We are in a four-week series called “I can only imagine” based off of the movie of the same name. Last week we talked about imagining a father… A perfect heavenly father who loves you a million times more than I could ever love anyone; a heavenly father who is perfect, gracious, loving and all of his dealings with us.
This amazing father offers one of the rarest commodities on the planet; forgiveness. He resets the relationship. He removes the garbage. He doesn’t pretend that the sin didn’t happen, but he covers it, he removes the shame, the embarrassment is gone, he makes the relationship what it ought to have been all along.
Today we will talk about imagining something called redemption.
Chip and Joanna Gains are killing me. Not just them but all of those programs on HGTV. Are any of you men with me on this? So these people take outdated properties and pour a ton of money into them and… Presto… Now they have their dream house! And suddenly we need a wall with ship lap on it. And better landscape. And an open concept.
There is a Bible name for stuff like that – redemption. To redeem something simply means that somebody puts up the money to buy back or to purchase something so that it can become their own. HGTV features properties that have seen better days but now they’re going to get a new chance at life.
This happens to automobiles as well. Take a look at these automobiles that have been redeemed. Pictures…
The specialty of Jesus Christ is doing this very same thing but not to property, not to automobiles, and not to furniture, but to human beings who were originally made in his image but became horribly scarred and disfigured by sin - our sin and the sins others committed against us.
Jesus is called a Redeemer because he rescues the sinner from his/her problems and dilemmas, he buys back those who have been given up on, he takes the least likely and transforms them into a trophy of his grace.
You see… Jesus is interested in…
- Your health
- your heart
- your faith
- your relationships
- what you believe
- the details of your life
- your sanity
But what we’re going to discover today is that Jesus doesn’t just redeem people but he also lays his hands and redeems every messed up thing in life.
If you watched the movie “I can only imagine” you see a picture of how God takes an angry and alcohol fueled raging man and can change not only him but also the actions of his life that harmed many people.
Only God can do something like that. That’s why we’re here today because we want God to do something like that… For you.
If old cars can be brought back to life… If old homes can be brought back to life… If old furniture can be brought back to life… Why can’t people be brought back to life?
Isn’t this part of what happened in the prodigal son story? We have focused on the prodigal son story the last two Sundays. Good father, bad son.
Good father gives bad son is inheritance.
Bad son wastes his inheritance on everything bad while good father hopes that he will come home.
Bad son ends up in a pigsty.
Bad son wakes up and feels the gravity of his sin and decides to go home.
Bad son doesn’t know what will happen when he gets home.
Good father sees bad son walking up the road and smothers him with grace and kindness and hugs and kisses.
Good father restores bad son to the family.
Good father throws a party and it’s at that party that he says this… Luke 15:23 …and let us eat and celebrate. 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’
Right there is the power that our heavenly father has called redemption – the dead live again. The lost are found again. The orphan is part of the family again. The dirty or clean again. The useless are useful again. The broken are fixed. Messes become messages. Tests become testimonies.
This morning let me paint you 4 pictures of redemption. I love these kind of messages because we’re talking about what God does and what God does is full of hope and gives us faith to trust him in the process.
Four things this morning;
1. God redeems people.
2. God redeems souls, hearts, bodies and minds.
3. God redeems your worst days.
4. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
1. God redeems people.
What is God’s response to all of us less-than-perfect people, and messed up people, and even those who seem to have gone too far?
Romans 5:20 But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. 21 So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant.
This verse talks about sin, lots of sin.
• Bad sin,
• more and more sin,
• overwhelming sin.
• Read that no matter how far….
• how deep,
• how messed up,
• how wide,
• how perverse,
• how destructive,
• how damning,
• how stupid,
• how embarrassing sin is and what it brought to your life- the condemnation, the complications, the associations, the reputation - grace goes further. It is God’s unlimited character.
Paul is saying ….If your sin is abundant, grace is more abundant.
If brought garbage in, grace will take it out and clean out the house.
If sin made a mess, grace will clean up the mess and sanitize everything
If sin has stolen everything, grace will find those stolen goods and redeem them, buying them back.
If sin has disfigured you, grace does plastic surgery and restores you
If sin has left you laying in the gutter, grace puts you in a mansion
Grace untangles the knots…
Grace puts broken things back together
God’s grace redeems you or rescues you or buys you back out of sin.
Redeeming grace is God going further than your sin.
Redeeming grace is never skimpy.
Redeeming grace is always “much more” than anything sin does to us.
Redeeming Grace is exceeding, drenching, saturating, over the top, abundant, and is quality as well as quantity.
Redeeming Grace is never about barely enough or just a little bit; redeeming grace is God always giving you everything that you need.
Do you see the incredible power of redeeming grace?
- It seeks you out while you are out of it
- It climbs over every obstacle, every sin, every degrading things, all our opposition, all our ignorance
- It pays the price
- It engages our heart and mind and makes us aware
- It gives us the faith to believe
- It does the work to recreate us
- It forgives
- It empowers us anew
- It puts us in the family
- It never brings up the past
- It creates a new future
What more can God do?
Grace in its purest form is God’s radical redeeming intervention into our lives to rescue us from darkness, to forgive us of sin and to transform us - the undeserving - into followers of Jesus. His grace delivers us the entire gift of salvation without limit and without reservation.
Grace reaches to the undeserving not to validate but to clean up the mess that sin has made. Grace is the activity of God intervening in life with God’s resources to restore us to God’s created intention.
2. God redeems souls, hearts, bodies and minds.
Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
God’s redeeming grace doesn’t and the day that that supernatural work called salvation - the day that Jesus and the Holy Spirit enter your life - what God seeks to do now is to transform you.
He is not going to leave you in the same condition he found you. He’s not going to continue to let you think the way you thought, to do what you did, to be enslaved to those addictions, or to go right back into everything your life was.
The two big words here in this passage are…
- “Let God…” That simply means that you put yourself in a position where God can do the work. The great story of Zacheuas in the Bible illustrates this; when Zak was faced with his sin he left it. He allowed the work of Jesus to not just forgive him of his sin but he left his sin.
- The other big word in this passage is “transform.” The redeeming power of God does not happen all at once. All of your bad thoughts don’t just go away. All of your bad habits don’t just go away. All of your weird beliefs don’t just go away. All of your selfishness doesn’t just go away. The transformation that God does is a changing of your mind which changes your heart which changes your behavior but it takes time for this to happen. It also takes a few other things: being in the word of God, being in the church, being in prayer, being in fellowship with other godly people, being filled with the Holy Spirit, filling your mind with the things of God.
And here is what a redeemed person looks like…
Galatians 5:22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
3. God redeems your worst days.
Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
Here is some hope and assurance that we need; that God even redeems the things that we think are irredeemable, that have no value, that could never be of any good in our life. God’s redeeming grace even covers that.
Look at Joseph in the Old Testament…
This verse doesn’t cover everybody but it certainly covers those who love God.
Grace has no boundaries: covers all the way back to the beginning and grace is so powerful that it takes us all the way to the end.
Not only that but God’s grace is so extensive that it takes all the sin that was killing us and redeems it.
Grace rules over sin and takes away its damage and turns what was bad into something called a testimony. A testimony is how what Satan was using to destroy us God is now using to destroy satan!!!
Grace makes us right…no matter how wrong we were.
Grace makes us acceptable…no matter how unworthy we were.
Grace makes us favored…no matter how unfavorable we have been.
God redeems…
- Addictions
- Wasted years
- Prison time
- Lost money
- Dumbness
- Stupidity
- Accidents
- Things done against you
4. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
Psalm 107:1 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble…
Let the redeemed of the Lord say…
- He has chosen me.
- He has rescued me.
- He lives in me.
- I live in the palm of his hand.
- He is changing me.
- He is making me.
- He is transforming me.
- His hands are on my past. He is leading me into his future.
- His grace is overflowing to me.
- His riches overflow to me.
- My needs are met by his glorious resources.
- I have joy in the Lord.
- I have a song to sing.
- He is working it out.
