Redemption #12 Series

I have good news!! In today’s lesson, we are only going to examine one sentence. So, we should be able to beat the other churches to the good restaurants.

We’ve had a long hiatus from our subject of "REDEMPTION". So let’s take a little time, refresh our minds with some of the facts we’ve covered and expand some of those areas.

It was almost 1:00 am when the phone rang. Dr. Leo Winters, the highly acclaimed Chicago surgeon, was abruptly awakened. There had been an accident and his skilled hands were needed for immediate surgery. The quickest route happened to be through a rather tough area, but time was a critical factor, so it was worth the risk.

At one of the stoplights his door was yanked open by a man with a gray hat and a dirty flannel shirt. "I got to have your car!" the man screamed, pulling him from his seat. Winters tried to explain the gravity of the situation but the man would not listen.

When the doctor was finally able to get a taxi to the hospital over an hour had elapsed and it was too late. The patient had passed away 30 minutes earlier. The nurse told him that the father of the victim had gone to the chapel wondering why the doctor never came.

Dr. Winters hurried to the chapel and when he entered he saw the father. He was wearing

a gray hat and a dirty flannel shirt.

Tragically, the father had pushed from his life the one who could have brought redemption for his son, from physical death.

We are in need of the Great Physician to bring redemption to our lives. The redemption that the Great Physician brings, is not just a rescue mission from dying physical, or even preventing us from going to an eternal hell.

After all, we are already dead in trespasses and sins. Therefore, we are in need of being rescued from our Spiritual state of death, and redeemed to the state of Spiritual life.

Redemption means, in its simplest form = To buy back. Certainly redemption is the process of God buying back the human race and the earth that was placed under human control.

However, there is much more involved in Biblical redemption than JUST paying a ransom price. We see that fact both in the definitions of the term redeem and the use of the term in the Bible.

Redeem = (English) To recover ownership of, by paying a specified sum; To fulfill (such as a pledge); To restore the honor, worth, or reputation; To ransom; To liberate or rescue from captivity or bondage, or from any obligation or liability

An illustration of recovering ownership by paying a specified sum can be seen in the sad story of Lou Johnson. Lou Johnson hit the winning home run in the 1965 World Series, thereby becoming the hero for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

However, Lou gave himself to drugs and alcohol, and that lifestyle stripped him of all he had and was. Lou tried for 30 years to recover the championship ring he lost to drug dealers in 1971. Drug and alcohol abuse cost him everything associated with that magical season, including his ring, uniform, glove, and the bat he used to hit the winning home run in the deciding game.

When the Dodgers president learned that Johnson’s World Series ring was about to be auctioned on the Internet, he immediately wrote a check for $3,457.00(?) and bought the ring before any bids were posted, and gave it to Johnson.

The Dodgers president did for Johnson what the former Dodger outfielder had been unable to do for himself. He recovered ownership of the ring for Johnson, by paying a specified sum, at a great cost to himself, BUT without any personal benefits. However, the Dodgers president could not redeem Johnson from the debasing effect of his lifestyle.

God, on the other hand,

has done for us what we are

unable to do for ourselves.

He redeems us and makes us the

recipient of His amazing grace.

God’s redemption does FAR more than simply return the ownership of our life. God’s redemption restores our life, not to just the way it was, BUT replaces our temporal life with an eternal divine life. There is SO much more involved in God’s redemption, and that is what we want to explore in this series.

Redeem = (Hebrew) To redeem (according to the oriental law of kinship), i.e. to be the next of kin (and as such to buy back a relative’s property, marry his widow, etc.); To ransom; To release; Preserve

Redeem = (Greek) To buy up, i.e. ransom; To rescue from loss (improve opportunity). Included in the make-up of the Greek word is the term-to go to the market or town square to purchase or redeem