For some reason, somebody decided to share this observation from George Burns with me this week:
The secret to a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.
I’m not sure that just because he played God in a couple of movies that George Burns is qualified to determine the secret to a good sermon. So although I’ll try to begin and end well today, I can’t guarantee just how close together those two elements will be.
This last Monday, our country celebrated the Martin Luther King holiday to honor the slain civil rights leader. For most of us, what we most remember about Dr. King is his famous “I Have a Dream” speech that he gave on the Washington, D.C. mall on August 28, 1963. His speech ended with these words:
So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside.
Let freedom ring,
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."
This morning, as we continue our basic training in the Book of Ephesians, we’re going to focus on freedom. And while the kind of freedom that Dr. King envisioned is certainly a worthwhile goal, the kind of freedom that Paul writes about in our passage today is far more significant.
But before we look at that passage, let’s take a moment to quickly review our training from the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, we saw that we have been set apart by God for salvation, for service and for spiritual blessings. And then last week, we began to look at some of those spiritual blessings. So before we go any further, let’s see how well we’re doing on our Scripture memory. Let’s see how well we can remember the first six verses from the last two weeks:
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 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 chose 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 his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Ephesians 1:1-6 (NIV)
You’ll remember that in Greek verses 3-14 comprise the longest sentence in the Bible. And in that one sentence Paul describes for us the spiritual blessings that God pours into our lives. One of the interesting things about those blessings is that we can clearly see the differing roles of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in bringing those blessings to us. While it may be true that the Bible never uses the word “trinity”, we can clearly see the work of the Triune God in these verses.
Last week we began looking at these spiritual blessings and we very clearly saw the work of God the Father in pouring out these spiritual blessings into our lives. It is God the Father who has chosen us to be holy and blameless and who has predestined us to be part of His family. I hope you’ve taken some time this week to think about that some more and to just humble yourselves before God and thank Him for choosing us in spite of the fact that we are all undeserving.
In those verses we have also seen several references to the fact that all that God the Father has done for us has been done through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. But for the next two weeks, the work of God the Son is going to come into even sharper focus in verses 7-12. And then in a couple of weeks, we’ll focus on the work of God the Holy Spirit in verses 13-14.
So once again, let’s see how we’re doing on our Scripture memory. Let’s see how well we do on verses 7-10 before Dave puts them on the screen:
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 his 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 on earth together under one head, even Christ.
Ephesians 1:7-10 (NIV)
If we wanted to boil last week’s message down into just one word, that key word would be “election.” That word describes for us the role of God the Father in showering us with spiritual blessings. Completely apart from our own works or our worth, God chose us to be part of his family and He accomplished that by pouring His grace into our lives. That’s election.
This week, if we want to boil the message down to just one key word, that word would have to be redemption.
Key word = redemption
Unfortunately, that’s not a word that we use very often in our culture today, so it’s very possible that many of us don’t have a real good idea of what the word means. But to Paul’s readers, the meaning of the word was very clear to them. The concept of redemption had its roots in the Old Testament, where it describes the release of slaves as well as Israel’s release from bondage in Egypt. The particular word that Paul uses here in verse 7 means to “be loosed, set free, or delivered by the payment of a price”
“redemption” = to be loosed, set free or delivered by the payment of a price
Probably the closest thing we have to redemption in our culture today is a pawn shop. If you’re short on cash, you can take something of value down to a pawn shop and they will give you an amount of cash that is well below the value of that particular item. Then you have a certain amount of time to go back and redeem that item by paying a price – usually the amount of cash you received plus a hefty interest charge. Before you redeem the item, it still belongs to you, but it is encumbered and you are not free to use or enjoy that item. But once you pay the redemption price you are once again free to use that item as you choose.
In these verses, Paul describes the price, the process and the purpose of our redemption. But before we look at those three aspects of our redemption, we need to ask an even more basic question:
Why do I need to be redeemed?
Jesus answered that question one day when He was teaching in the Temple courts:
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:31-36 (NIV)
Although Jesus doesn’t use the word “redemption” here, His words certainly reflect the concept of redemption. Paul is going to go into this much more in Chapter 2, but the Bible is clear that when we are born into this world as sinners, we are slaves to our sin. So, in order to become part of God’s family, I have to be set free from my sin – I need to be redeemed.
I need to be redeemed because I am a slave to sin.
And the only way that is possible is for someone else to pay that redemption price for me since I’m incapable of paying it on my own. It’s as if my soul is in hock at the spiritual pawn shop and I just don’t have the ability to make the payment that needs to be made. So someone else has to make that payment on my behalf. That process of redemption is what Paul is describing here in these four verses. He very clearly describes three aspects of my redemption.
Three aspects of my redemption:
• The price of redemption – the blood of Jesus
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins…
“Him” in this verse refers back to the end of verse 6, where Paul calls Jesus “the One God loved”. So it is only in Jesus that we have redemption. He is the one who paid the redemption price on our behalf. Paul makes that clear in several other passages of Scripture as well:
…You are not your own; you were bought at a price…
1 Corinthians 6:19, 20 (NIV)
You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.
1 Corinthians 7:23 (NIV)
And what is the price that was paid to free us from slavery to sin? The blood of Jesus Christ. Peter writes about the price of our redemption as well:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
1 Peter 1:18, 19 (NIV)
When Paul and Peter write about the blood of Christ, they are not saying that the physical blood itself has any mystical or magical properties that provides for our redemption. The phrase “the blood of Christ” is just a phrase that is used to describe the painful, agonizing, bloody death of Jesus on the cross.
That is the only possible way that our sins could have been forgiven and that we could have been freed from our slavery to sin. There is certainly no way that we could have ever paid the redemption price on our own. So, because of God’s love for us, His Son died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and redeem us from slavery to our sin.
One other observation before we move to the next aspect. Notice that the verb used here, “we have”, is in the present tense. That is significant. If you’ll notice, all the other verbs we have seen beginning in verse 3 have been past tense – “God…has blessed”, “he chose”, “he predestined”, he has freely given”. That is to stress that our spiritual blessings have already been made available to us through the completed work of Jesus on the cross. But the fact that we “have” – present tense – redemption indicates that redemption is a benefit that we experience now, not just in the future.
There is a tendency to think that redemption is all about the future. Jesus paid the redemption price so that my sins can be forgiven and I can spend eternity in the presence of a holy God. That is certainly true. But there is a present day aspect to redemption, too. Because Jesus paid the price, I am free – right now – from slavery to sin. That certainly doesn’t mean I’ll never sin again. I’m still human and have my flesh nature. But it does mean that I have the tools at my disposal so that I don’t have to sin. Before I accepted the redemption that Jesus officered I couldn’t help but sin. That was my nature and I was a slave to sin.
Radio personality Paul Harvey tells the story of how an Eskimo kills a wolf. The account is grisly, yet it offers fresh insight into the consuming, self-destructive nature of sin. "First, the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. Then he adds another layer of blood, and another, until the blade is completely concealed by frozen blood. "Next, the hunter fixes his knife in the ground with the blade up. When a wolf follows his sensitive nose to the source of the scent and discovers the bait, he licks it, tasting the fresh frozen blood.
He begins to lick faster, more and more vigorously, lapping the blade until the keen edge is bare. Feverishly now, harder and harder the wolf licks the blade in the arctic night. So great becomes his craving for blood that the wolf does not notice the razor-sharp sting of the naked blade on his own tongue, nor does he recognize the instant at which his insatiable thirst is being satisfied by his OWN warm blood. His carnivorous appetite just craves more--until the dawn finds him dead in the snow!"
That’s a picture of what we were like before our redemption. But the blood of Christ redeems us so that we no longer are slaves to our own lusts.
• The process of redemption – God’s grace
…in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
Last week, we saw that God pours out His grace on us. We compared it to a winning football team pouring the Gatorade bucket on the coach – nothing is held back. Paul gives us another similar picture of God’s grace here. He writes that God lavished us with His grace.
God’s grace is the process by which He makes redemption possible for his children. Once again Paul reinforces the principal that every spiritual blessing that we have in Christ is not a result of our own merit or our works. They are 100% dependent on the grace of God. But Paul goes even further this time. He writes that along with God’s grace, God also lavishes on us wisdom and understanding.
What Paul implies here is that part of God’s grace is giving us the ability to understand and apply the things of God. In a similar passage in Colossians Paul prays that God would pour out this aspect of His grace on believers:
For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
Colossians 1:9 (NIV)
And a little later on in Ephesians 1, Paul is going to pray that the believers in Ephesus would cultivate this aspect of God’s grace so that they can know God better.
It is the wisdom and understanding that come to us when God lavishes His grace on us that allows us to understand the mystery that Paul writes about in the following verses. And that leads us to the third aspect of redemption:
• The purpose of redemption – restoration
And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his 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 on earth together under one head, even Christ.
I’m one of those people who have always loved a good mystery. When I was a teenager, I used to love to read the Agatha Christie mysteries. And even today, I enjoy shows like CSI because of the mystery of trying to figure out who the culprit is. But that’s not the kind of mystery that Paul is writing about here.
When Paul uses the word “mystery” in his writings, it almost always refers to something that God had not revealed in the past, but which he has now chosen to reveal. Here’s an example from one of Paul’s other letters:
Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him…
Romans 16:25, 26 (NIV)
Notice how Paul describes “mystery” here. It is something that was “hidden for long ages past”, but “now revealed and made known”. And that mystery is very clearly referring to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, God’s plan for Jesus Christ to redeem us is a plan that was not fully made known until Jesus Christ came to this earth, died on a cross and rose from the dead. Although there were hints of that plan in the Old Testament, that plan could not have been fully known by man until Jesus actually carried out the plan.
This week I read an interesting story about Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes was a doctor. As such he was very interested in the use of ether. In order to know how his patients felt under its influence, he once had a dose administered to himself.
As he was going under, in a dreamy state, a profound thought came to him. He believed that he had suddenly grasped the key to all the mysteries of the universe. When he regained consciousness, however, he was unable to remember what the insight was.
Because of the great importance this thought would be to mankind, Holmes arranged to have himself given either again. This time he had a stenographer present to take down the great thought. The either was administered, and sure enough, just before passing out the insight reappeared. He mumbled the words, the stenographer took them down, and he went to sleep confident in the knowledge that he had succeeded.
Upon awakening, he turned eagerly to the stenographer and asked her to read what he had uttered. This is what she read: "The entire universe is permeated with a strong odor of turpentine."
Man has long tried to determine and explain the mysteries of the universe, but Paul writes that it was God’s will to make this mystery known to us by lavishing us with His grace and the wisdom and understanding that comes along with it. At first glance, this mystery, this plan of God, seems to be limited to the idea of redeeming us from the slavery of sin and providing for the forgiveness of our sins. But in these two verses, we find that is just part of a much larger plan that God has in mind.
God’s overall plan is to bring everything in heaven and on earth together under the headship of Jesus Christ. Up until now, Paul has used the phrase “in Christ” and several equivalent phrases to show that God’s Son is the one in whom we have been blessed. But here, Paul makes it clear that Jesus is not just the means, or the instrument of our redemption. He is, in fact, the focal point of all of the created order.
The verb which is translated “bring…together” in verse 10 is a word that is only used one other place in the Scriptures. Let’s take a look at that verse to see if we can’t get a better understanding of what Paul is writing about here in Ephesians.
The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
Romans 13:9 (NIV)
You’ll notice that I’ve underlined the words “summed up” in this verse. That is the same Greek word translated “bring together” in Ephesians. From the context here, we can see that the word carries the idea of bringing something to the main point or to sum up. So when we apply that to the passage in Ephesians we see that God’s plan for Jesus to be the focal point or the summation of everything in the created order.
So God’s plan of redemption includes the restoration of the created order to the way it was before sin entered into the world and destroyed the perfect harmony that existed. Paul described that initial state in his letter to the Colossians:
For by him [Jesus] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:16, 17 (NIV)
You can’t help but notice here several parallels to Paul’s words in Ephesians. He writes about things in heaven and things on earth. And at creation Jesus held all those things together. But man’s sin ruined that perfect harmony. God knew, however, that would happen and He had a plan to restore everything to the way that it was intended to be under the headship and authority of Jesus. That’s the plan of redemption that he has made known to us through lavishing us with his grace and its related wisdom and understanding.
Although this plan has been put into action, it is quite clear from this passage, and from our own observations, that this plan has not yet reached its final consummation. That will only happen “when the times will have reached their fulfillment.” Although we can’t know the timing of when that we occur, we can be assured that God will indeed bring all things together under the headship of Christ and that He will restore His creation to perfect harmony.
It is only then, that we will truly be able to say, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."
