Let's go to the Lord one more time in prayer and then jump in. Father, I simply ask for your blessing upon our time in your word. Help me to be a faithful servant now to my brothers and my sisters here. Thank you for what you are doing through them for your glory and for the good of those, not only here, but that they reach. Would you shift our eyes tonight onto the riches of redemption, namely Christ, For those in the room who are not at peace and that are experiencing trial and pain, would you bring them comfort and hope through the text? And for those of us that are enjoying another mountaintop Christmas season and all the good things you give us, all those good gifts, the great traditions and the joy of family, May all of that still pale in comparison to Christ our Lord, the greatest gift we could ever receive. We pray this in his name, amen. There are three questions that I want to highlight tonight and answer from the text. The first is, who is our Redeemer? The second is, how did he redeem us? And the third is, what is the result of his redemption. Again, we either get stuck in life thinking that God's greatest blessings are material. If we do, we're wrong. Or we get stuck in life thinking that our pain in the valley we're in is all it's ever going to be. This is our lot in life. It never gets any better. If we're there, we're wrong. In all of these things, The Word of God intends again and again and again to shift our eyes to Christ, so that when we're in the valley, we see Christ, and we know the sun will rise again. And when we're on the mountain, we still see Christ, knowing every good and perfect gift is from Him, and because of Him, and ultimately for Him. And during the Advent season, there is no better time to meditate on His love for us. In the book of Ephesians, maybe you know, maybe you don't, so I'll give you kind of a two-minute recap. The first three chapters are spent unpacking doctrine, big doctrine, an essential doctrine. You might call it essential orthodoxy, the gospel that Christ has came and that he has bought a people unto himself. In that, His grace is shown. All of that is clear in chapters one through three. You could say the gospel is made clear. In chapters four to six, what is made clear is how you are to live if you have believed that gospel. So you don't just say you believe, but you live like it. There's orthodoxy, that's right, believing. And then, of course, orthopraxy, that's right, living. And where we find ourselves is on the front end of that. where Paul is setting the course for those who would read his letter to remember, or perhaps for the first time if they're hearing this letter, they're maybe a new Christian, they've never been taught these things before, to know that the greatest blessings they will ever receive are spiritual, and that every ounce of riches that they have in Christ causes everything else to be dwarfed. This audience is in a place that is an epicenter. Ephesus and the surrounding regions are filled with pagans. They have great temples for false worship. They're no doubt successful. They have the arts. They have literature. They have culture. They have all these things. And what you might have is either Christians who have been Christians for a long time looking around at the world and wondering, it sure looks like they're winning. It sure looks like everything's going well for them. What you also have are new believers getting used to the customs and the practices of the Christian life and falling back into or even just mixing in their former ways of worship, their former practices, their former lifestyles. For them, It was not like today where people say they're a Christian or they might join a church or be a part of a church and nothing really bad happens to them. It can be that you go to church, you can be a cultural Christian, and then you can do whatever you want and never be persecuted for it. In this society, in this culture, in this time, being a Christian meant you were gonna lose something. Relationships, respect, you were gonna be one of those people. There were slanderers that would say that Christians were cannibals because we take the Lord's table and they would say that, oh, they think they're eating the body and drinking the blood. There were so many rumors and so many slanderous remarks about Paul and about the Christian church. Being a Christian was not like today, where you go to some of the churches, even in the valley, where we minister. And many times over, you meet people that come to a no-doubt apologia in our church as well. It's almost easier to meet a crazy new believer. You know what I'm talking about? The person that comes in and they know nothing. It's actually better if they were just like a drug addict, maybe two weeks before, a week before, an alcoholic, Jesus sets them free and they just go, hey, blank slate here, what do I do? You go, perfect, I love people like you. Let me tell you how this is gonna go. And they're on fire. You get so many other people that come in the church today and they go, yeah, yeah, no, I'm saved. I'm saved. I went to there. I go to there. I've been in church all my life. And you're spending more time maybe deconstructing or disentangling or tearing down the walls of their false belief and false idea that you could be a Christian, do your thing, do your 60 minutes, then go live like hell for the rest of the week, and then call yourself a Christian. But because you went there, and you had a great time, and the lights, and you got the feels, and the goose bumps, and the hair stood up on the back of your neck, you thought, that felt so good. I mean, surely God is in this place, and he wasn't. I mean, that is what we spend so much of our time walking with people on. Ephesus was not your seeker-driven mega-church world Christian. These people, We're done for. Cut off and written off. So Paul comes along and says, I know it doesn't look like it or seem like it all the time, but you are rich. You're on the winning team. You have victory. And in that, he points them to one person and what he has done again and again and again. Let's answer our first question, who is our Redeemer? In verse seven, right at the beginning, in him we have redemption. So if we're talking about redeeming what has been lost, we need to begin by knowing what redemption is all about in the first place and why this him, who is Christ, is the Redeemer. Now redemption is a vital doctrinal truth in the Christian life. The scriptures refer to it time and time and time again. We're coming on the heels today. We finished the book of Ruth and the theme of a redeemer is very prevalent in that book and it ends with a lineage and the lineage points to ultimately David and then of course eventually Christ. The concept of redemption through the Old Testament and the New Testament is clear. It means to buy back and it's the concept biblically of buying back or redeeming a slave, or a family member who was in debt, or a family member who was sold into slavery, you could buy back land, inheritance, family members. There were even instances of slaves working and saving, ultimately redeeming themselves, buying themselves off, if you will, and paying off the debt they owed. And not necessarily like today's thoughts of slavery in our history or what have you, in the sense that you could give yourself over back then even to work. It would be not dissimilar in many cases to our work relationships, employee-employer relationships. You could sell yourself into a work situation and work your debt off. The idea of being redeemed was very common and known. So when he says in him we have redemption, the original audience is immediately thinking In Him, we have been bought back, or bought from something. There was a debt, and now it's paid. That's where Paul shifts their attention. The Bible teaches that we were slaves to sin, and we needed to be redeemed from the ownership of that. when you and I were lost, or if perhaps you're here and you haven't committed your life to Christ, you're trying to figure out what that really means or what that really looks like, let me just tell you this, you don't dabble in sin, you're not just kind of struggling in sin, or people like to say the word struggle and not say the word sin a lot nowadays. You didn't just dip your toes in, you were completely dead in a coffin, nailed shut by the power of sin. You were a dead slave to it. You couldn't stop doing it, and you couldn't rescue yourself from it. Now, biblically speaking, what does that lead to? It leads to death and destruction. Romans 6, 23 being the passage that teaches that. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Sin equals death. The wages of it is death. That's what the Bible teaches. We were all on the path to hell. destined to spend an eternity there because of sin, we needed to be redeemed. We were living a lifestyle of immorality. We were owned by it. It was our master. Sin was king over us. All of this separates us from God. Isaiah 59 verse 2 explains, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. Sin is not a small issue, it is a Mount Everest of an issue, and it creates a massive, insurmountable gap between people and God. Nobody can say, I'm a good person. He'll let me in. You know, I love God. Look, me and God, we're good. We got a deal. Unless you have Christ, there's no deal. The gap remains. Nothing can close it because of sin. In John 8, 34, Jesus teaches this. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin, it's a present active verb, that means to live the lifestyle of sin. You're just habitually in it. Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. You live in it, you're a slave of it. Well, I had a good day yesterday. Well, you're still a slave to it. Well, I don't sin all day long. You're still a slave to it. In 1 John 1, 8, John goes for the jugular, says if we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. No one can say they've never sinned, or they don't really sin, or they don't have an issue with sin. Romans 3.23 teaches all have sinned, all have fallen short of the glory of God. Why do I explain that and cross-reference you all over the place? Because I want you to be reminded or maybe to hear for the first time that we are all in need of redemption, or as believers, we were in great need of being redeemed. It wasn't just a good idea. It was essential to everything that you experience now. You and I had to be bought in Him, as in Christ. And it begs an important question I think we should ask of the text, is why was Jesus qualified to be our Redeemer? So you may say, okay, I believe you. I understand what you're saying. We have a problem at sin. Sin leads to death. I need to be bought back or whatever you're saying, redeemed. All right, well, what makes this one able and qualified to redeem me?" Oh, I'm so glad you asked, because Christ, His life was worth more than all of human history put together, because on the cross, He bore the wrath of God the Father, and the only reason that that sacrifice and the receiving of God's wrath was acceptable is because He was perfect and without sin. God is not looking for sinful people to come and put before Him their meritorious works. He doesn't even need sinners to go and die on a cross. People think, well, it was the cross. He had to die on a cross. Okay, so it's about the cross. No, it was about Christ and His perfect life, that one life being laid down unto death before God the Father, and the wrath of God pouring out upon His Son. And not just any son, but the perfect Son. The sinless Son. He was sinless, so now you could be one day in glory. Acceptable to God as you stand before Him naked and bare in all that you are. And He would not see your sin and all that you were. He would see Christ and His righteousness. His perfection placed upon you in glory. That is salvation. He has bought you. There's no more debt to be paid. And this is where Christianity stands outside and separate from every other religion, where you have to add things to your faith. I talk to Mormons all the time, and it's, you know, well, grace, of course, but also, and there's an addition, Roman Catholics. Recently, a bunch of Roman Catholics got so angry at me for saying, that they believe in a works-based system. Well, no we don't. We begin to walk through the catechism, begin to walk through their reasoning, and of course they do. You have to work hard to earn God's favor. You have to work hard to not only be saved, but to stay saved. It's exhausting. And yet, Christ has paid it all. This is why we sing the song, Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin has left its crimson stain, He washed it white as snow. Not you, but Him. He was without sin, and 2 Corinthians 5 tells us He became sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. did it. That is why we look to Christ. And this becomes a pivotal moment for every human being on earth. Will you believe that Jesus was just a good example of love? Will you believe that he was just a moral teacher? And you could add a little bit of him into your your pantheon of gods. If you're a Hindu or a Buddhist, you could have them be one of your guys. If you're a Mormon, you could have them be a little bit of this and a little bit of that in a lot of different religions. But in Christianity, he is God and God alone. He stands alone. That is why he is the satisfactory sacrifice for sin, the one able to redeem. That's where the rubber meets the road. Whether you believe in Him alone or not dictates whether or not you will be and have been bought by Him. The New Testament is plastered with proof of His deity and His own claims to deity. In John 10 verse 30, He says, I and the Father are one. Leviticus 24 16 in the Old Testament says that that's blasphemy if you were to say that so when Jesus says that in John 10 they want to stone him if they did not want to stone him it would be because he didn't make such a claim they did in John 8 58 he says I am literally the name of God Yahweh I am Exodus 3.14 says that's blasphemy too. So they wanted to stone him in that case. These weren't benign statements. They were strong claims to deity. In John 1, all the way from verses 1 to 14, the Word again and again and again is God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Who is that Word? Christ. Matthew 14.33 and Matthew 28.9, In Luke 24, 52, John 9, 38, in all of those, they worshiped Him. And I'm so sorry, I just realized where I am. I could have read all of those to you. I have an hour and a half to preach. I just wrote them in. John 20, verse 28, Thomas, when he sees Him, Jesus appears to him. What does Thomas say? My Lord and my God. In Colossians 2.9, Paul, in Christ, the fullness of deity dwells. Not a little bit. It's not Achilles, just kind of dipped. Full deity in him. He is God. Titus 2.13, Paul writes that while we wait for the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, he's explaining all of these wonderful truths. And notice what he calls him. in waiting for the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And then in Revelation chapter five, we have this scene of all of creation worshiping the Lamb. He's the only one worthy to open the scroll. To Him we sing, you are worthy. Why? Because He is God. Many people are in denial about everything that I just told you. They don't want to acknowledge that they are a sinner, and they don't want to acknowledge Christ as Savior and Lord. They prefer a Jesus who wasn't God, a Jesus who died to be a good example, a Jesus who is love, a Jesus who, if he were here today, as someone told me recently, look, your truth is your truth. That's what Jesus would say to many people. He's a Jesus everybody can get on board with. Unfortunately, he's not the Jesus who saves. He's not even the biblical Jesus. Many people love a Jesus who died to wash away sin, and all you need to do is show up to church and repeat a little magic prayer, and you are set. But in that line of thinking, you will find a rude awakening if Jesus isn't God. if he just died to be a good example of love, if the wrath of God didn't literally fall upon him, then not only has the price of redemption not been paid, but you have to pay it or someone still does. If Jesus was a historical figure who taught some moral things, He grew a big following, then He died. He could not have been a Redeemer. We're not redeemed. Christians are to be pitied more than any other people. But if you believe the Scriptures as the very words of God, then you know He was and is the Son of God, equal deity to the Father and our Redeemer. And that is why, in order to be saved, You must put your faith in Christ alone. And that is why, during the Advent season, nothing else compares, nothing else matters, no one else is the object of our affection and our worship more, not even close to Christ alone. All glory and all majesty, all honor, all praise, all dominion goes to Him. He is our Redeemer. And so we also must ask, how did He redeem us? By what cosmic mechanism does Christ redeem you and I if we are believers? Look at it there in verse seven, the next three words, through His blood. The question then is, how exactly does blood accomplish redemption? This is the doctrine of the atonement. And anytime you see Jesus' blood mentioned, it's not that He just needed to bleed. If that's the case, then you might as well have just had a paper cut and just called it a day. It's His blood in death, you understand? He had to die. It's His blood poured out in death. It's the atonement. It wasn't just the sweat drops that turned to blood. It wasn't mere blood that came from the crown of thorns. It wasn't the blood, as significant as it would have been, from His back as they scourged Him. It wasn't the blood from His face as they plucked His beard. It wasn't the blood from His hands or wrists as they nailed Him, or His feet. It was His blood in. Because death is and was required for atonement to be achieved. Atonement reaches back to the Old Testament and the practices of Judaism. what was considered the Sabbath of Sabbaths, what many today, you'll know, you maybe hear the phrase Yom Kippur, considered Israel's holiest day. It was only that day that the priest could enter the Holy of Holies. He would sprinkle blood on the Ark of the Covenant from sacrificed animals who had been killed, and this would atone for the people's sins. And that was only a symbolic shadow of what was to come when true and lasting atonement would be accomplished through Christ. That's the idea of Christ being the final sacrificial lamb, the perfect and spotless one whose blood was poured out in death on the altar of the cross, if you will, before God and offered up for his people. It was a once for all sacrifice. No other sacrifices need to be made. No other sacraments will save. We enjoy the sacraments, we relish in the sacraments, we see them as a beautiful means of God's grace and of our worship, but in them you are not saved. It was the sacrifice that was already completed. that saves. Hebrews 10.4 says it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. It's not literally now that the blood of those animals will do it. He is the only acceptable sacrifice. Jesus Christ, once for all, is the One whom we are saved through and sanctified through. And the Bible clearly teaches that sin must be atoned for by judgment, by wrath, by punishment, Or that only the shedding of Jesus' blood would redeem lost sinners. Only Christ's blood would accomplish this. In 1 Peter 1. Verses 18 and 19, I love this, as Peter says, knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers. I love the way Peter, with the edge, just patronizes what they think might be impressive. He says, but with the precious blood, as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. In 1 Peter 2, 24, continuing in that same vein, he says, of Christ, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. And then he says, by his wounds you are and have been healed. healed. It is by the wounds of Christ that you are healed. Not meaning that because He died you're guaranteed a healing from cancer or you can just name it and claim it and have whatever you want because it's in the atonement. No. Healed meaning made well. That gap between you and God solved once and for all, the sickness of wickedness and vile filth in your heart called sin that leads to death, healed, made well, a heart of stone taken, a heart of flesh given. That is the healing that Peter refers to and the healing that Christ brings through His blood in death. God made His perfect Son sin. He judged, punished, poured out wrath, killed his son. And in that, Christ paid the full price. That is how we are redeemed. And I wonder how often we appreciate those truths and how hard they hit us. I think we can be tempted to sort of graduate from the gospel. And it's a message that we preach to others, rightfully so. It's a message that we would say we need, and rightfully so. It's a message we want to hear. We want to hear the word gospel. We want to read gospel in books. We want to hear gospel mentioned on podcasts. And it's important that we feel as though the gospel is permeating everything. But so often, as Christians, and perhaps the longer we have been a follower of Christ, maybe, just maybe, we're tempted to begin to think we've graduated from the gospel and we're on to more important things. And I'm all about doctrine. I love the deeper dive, and I think that most churches are featherweights in a house of cards, and they need to go deeper on doctrine. I'm all for that. But in that, even doctrine, even great truths of Scripture, in them, and perhaps undergirding them, is the Gospel. It's not, well, once you get the Gospel, we move on to the big words. But once you get the gospel, kind of land the plane on that. That's year one. We put you in the new believers class and you do your little things and you know. No. It's always. It's forever. Every day you need the gospel. I don't know about you, but every day I sin. I hate it. I was loathing my sin in prayer this morning before church. I don't remember what I did, but I was sure it was something. I told the Lord, you are so kind to let me do this, that you would use us to accomplish your purposes, that you would let mere men preach, that you would let us be saved, you would let us into your heaven. And I know God is love, and he's so personal, and he's approachable, and you should lighten up, Kosti. I understand all of that, okay, I'm with you. But isn't it humbling when we reflect upon the Gospel, and upon atonement, and upon the wrath of God being poured out, and upon Christ as Redeemer, you begin to think not, yeah, of course He would save me, duh. I'm so lovable. He chased me down. He just couldn't have heaven without me. So we sing songs about that. Like God is just up in heaven with his fingers crossed, like, oh, I just got to get them. Man, I hope they pick me. And if I can just run fast enough, I can catch up and pull on their coattails and just let them know, hey, would you come? Would you consider me? Would you try a little bit of me? And if you don't like it, your money back guaranteed. Rick Warren garbage on CNN or whatever they do. They're the tithe back garbage. You might just find a paradigm shift in your mind where we stop all the nonsense of, well, you're just crazy about me. And yes, God loves his people, but we're humbled during the Advent season in particular as we begin to think, Emmanuel? God with us? Here? that he would choose me, call me, love me when I was unlovable, irreconcilable. It's not he saw that you were so good and said, I'll save him. Romans 5.8 tells us, while we were yet still sinners, Christ died for us. So you don't make yourself perfect enough to come to God. He has already come to you. And that doesn't make us more arrogant and more cocky. It makes us more humble and more aware of our own wretched state and what He has done to make us clean. You and I are slaves who have been set free and now we are called sons and daughters. What a beautiful truth. I think it changes the way we worship, should it not? I'm guilty of this. I'm Canadian, and so I have a problem with idolatry, and it's called hockey. You know, I'm pre-mill, you're post-mill, but beards and fighting is like in our blood, too. I'm with you. I think we're more a lot alike than you think. Although mine's not as sanctified. Yours is theological. Mine is just hockey. That's an idol. And I am guilty of this. Anybody get riled up over sports or things? I mean, I lose my voice. There is a friend of mine, and I'm going to go to a game in California. He's very kind. He's taken me to a game on January the 3rd. Do not look for me. And if you hear me preach that following Sunday, you'll hear it in my voice. I will lose my mind at a hockey game. I'll lose my voice. I have been that guy in the playoffs, potentially swinging an article of clothing or something of that sort, maybe with paint somewhere on my face or body. It's just we're soccer hooligans. It's Canadians and hockey. I'm sorry if I'm not allowed to use an illustration like this in the pulpit. Jeff will forgive me later. But let's go further into our own lives and our own hearts. How fired up do we get about a lot of things in life? How excited do we get? I mean, it brings up our emotions. It brings up our most passionate response. And then we hear about Christ and redemption. It's good, it's good. I read the book of Ezra and I see people simply raising their hands because the word of God is being read. You think about redemption and it's a game changer. No longer do you care about losing your mind for some ridiculous game. or going to some concert and feeling the feels because you're one of these weirdos with their Taylor Swift stuff and the lights and all that, and you feel like you're a part of something. Let me tell you, when you're a blood-bought saint, you don't need none of that. You are part of something that this world needs, and many of them don't know yet. You're part of something greater. You're part of something that should cause you to lose your voice, lose your reservations about Well, I need to, you know, just keep it calm here, and Christians are supposed to act like this, and we just kind of live a little life here, and then we go on into heaven now, and we wait for Jesus, and we just kind of keep it mellow here. You start not caring about much else. Why? Because you remember the way you were. I call this church planter mentality. When we planted the church, it's like everybody was the next salvation. Everybody, I see you, hey, hey, you, come here. I wanna talk to you. You ever plant a church? What are you talking about? Listen, Jesus is gonna change your life. He's got plans for you. Give your life to him. Everybody is the next evangelistic target. And then the longer we're saved, we lose that. It's that first love mentality, that you love Christ, he saved you. And so you look at every single person and you think, I've gotta live it. Now I know where I am, okay? I know the way you guys are. I love it. But we need the reminder that church doesn't end here. We are the church. Tomorrow, redemption is the fuel that sets you on your course to go after the souls of men. Is sports exciting? Sure. Can we have passions? Of course. Does God care about those things? I think He enjoys giving His children good gifts. greater than any win, greater than any passion, beyond anything that any man would obsess over that is part of this fleeting world, when you meditate on the truth about redemption. I think our hearts stop skipping a beat for some vacation. Or some Instagram post, or some set of tickets, or some new car, some new house, or some, I don't know, whatever people do with their West Elm designs. And look at these new chairs I got. No one cares. Christ has won victory. He's everything. You want to tell the world. You want to share it. Why? Because redemption changes the way you live. And I think too many Christians have forgotten the jaw-dropping, earth-shattering, damnation-canceling work of Christ. I met a long-time Christian some time ago and he told me, You know, let me just let you know, I love your passion, but just listen. Trust me, I've been in this game a long time. Right when someone says, I've been in this game a long time, and we're talking ministry or Christian life, I'm like, oh, here we go. He said, you'll calm down. OK? You'll calm down. He said, like you? I don't be like that at all. I hope I'm 80 and I'm passing out tracts at the old folks home. Give me a geriatric corner office at the church. I'll sit in there and just counsel. I hope I'm walking around with my little walker. I hope you will be too. Yelling at people in the old folks home to come to Christ because they still haven't gotten saved. This stuff is not supposed to be religious exercise where we just go through the motions. you'll calm down. Tell them, I'll tell them to come to Apologia, tell them that you're gonna calm down. Tell them, man camp. There it is. Taking something for granted or someone for granted is the fastest way to cold, mundane, lifeless relationships. We know this to be true in marriage, so why in the world would we do it with our faith? Never think you graduate from the gospel. Never be so impressed with, you know, big theology and nerding out. All those are the good, helpful things that you can't appreciate the simple truth when you wake up in the morning and you can say, thank you, Lord, for the breath in my lungs. If I don't do anything today but worship you for redeeming me and proclaim your name to everybody that I come into contact with, today is a win if that's all I ever do. Forgive me for not losing my voice enough through praise and through prayer. Forgive me for not callousing my knees more, going to your throne, begging you and pleading with you to do what I know you are going to do. You've already won the victory, just help me to walk in it today. You never want to get far from first love when you're married. Why do you ever want to get far from first love with Christ? The passion, the drive, the zeal. You know where that comes from? It comes from remembering redemption. Many times we love certain things. I brought up hockey already. Why do I love it? I love it because it brings back memories of my father and I. It brings back memories of yelling at the TV. Telling the ref that was a cheap call, or he's getting paid by the other coach, or playing the game. Relationships, and when you remember all that, what happens? Well, it's in your veins, and you buy in, and you wear a jersey, and you got an identity. You know, so much of that parallels by way of illustration that you are on the team. You have been bought by Christ. You bear his name. But you've got to keep fresh in your mind the memories from the beginning. Where you were. I think more Christians would be on fire if they continued to remember the gutter that He pulled them out of. That they were dead and lost, and now they are alive and found. He's redeemed you. And the next question, and the final question is, what is the result of His redemption? Look at the back half of verse 7 and then into verse 8, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. The word forgiveness means loosing someone from their guilt and from their punishment. It's being used in a legal sense here. Trespasses, the idea here of losing your footing, it's a misstep, it means to miss the mark, that is what sin is. All of this, to forgive you, to loose you from your guilt and your punishment, is all according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. Redemption results in you being loose from your sin. The bondage of the past, the bondage of the present, the bondage of the future. Every sin you've ever committed, every sin you will ever commit. Washed, cleansed by the blood, forgiven. And true faith enjoys that level of security and relationship. True love for Christ. True faith. Is walking in liberty and freedom. Knowing Christ has paid your debt. Now, in Christ and His forgiveness, there's two great burdens that are relieved. First, to those of you who feel depressed or you have waves of it because of your past failures. This is a normal struggle or challenge in the Christian life. You begin to think about your past. And you think, well, maybe I'm going to be less blessed. You know, I can just kind of have a backseat in the kingdom, so to speak. No. Redemption provides retroactive forgiveness. All forgiven saints are on equal footing at the cross. God is not holding certain sins against you that He's not held against others. Like, you've got something over your head. Psalm 103 verse 12 reminds us, your sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west. Isaiah 44, 22 says he wipes out the sins of believers. Why? For I have redeemed you, God says. Romans 8, 1, that there is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ is the constant reality of the believer. Whether you've been in prison, committed murder, had an abortion, committed adultery, fornicated, been violent, or just stole from your company one time because you got a reimbursement for something that was not a company expense and you lied. There may be earthly consequences for sin, yes. Those may be hard to deal with at times. A man in prison currently is forgiven if he's a believer. And yet, the bailiff doesn't come and the judge doesn't say, well, you've become a Christian, have you? I wish they would. But they don't. You're free to go. No, you may live out an earthly consequence, but you are not eternally condemned. You need to have that reality in your mind if you feel guilty about past failures. And then there's another liberating aspect to this, to believers who feel deflated about their present failures. I'm sorry, but sanctification, as we read in the catechism in the beginning, is reality. It is progressive. You are not perfect. You will not be. You will, day after day, slowly be transformed from glory to glory. And I wish it were faster, and I know you do too, as you agonize over your sin, but Redemption reminds us that we have ongoing forgiveness for our sin. And by the way, with one another. You know why we can forgive one another in the church? Because He has forgiven us so much. You know why we never want to withhold forgiveness from one another in the church? Why walking in bitterness is one of the most divisive aspects of sin? Why bitterness will break down a church faster than just about anything is because it is the most anti-Christ thing that we can live out against each other because we are the antithesis to what the cross actually did. We're living in bitterness, yet our Lord Jesus is the very picture of forgiveness. You've been forgiven. 1 John 1-9 reminds us if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. So you're forgiven, you confess. This is the daily walk for a Christian. You say, I'm battling sin, I hate it. What do I do? Confess it. Bring it out into the light. Will sin set back your growth? Sure. If you ignore wise counsel, if you refuse to take worldly patterns in your life and place them before the Lord, and most certainly before others who want to help you and want to disciple you and want to nurture you in the faith, will you not grow as fast as others? Absolutely, that's a reality. And yet, many times over, Christians want to walk with the Lord. They want to obey Him. They desire to bring Him glory and to please Him with their lives, and yet we still sin. I believe that some of you, and certainly I need to hear this time and time again, that God's grace is greater than your greatest sin. You cannot out-sin the grace of God. That doesn't cheapen it. That's just the reality of it when you're a true believer. Only pride says, I'm so bad, He can't forgive me. That ultimately is pride. That you think you are beyond the grace of God. That your life is unreachable for an infinite, omnipresent God. Only mankind would be so arrogant. You can't out-sin His grace. And yet if you abuse grace time and time again with no thought, no conviction, you ought to question your salvation. You ought to ask, am I really a believer? Am I saying one thing and yet living another? Jesus is the one who said it, not me. If you love me, you will obey my commands. And so the desire to obey and a lifestyle of patterned obedience that on the trajectory of your life, you pursue obedience to Christ, that is the mark of the believer. If that is not present in your life, you should be asking big questions. You should be falling on your knees before the Lord, begging him to change your heart and change your mind. Grace is not a license to sin. It's a gift to be treasured. And He bought you with a price. You have been redeemed. And because you have been redeemed, you obey Him. That's ultimately the driving force behind all of Paul's imperatives in the rest of this beautiful letter. that a husband would love his wife like Christ loved the church, that a wife would submit to her husband as unto the Lord, that children would obey their parents as unto the Lord, that employers would treat employees with respect and they would be submissive to them, that all would walk in a manner worthy, that we would be forgiving and mindful about the way that we walk, about the way that we talk, about the way that we give, about the way that we live, about the way that we serve, and for those who are given into the leadership of the church, for the way that we lead the body which ultimately belongs to Christ. Every command for you and for me is rooted in the reality of God's redemptive work. He created you, you were lost, you were dead in sin, and then Christ bought you. And friends, I want you to be encouraged this season that no matter your net worth in this life, the riches that you possess in the next one make everything else simply grow strangely dim because Christ becomes all in all to you. I pray that consumes your heart and mind this Christmas. Let me pray for you. Father, we are, as your people, in great need of constant reminder. We see that in Israel's pattern, and it's no different for us today as the church. I pray for my friends here that this Advent season would be filled with emphasis and focus on redemption. that for all our earthly passion, for good things, to enjoy our family, to give good gifts, to feast together, to enjoy arts and music and sports, to enjoy passions and competition, to bond with our families, our wives, our children, our neighbors, to enjoy the good gifts brings you pleasure. And yet, to ever treat all of those like they are the main thing is where we often commit the sin of forgetfulness or perhaps idolatry in that we begin to shift our eyes to the things of this earth. Would it be this season for us that even the good things which come from you fail to eclipse the greatest thing, who is Christ? May we love Him more, worship Him more, give Him more of ourselves in all that we do to love and obey Him, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.