Redeemed - Oh Yes! Series

INTRO.- Redeemed - Oh yes! Don’t you just love this title?

ILL.- A little boy had made a little boat, all painted and fixed up beautifully. One day someone stole his boat, and he was distressed. In passing a pawnshop one day he saw his boat. Happily he ran in to the pawnbroker and said, "That is my little boat." "No," said the pawnbroker, "it is mine, for I bought it." "Yes," said the boy, "but it is mine, because I made it." "Well," said the pawnbroker, "if you will pay me two dollars, you can have it."

That was a lot of money for a boy who did not have a penny. Anyway he resolved to have it; so he cut grass, did chores of all kinds, and soon had his money.

He ran down to the shop and said, "I want my boat." He paid the money and got his boat. He picked it up, and hugged and kissed it, and said, "You dear little boat, I love you. You are mine. You are twice mine. I made you, and now I have bought you."

Doesn’t this story sound familiar? Doesn’t it sound like what has happened to us in life? We are twice the Lord’s possession! He made us but then we got sold to the devil. Later, Jesus came along and paid for us with His own death on the cross. Now we are twice His! God said, "I made you and now I bought you!"

ILL.- Dr. A. J. Gordon was the preacher of a church in Boston many years ago. One day he met a little boy out in front of the church. The boy was carrying a rusty bird cage in his hands and several little birds were fluttering around on the bottom of the cage, as if they knew they were going to be destroyed.

Dr. Gordon said, “Son, where did you get those birds?” The boy answered, “I trapped them out in the field.” “What are you going to do with them?” the preacher asked.

“I’m going to take them home and play with them and have some fun with them.” “What will you do with them when you get through playing with them?” Dr. Gordon asked. “Oh,” said the boy, “I guess I’ll just feed them to an old cat we have around the house.”

Then Dr. Gordon asked the boy how much he would take for the birds and the boy answered, “Mister, you don’t want these birds. They’re just little old field birds and they can’t sing very well.” Dr. Gordon said, “I’ll give you two dollars for the cage and the birds.” “All right,” said the boy, “It’s a deal, but you’re making a bad bargain.”

The exchange was made and the boy went whistling down the street, happy because he had two dollars in his pocket. Dr. Gordon took the cage out behind his church and opened the door of the cage and the birds flew out and went soaring away into the blue, singing as they went.

The next Sunday Dr. Gordon took the empty bird cage to the pulpit to use it in illustrating his sermon. Then he said, “That little boy said that the birds could not sing very well, but when I released them from the cage they went singing away into the blue, and it seems that they were singing, “Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed.”

Honestly, I don’t know how those birds felt to be freed after being caged with the possibility of death, but I know what is to be freed from sin that leads to death! Don’t you? If you don’t know about this and haven’t experienced this feeling of freedom then you need to find out.

PROP.- Our text gives us the lowdown on what it means to be redeemed by God.

1- Redeemed with money - oh no!

2- Redeemed with blood - oh wow!

3- Redeemed from sin - oh wonderful!

I. REDEEMED WITH MONEY - OH NO!

18For 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. NOT WITH PERISHABLE THINGS SUCH AS MONEY.

ILL.- Dallas, TX—Four men who tried to dupe the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas into certifying that they were entitled to $33 million belonging to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were arrested. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

The men presented a document to the bank that a Secret Service spokesman described as an obvious forgery. One tipoff: Saddam’s name was misspelled “Sadam.” When arrested, the men gave authorities documents that purported to represent $166 trillion in assets belonging to the likes of Manuel Noriega, Idi Amin and Fidel Castro.

“It was totally bizarre,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Melsheimer said. “You can’t just walk into the bank and negotiate a multimillion-dollar note, especially when it has Saddam Hussein’s name on it—and spelled wrong.”