I Stand Redeemed Series

I Stand Redeemed

I Peter 1:18-23

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- A gathering of friends at an English estate nearly turned to tragedy when one of the children strayed into deep water. The gardener heard the cries for help, plunged in, and rescued the drowning child. That youngster's name was Winston Churchill. His grateful parents asked the gardener what they could do to reward him. He hesitated, then said, "I wish my son could go to college someday and become a doctor." "We'll see to it," Churchill's parents promised. Years later, while Sir Winston was prime minister of England, he was stricken with pneumonia. The country's best physician was summoned. His name was Dr. Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered and developed penicillin. He was also the son of that gardener who had saved young Winston from drowning. Later Churchill remarked, "Rarely has one man owed his life twice to the same person." (Ron Hutchcraft, Wake Up Calls, Moody, 1990, p. 22.)

- Like Churchill I owe my life twice to the same person. My Heavenly Father gave me life and then gave me eternal life. You see the first time I was born I was conceived in sin and born in iniquity. I was on a path that led to condemnation and there was NOTHING I could do to change that. But God in His abundant mercy sought me and bought me with the precious blood of His dear Son. As I stand before you today, I Stand Redeemed!

"When I think of all my faults and my failures"

"When I consider all the times I let God down"

"I am humbled at the grace He has extended"

"I'm amazed at the mercy I have found"

"I could never earn His love on my own"

"Yet every time I come before His throne"

"I stand redeemed, by the blood of the Lamb"

"I stand redeemed before the great I Am"

"When He looks at me, He sees the nailed scarred Hands"

"That bought my liberty -- I stand redeemed"

(I Stand Redeemed, as sung by Legacy Five)

Praise God for redemption! It is that redemption that The Apostle Peter wrote about here in I Peter 1:18-25. I would like to walk through these verses and preach about the fact that "I Stand Redeemed". I hope and pray that you too can say "I Stand Redeemed". But if you can't say that at this moment... stick with me for a little while and I will show you that redemption is possible for you today! Let's begin in verse 18 and examine:

I. THE PLAN OF REDEMPTION - v18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;

- God the Father created a perfect world. He created man and woman and placed them in "The Garden of Eden". God commanded them not to eat of "the tree of knowledge of good and evil" . God warned Adam that if he did, he would surly die. Satan came and tempted Adam and Adam failed, and from that very moment death and decay came into the perfect world that God had given man. For this reason we are guilty sinners as well - Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

- God by His nature cannot be in the presence of sin and disobedience.And there is a penalty for sin and it is punishable by death. It is only through God's plan of redemption that we have any hope of one day living with Him. God knew that we would need a redeemer even before the fall of man in the Garden.In fact He knew this "before the foundation of the world" . This truth is revealed in - v20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world,

- We needed a Redeemer to remove the curse. We needed a Savior to reconcile us back to God. God Himself gave us that redeemer in the person of His only Son Jesus Christ. Redemption is defined as - the process of buying back someone from bondage by the payment of a price; to set free by paying a ransom. More specifically it is the price Jesus paid to free us from the bondage of sin - Romans 3:24 says (we are) "justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus"

- When we hear the term "redemption" we automatically think about it in the theological sense. But for the people Peter was writing to it had a more practical implication. There were millions of slaves in the Roman empire. Some were born that way and some had been enslaved when Rome conquered their land. A slave had no freedom... he was another person's property. Redemption was something they all longed for. There was nothing that they desired more than to be "redeemed" and set free from their bondage. Each of us were born into this world as slaves of sin. We had no liberty...no freedom... no rights of our own. And there was nothing we could to change our circumstances. But God had A Plan Of Redemption! Not only did God have a plan for redemption, Our Heavenly Father paid a great price.