Judas showed up one of his disciples with the priest guards because he had betrayed Jesus, just as he had foretold. And they took him away and arrested him In the middle of the night. They took him to the high priests where the elders were gathered to put Jesus on trial, where they declared him guilty of blasphemy.

They bound him and brought him to pilot the Roman governor early in the morning. And although Pilate couldn’t find any fault in him, the leading priests and elders persuaded the crowd to demand that they crucified Jesus. So pilot, having washed his hands of the matter, saying his blood is not on me, his blood is on you. He ordered Jesus, to be beaten and flogged.

And he turned them over as the crowd demanded to be crucified, the Roman soldiers stripped him down. They beat him and they whipped him and they spit on him and they mocked him. And they put a crown of thorns on his head and forced him to carry a cross that was too heavy to bear to a place where he would be put to death.

And they nailed him. They nailed his hands and his feet with sticks to this cross, and they hung him between two criminals at the place they called Golgotha, which means place of the skull. The mockery and the ridicule continued from those who passed by, and hours of agony ensued as. His lungs collapsed from the weight of his body and his life drained from him until he cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And he shouted again and he released his spirit. Then a rich man later Joseph from Aramaic, who was a follower of Jesus, asked for his body and he took him and he buried him in a tomb. But three days later, early on a Sunday morning, as the day was just dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to visit the.

And when they were coming, there was a great earthquake and the Angel of the Lord came and he rolled aside the stone from the tomb of Jesus. And the guards shook with feared when they saw it and the angel spoke to the woman, Don’t be afraid. Jesus is risen from the grave. Jesus is risen from the dead just as he said it would happen.

Go and tell all of the others he’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive. And that Luke 24, 46 and 47, when Jesus appeared later to the disciples, he said thus It is written. And thus it is necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations.

To all the nations you see, he died so that he could rise, so that we could have remission and redemption from our sins, so we could have full restoration of relation with the father. You see, we were held dead in our sins. But Christ, but Christ came and He died. That horrible death so that He could bring us life, so he could bring us hope.

So we wouldn’t have to taste death, so we wouldn’t have to experience the agony of sin and the destruction that it causes. That’s what my Jesus did for me. He is risen. That’s What my Jesus did for you. But God demonstrated his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died.

For us, this is the greatest expression of love in the history of humanity. God sending his son to Earth to die so that we could have life so that we could be free. In him, We have redemption through his blood and forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. You see,

he came to bring redemption.

He came to bring us full, complete, not halfway redemption and praying about this week and this weekend and the service today. I could not get away from this word redemption. I couldn’t escape it. Everywhere I turned around, it popped up. I was in a conference in Orange County. It popped up. I was reading the scriptures, popped up in conversations at our Wednesday night.

Engage it pops up. God is in the business of redeeming mankind. God purposed for us not to walk in the way that we were walking in. But you bring us full redemption. So today I want to I want to talk about a few things, and I believe that God is asking us some questions about redemption. What Is redemption.

Do we actually really understand what redemption is? Why do we need redemption and what do we do with it when we get it? See, Ephesians one seven told us in heaven we have redemption. We have we OC, we have redemption through his blood. All that Jesus did, the death that He died on the cross, the blood that was shed was to bring us to redemption.

So what is redemption? Redemption is deliverance to ransom in full, to release redeemed means to purchase back home, to liberate or rescue from captivity or bondage, or from an obligation or liability to purchase back. You see, when God created man in the beginning, he created man in full relationship with the desire to walk so close in relationship side by side.

And that is what he desires. When Adam sinned and the fall in the garden occurred that was separated. That’s why God sent Jesus to bring the redemption, the pain back of the price of sin, so that we could have full restoration of relationship. Redeem means to exchange exchange one thing for another. Jesus is death for my life. An exchange.

The words redeem in ransom. Both mean to buy back, but redeemed has this wider application because it means to regain possession of not like buy it back and leave it there to regain possession of to redeem one’s property. Ransom is to redeem a person from captivity by paying a stipulated price or to redeem from sin by sacrifice the like.

Some theological lexicon defines redemption as the act of freeing or the state being freed from bondage, or the states of being freed from bondage. You see, this word redemption was actually a word used primarily in trade and commerce. One theological dictionary describes the word redemption with the essential point that it confers both an actual and a legal established freedom, ensuring against any renewal of slavery.

And this means that it is to violate the meaning of the term redemption for those have been redeemed to ever again be subject to the slavery in which they were redeemed. From that never again legally, never again subject to the slavery that they have been redeemed from. Redemption is most basic form and basic meaning of the time is a ransom or purchase out of bondage or obligation.

It was a term used primarily in the slave trade to describe the purchase of a slave’s freedom. Now, I find it interesting. I’ve been a Christian a long time and the word redemption is used a lot. Yet I find it interesting that in my cultural world, in my everyday life, the word redemption has little relevance for me to really, truly grasp the gravity and the entirety of what it means.

It’s only theoretical. So I’ve never experienced a physical slavery. I don’t know anybody that is experienced a physical slavery in a legal sense. But we have to understand we have to understand what is happening there. You know, at the time, slavery was universal. It was universal in the ancient world, and a really high percentage of the population were slaves.

Yeah. It is estimated that at the time of the Roman Empire, there were 60 million slaves. 60 million? It’s widely believed that it was so widespread that one in two people were slaves, one in two half the population were enslaved in the Roman Empire. They constituted the workforce and included domestic slaves and servants, manual labor, educated people, doctors, administrators, Slaves could be inherited or purchased or acquired in a settlement of bad debt.

Slavery could take on the form of debt slavery in which people sold themselves or their children to clear a debt. They were those born in slavery. They were those enslaved as prisoners of war. Nobody questioned it, nobody challenged it. It was a fact of the economic life of the time. So therefore, I think it’s safe to say that every person that heard Jesus or Paul talk about redemption knew exactly what it meant.

The act of freeing or the state of being freed from bondage, such as that of a prisoner of or slave by payment of a ransom. Everybody knew it, and they understood the magnitude of the life altering event that occurred when someone was redeemed. That, and I don’t know that we can totally wrap our heads around it and our current cultural context, but the magnitude is huge.

Everything about the life of that person changed that day. Every legal right that they didn’t have, they had everything that was taken away from them. They now had the ability to go get over themselves. They had every ability to walk into their own lives and not be owned by somebody else. That is huge. If you are somebody that has been in that kind of state and you are taken out of it and someone’s said, I’m going to pay for you.

I’m not going to make you come and serve me. I’m going to just redeem you. I’m going to take you out of that place of slavery and bondage. And I’m just to let you go free. I’m not doing it for anything of my own or anything of my own strength or anything on my own agenda. I’m doing it so you can be free.

That is life altering. That is a life altering moment. And everybody that heard redemption knew what that meant. It’s funny that the Bible uses this ugly reality to describe a beautiful truth that Jesus accomplished on the cross on Resurrection Day. But When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman born under the law, so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ who gave himself a ransom for all the testimony given at proper time. And Jesus himself said it in Mark 1045, for even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life ransom.

For many, yes, you see the mission of Jesus. His life was a work of ransom and redemption in which his own life was the price that would be given in the stead of many sinners whose freedom he purchased. He purchased. So why? Why do I need this redemption? This is a predicament that each of us find ourselves in. The Scripture says that Christ came to redeem his people from the bondage of their slavery to purchase out of the slave market of sin by the payment of his own life. You see, we live in a world that is full of sin. We live in a world consumed with pride and lust and selfish ambition, a world fueled by the pleasures of sin, a world filled with depression, anxiety and torment and hopelessness and brokenness and trauma. We live in a world that brings constant condemnation, who never lets us move past our worst moments but wants to define us by them who keeps us in a state of brokenness. That’s why I need redemption. But so often people don’t realize that they need redemption. They don’t want to accept their need for it. They don’t want to admit that what they’re doing might be wrong. They don’t want to accept that maybe they aren’t enough in and of themselves that they’re not strong enough. They say that I’m a good person. I don’t need Jesus, but there’s no such thing as a good person that does bad occasionally. There’s no such thing as a good person that does bad things occasionally. Okay? There is no such thing as a casual relationship with sin. None. Sin only leads to death. And the only way to be freed from the power of sin and death is through the cross of Jesus, through the redemption that his blood purchased for us. So often people don’t understand what redemption is worth and what it is capable of. They don’t understand the power that is contained in the blood of Christ, because like I said before, redemption is a full release and freedom from all bondage, full release and freedom from all bondage. This changes everything to truly understand the gravity and the magnitude of the life changing, life altering truth of being completely free will change everything about you. The redemption that Christ purchased on the cross was not just to keep us from going to hell, although that is an awesome and amazing and wonderful thing, it is just the beginning. So what do we do with redemption? Redemption is the full power of God on display and the full power of God manifested inside of me, in through me on display in my every day. Like I said, it is the state of being free. Now, let me break this down even a little bit more palatable. The state of being. There’s a definition for that the state of being a state of being is a quality of your present existence. States of beings are qualities, not goals. At it is your present existence. It is your present. Being happy isn’t an achievement. It’s a state that. So instead of treating freedom and redemption like a goal, we must treat it as a state of being my present state because of the price and the ransom that purchased that freedom. So if we have redemption through the death of Christ, the that he shed and the victory he possessed when he rose from the grave, then we start from a place of freedom. We are not trying to achieve it. We start from there. Freedom isn’t something that we have to strive for. It’s something that we can live in and it changes everything. It’s who you are. It’s Christ inside of you. It’s the freedom that He bought. So what do we do with this redemption? This redemption? That is an exchange. What’s it all about today? Isaiah 53. Start in verse three. This is a prophecy from Isaiah. Thousands of years before Jesus came around and starting in verse three and says, Speaking of Jesus, his death, he says he was despised and rejected. A man of sorrows acquainted with deep grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way and he was despised and we did not care. Yet it was in. It was our weakness that he carried. It was our sorrows that him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins. But he was pierced for our rebellion. He was pierced for our rebellion. He was crushed for our sins. He was crushed for my sins. He Was beaten so that we could be whole. He was whipped so that we could be healed. All of us like sheep. Straight away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all. He was oppressed and treated harshly. Yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep in silence before the shearers, he did not open his mouth, unjustly condemned. He was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short. But he was struck down for the rebellion of many people. He had done no wrong and received and never deceived anyone. But he was buried like criminal. He was put in a rich man’s grave. But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life was made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord’s good plan will prosper at his hands. When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience of my righteous service, will servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all of their sins. Jesus made it possible for us to be righteous because He took on all of our sins. He paid the price. He redeemed us. He brought us out of a place of slavery. He brought us out of a place of bondage. And he exchanged his life for mine. He said, Your life is so valuable. I’m willing to put it all down so that you can live righteous, so that you can live in peace. So you can live whole. He was the exchange. So anybody ever used a gift card? So anybody ever tried to use a Lowes gift card safely? It cannot be redeemed anywhere else or for anything else other than what it was purchased for. You see, God is the only place that we can redeem what Jesus purchased for us. Eternal life was purchased by Jesus, and when we come to God, we can redeem that gift. But that’s just the beginning. I have a weakness. Jesus purchased strength. Redeem It. I have sickness. Jesus purchased healing. Redeem it, bring it to the Father. It’s a finished work. Redeem it. I’m full of grief and sorrow. But Jesus purchased joy and beauty every time it I’m broken And Jesus purchased wholeness. See what Jesus did today, 2000 years ago purchased our lives and He finished it on a day once and for all. And he gave us everything that we need. Now, I’ve given it all to you. So why did you come to me and receive it? Maybe some of us in here have never received Jesus. Today’s a really good day to do it. Maybe some of us knew Jesus a really long time ago, and there’s been a lot of water under the bridge and there’s been a lot of things that have been wrong to you from you. But Jesus said, I purchased your life for freedom. Come and receive the whole mess that I have for you. Come and receive the life that I have for you. The future that I have for you. Come in exchange your brokenness for my wholeness. Come in, exchange those places of pain and let me feel them. It’s not just to go to heaven when we die it’s a live, a full and complete and joyous and fresh life full of his presence. He says, I have a future for you. I have a hope for you. So for those of you that have been in hopeless places and hopeless situation, God wants to save, there is hope. There is a way out. This is your day. This is your day to redeem what he purchased on the cross, to redeem, to walk in the redemption that he provided. Lord, we come to you today, Lord. We come to you, our Redeemer, the God who took me from a place of brokenness and brought me to a place of wholeness. God, we come to you today is the purpose perfect sacrifice. We come to you as a God who gave your son to die for me so that I could live and live a life of abundant only. So today, wherever we are, God, we choose to give you everything. Today we thank you for the blood that your son shed on the cross. We thank you for your death and for your resurrection to life. We thank you that you are good and that nothing can separate us from your life. We thank you for your hand of grace and of healing and of wholeness and of peace and of joy. We give you praise today. We give you honor today We give you glory today. Because there no one else more worthy. You deserve all of my worship For all that you have done for the extremes that you made. So we worship you today. Jesus forgive you, praise, give you honor. As we close, I want to invite anybody that doesn’t know Jesus to receive Him today we’ll have our pastors at the front come and meet this Jesus who brings full redemption and freedom. I want to invite those who know Jesus but need a refreshing to their souls that need that healing and that wholeness. I want to invite those that have known Jesus. But it’s been a while. Today is your day. Today is your day. It is a day of a new life. A new life. A man who men church. Bless you today. Like I said, we’re going to continue. Myself and my husband, Pastor Jonathan and other pastors will be here. Please join us. We believe in family and doing life together and we would love to share a meal with you. We have an amazing hospitality team who has provided lunch for us. So please join us across the way. But you know, if God has been picking your heart and you would like prayer, come and receive prayer. Amen.