Tom carried his new toy boat to the edge of the river. He carefully placed it in the water and slowly let out the string.
He was amazed how smoothly the boat sailed! Tom sat in the warm sunshine, admiring the little boat that he had built.
Suddenly a strong current caught the boat. Tom tried to pull it back to shore, but the string broke. The little boat raced downstream.
Tom ran along the sandy shore as fast as he could. But his little boat soon slipped out of sight. All afternoon he searched for the boat.
Finally, when it was too dark to look any longer, Tom sadly went home.
A few days later, on the way home from school, Tom spotted a boat just like his in a store window. When he got closer, he could see—sure enough—it was his!
Tom hurried to the store manager: “Sir, that’s my boat in your window! I made it!”
“Sorry, son, but someone else brought it in this morning. If you want it, you’ll have to buy it for $50.”
Tom ran home and counted all his money. Exactly $50 When he reached the store, he rushed to the counter. “Here’s the money for my boat.”
As he left the store, Tom hugged his boat and said, “Now you’re twice mine.
First, I made you and now I bought you.” Good News Publishers, Westchester, IL
Our topic for today is redemption. That is the focus of today’s passage, and so we want to spend some time exploring what it means that you and I are redeemed when we come in faith to Jesus Christ.
Before we get into the meat of today’s passage, I thought it would be good to talk a bit about the book of Ephesians and why it’s important for us to study it together over these next many months.
Today’s is the 2nd message in a series on the Letter or Epistle to the Ephesians.
I do want to say that in this series on Ephesians we will take a number of different approaches to the messages, so it won’t get predictable or boring.
We will have different speakers: for example Bill Ryan is speaking next week, who will take a variety of approaches to the series.
Today is more of a teaching message to try to launch us into the book, so I hope you are ready to pay attention. And I hope that you might even take notes.
There’s a place in the bulletin for you to take notes, and if you have any questions at all about the messages over the next months, including today’s, I really hope you will ask them.
You can talk to me or each speaker after each service, or you can email or call me during the week.
The book of Ephesians is a beautiful letter, filled with profound and inspiring Words from God.
It soars to great heights when it speaks of Jesus and the life he has created for us through his suffering and death and resurrection.
It shares with the book of Philippians a lot of focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ.
And it addresses human problems that take up a lot of space in books like Galatians.
The book of Ephesians has been called “The Queen of the Epistles”, and that’s a good way to think of it. It is a stunning and moving letter, written by Paul from a dank, disgusting, smelly prison.
It was in prison, and in fact very near to the end of his life where he would be, according to Christian tradition, beheaded for his faith, that Paul wrote Ephesians.
“Ephesians is connected with Paul’s letter to the Colossians which is all about the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
In Jesus Christ were hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col.2:3); all the fulness of God dwelt in him (Col.1:19); in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily (Col.2:9); he alone is necessary and sufficient for man's salvation (Col.1:14).
The whole thought of Colossians is based on the complete sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
“The thought of Ephesians is a development of that idea”. It really addresses a problem in all of creation as well as a very personal problem that you and I have. The Bible says that creation is broken. It says that humanity is broken.
19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope21 that[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Romans 8
So creation is broken, in bondage to decay. Creation groans. Natural disasters are a sign of that brokenness, more so than than they are any expression of God’s direct will or even of His power.
Another way to understand this is to simply consider God‘s nature. His will is not to destroy, but to give life. His will is NOT that any should perish. This helps us to understand perhaps just how broken creation is.
William Barclay says this: “The key thought of Ephesians is the gathering together of all things in Jesus Christ.
“Man's (fallenness) has broken the social union which should exist between man and the beasts; man is divided from man; class from class; nation from nation; ideology from ideology; Gentile from Jew. What is true of the world of outer nature is true of human nature.
“In every person there is a tension; every man is a walking civil war, torn between the desire for good and the desire for evil; he hates his sins and loves them at one and the same time.
...Worst of all there is disharmony between God and humanity.
“Humankind, who was meant to be in fellowship with God, is estranged from him...That disunity is not God's purpose but it can become a unity only when all things are united in Christ.
“As E. F. Scott has it: "The innumerable broken strands were to be brought together in Christ, knotted again into one, as they had been in the beginning."
The main idea of Ephesians is the disunity in the universe and the truth that it can become unity only when everything is united in Christ.
That’s a lot of words. For anyone who tuned out during that, you can come back now and I’ll summarize: ‘without the presence of God in Christ, without Jesus, all of life is a mess.
That Jesus is so important and essential to life that we shouldn’t really be surprised at this. In Jesus, the is harmony and beauty and hope and life’. In today's message, we’re going to unpack this
“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”.
What do you and I have in Jesus? What is the main good thing about living our lives as followers of Jesus?
You and I have redemption. What does that mean?
? the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.
? the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt.
When the word Redemption is found in the Bible, it means a freeing or releasing that happens because of a payment of ransom. It means:
A. redemption, deliverance
B. liberation procured by the payment of a ransom
In Jesus we have an exchange that is made. His life on the cross for our life. It is a beautiful exchange. It’s beautiful because Jesus motive is only love.
It’s only His desire for us to be near Him that motivates Him. It was God’s love for humanity that led to Jesus willingly going to the cross for you and for me.
And this redemption comes to us through His blood. This can be hard to understand unless we’re a bit familiar with the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible.
In Leviticus 17:11 is the Old Testament’s central statement about the significance of blood in the sacrificial system.
God, speaking to Moses, declares: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” Leviticus 17:11
There are then a great many more details and examples given of how the people of Israel would offer sacrifices to atone for sins.
In the most holy place of the tabernacle, the priests would offer the sacrifices on behalf of the people.
We don’t have time to look closely at what the book of Hebrews has to say about this, but I’ll say that Hebrews 9:11-18 confirms the symbolism of blood as life and applies Leviticus 17:11 to the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It says that the Old Testament blood sacrifices were temporary and only atoned for sin partially and for a short time, thus the need to repeat the sacrifices yearly.
But when Christ entered the Most Holy Place, He did so to offer His own blood once for all time, making future sacrifices unnecessary. This is what Jesus meant by His dying words on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Never again would the blood of bulls and goats cleanse men from their sin.
You and I, by accepting Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, can stand before God covered in the righteousness of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).
What does this mean for you? It means that you, if you are a follower of Jesus, have been redeemed. It means your sins are forgiven.
And this is no small thing. Please know that this is no small thing. This is all because of the lavish love of God. At one time your sins separated you from God.
This was our condition before Jesus came. (Photo of Chasm)
Those who were baptized last week were baptized knowing that this is the fundamental problem between humanity and God. God is utterly and completely holy.
Sin is a devastating breach in our relationship with God. We can’t get to God by ourselves from where we are now.
There isn’t any amount of good things, good deeds we can do to bridge this gap, to fill this chasm. The gap is too deep.
(Photo of cross over chasm)
But Jesus, because of the lavish love of God, made a beautiful exchange for us, laying down His life on the cross.
These are images that try to convey the reality of the enormity of what God has done for you through Jesus.
Here’s another image.
We can understand that what we could not do for ourselves, God did for us. And again, He had one reason for doing this. He loves you.
And because He loves you He lavishes the gift of forgiveness on you, and He does so not with the snap of His fingers, which would only seem like magic to us, and not really any kind of proof of God’s love.
He does so by the laying down of His life on the cruel cross, rejected and beaten and slaughtered on the cross by humanity.
And the end result is our adoption by the One Who has saved us into the family of God.
There is a story of an orphaned boy who was living with his grandmother. One day their house caught fire.
The grandmother, trying to get upstairs to rescue the boy, perished in the flames. The boy’s cries for help were finally answered by a man who climbed an iron drainpipe and came back down with the boy hanging tightly to his neck.
Several weeks later, a public hearing was held to determine who would receive custody of the child.
A farmer, a teacher, and the town’s wealthiest citizen all gave the reasons they felt they should be chosen to give the boy a home.
But as they talked, the lad’s eyes remained focused on the floor.
Then a stranger walked to the front and slowly took his hands from his pockets, revealing severe scars on them.
As the crowd gasped, the boy cried out in recognition. This was the man who had saved his life. His hands had been burned when he climbed the hot pipe.
With a leap the boy threw his arms around the man’s neck and held on for dear life.
The other men silently walked away, leaving the boy and his rescuer alone. Those marred hands had settled the issue.
Many voices are calling for our attention. Among them is the One whose nail-pierced hands remind us that He has rescued us from sin and its deadly consequences. To Him belongs our love and devotion.
John’s gospel says this: 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
So yes, to all who receive Him, He gives the right to become children of God. So you and you and you are a child of God.
Jesus is the one and Only begotten Son of God. The rest of us, well the Bible says we were chosen.
Barbara and I love our children. We would do anything for them. But we didn’t chose our children. They were born to us.
Jesus was born on this earth as the Son of God.
You and me...we were picked out of a line up. We were, the Bible says, adopted.
4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 6 Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba,[c] Father.” Galatians 4:4-6
The original language here uses sons and sonship. Doing let that trip you up. It’s about the fact that all of us, female and male, are God’s children.
And actually the language of sonship does have importance in the culture that these words were written in.
7 So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir. The son was always the heir. The inheritor of all things belonging to the father.
Next in today’s passage we have this:
With all wisdom and understanding, 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 reach their fulfillment —to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. Ephesians 1:7-10
So in Jesus Christ, God will bring to unity, to accord, to harmony everything under the sun, including us, including creation which awaits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.
Colossians 1 says this: 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
This speaks of the kingdom of God, both here now and not yet. It is present within us - Jesus said the kingdom off God is within us as believers - and we await its final coming in glory.
The question perhaps is ‘what will we do as we wait?’ Well, I hope that it’s become clear, if it wasn’t already clear to you, that as you trust in Jesus’ suffering and death for you, you can have a deep assurance that your sins are forgiven.
There is no chasm, no distance now between you and God.
You have direct access through prayer and worship to the throne of God. He hears your prayer as the prayer of His beloved child.
He hears your prayer as the petition, the intercession, the cries of one for whom Jesus gave his life. This is part of the understanding of “the Kingdom of God is in your midst”, as Jesus said in Luke 17:21.
I hope that makes us want to worship. I hope that makes us want to live in the freedom and anointing of a beloved child of the most high God. You have received Jesus as your Lord and SavIour.
That means that you have the right to be called a child of God. This is your lineage, your heritage, your destiny.
To know Him and to love Him and to live your life in the light of the redemption and forgiveness that Jesus won for you on that cross of shame, which has become for us the sign of God's grace and mercy in our lives.
Let’s pray. Father God we thank you for your love and mercy expressed in Your choice to redeem us through Jesus suffering and death on the cross. We thank
You that You have adopted into the family of God each person here who has received You as their Lord and Saviour.
May we live understanding the freedom You have won for us, Lord Jesus and may we use that freedom to serve You and honour You in all our relationships and for all of our days on this earth.
This we ask in the perfect name of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
