Ephesians 1:7-10
Redemption!
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Ephesians 1:7-10
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.
New King James Version (NKJV)
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Transcript
Welcome to God’s Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.Sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life.
Please turn in your Bibles with me to the book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter one. And this morning we’ll be looking at verses seven through ten. You can find Ephesians chapter one, beginning at verse seven on page 1038 of your provided Pew Bibles. Ephesians chapter one beginning at verse seven, “In Him,” that being Jesus, “we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth – in Him.” Thus ends this portion of the reading of God’s Word. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Well, there’s a beautiful key idea in this passage. It’s redemption. Redemption has its idea behind it as if there was somebody who was a slave and that slave had been conquered by someone else. And as the conquering army had come in and they had taken this slave and they had brought them into a new master, the old master went to them and said, “No. I want that one back.” And the master pays for that slave to be brought back into his household. The master pays the redemption price to bring out the slave and bring him back into his own family. And that is the picture that we’ll be unpacking here this morning as we look at how does God redeem you. How does God buy you for Himself? How did God purchase you to be His own?
And so it starts with understanding what the nature of redemption is. Look with me at verse seven, “In Him we have redemption through His blood.” See, each of us were born as slaves. You might not think of that, right? We in America like to think that we were endowed by our Creator with natural unalienable rights. But the reality is, we were born into slavery, because our father, Adam, sold himself into slavery. See, this idea reaches all the way back to the creation account of what Adam did in the garden. When Adam was in the garden, Adam was there and God had blessed him with an abundance of spiritual blessings, with an abundance of material blessings. God had given him all the fruits of the trees. Anything in the garden, he could eat any of them. God walked with Adam. God talked with Adam. There was fellowship between Adam and God. God knew every thing that Adam needed. God even knew when it was not good for Adam to be alone, God made a helper for Adam. God loved Adam. And they could have lived in that harmony and that care forever, as long as he didn’t eat from that one fruit.
But something happened. Eve was deceived, but as she brought that fruit to her husband, in Genesis chapter 3, Adam began to distrust God. When Adam saw that fruit, Adam heard those deceitful words of the serpent and he began to well up in his own heart a pride. He began to well up in his own heart a distrust for God. You have to think about how this little drop of poison entered into it. Think about this for a second, why would Adam have eaten from that fruit? He has everything he needs. God has told him that He’s going to care for him. God has given him good work to do. God has provided everything he needs. What is it that makes Adam eat that fruit? He doesn’t trust that what God has given him is enough. He doesn’t trust that God’s care for him is enough. He doesn’t trust that what God has provided for him is good enough, and so he’s going to provide something better. There’s something that God was holding out from him. And that must be better than what everything God had promised. And when he did that, he sold his soul into slavery.
And this is what sin does. It makes us a slave. Sin makes us a slave to it. We became slaves in Adam. We receive that nature in our own hearts. We do this as well in ourselves. It’s amazing when we read through the Old Testament what sin is described like. Do you remember the story of Achan? Do you remember when the Israelites were surrounding Jericho and they marched around the wall the seven times and they blew the trumpets and the walls fell down? And there was a wonderful victory at Jericho? But when they went to fight the next army, they lost. And they go through this process of praying and asking God, “God, why did we lose? Why did this happen to us? Did you forsake us?” And God said, “No. Somebody sinned.” And there’s a process of going from tribe to tribe and then family to family and then household to household to individuals and it narrows down to Achan. And it was Achan who had in Jericho taken a talent of gold. None of them were to take anything from Jericho.
But I want you to think of the slavery that must have been in Achan’s heart. He sees that gold. God has told him, “Don’t touch anything in Jericho. Destroy everything. Don’t take anything. The entire city is mine.” But when Achan sees that gold, he thinks, “No. That’s better for me than all the inheritance that God would provide.” And he hides it. Think about that. The first thing he has to do is he have to hide that gold. When he gets home, he has to now hide that gold in the floor of his tent. He has to dig a hole. He has to tell his whole family, “Don’t tell anybody about this gold.” Then, every time he’s walking out of his tent, he needs to look over his shoulder and make sure that nobody looks in his tent and sees this possible hold underneath the rug where the gold is hidden. Every time he walks past Moses’s and Aaron’s tent, he has to avert his eyes because he doesn’t want them to know that he might have the gold. Do you see that this sin is weighing down on Achan? He’s a slave to it. He’s got to hide this sin.
This is exactly what happens to David. David finds himself a slave to his own sin. When he looks upon Bathsheba, he has to continue to run away from that sin, he has to keep trying to cover it up and cover it up and cover it up and cover it up. He can’t free himself from that sin because God had made him good promises. God had said, “I’m going to give you someone who is going to sit on your throne forever.” And yet David looks at Bathsheba, that woman of one of his best friends, and he sells himself into slavery.
Brothers and sisters, I propose to you that that is what we do when we sin. When I talk to men who struggle with pornography, this is what they tell me, “They feel like they’re a slave to this sin.” When I talk to people who struggle with gambling and the addiction of gambling, they say, “I feel like I just can’t get away from it.” It becomes this slave to them. When I talk to people who are coming out of narcotics and alcohol addictions, they tell me, “It’s like I was a slave to that sin.” They had been deceived. They had heard the lies that somehow this thing would promise them happiness. This thing would be good for them. These actions would give them pleasure. But that’s always what sin does, it over-promises on pleasure, and it over-delivers on guilt. Sin always over-promises on pleasure, and instead, it always over-delivers on guilt. And that is what we are slaves to.
This is very important. This is very important. The Bible does not tell you that you are a slave to Satan. The Bible does not tell us that we are slaves to the devil. Scriptures are clear that God redeems us, God buys us out of the slavery of our own sin. God buys us out of the slavery of our own guilt, of our own debts. Do not be tricked that somehow it’s like Satan owns you. That’s not the truth. Satan does not own people. Satan is the deceiver. And yes he has sway over, power of the world, but this is not the case. We are not pleading with the devil and for Jesus to overcome the devil. We are overcoming sin and guilt. That is what God redeems people from.
It’s interesting what it says here. Look with me at verse seven again. “In Him we have redemption.” It’s very important, the Greek there is a present, active indicative. If you’re a grammar person, you can go look that up later. But the idea here is that it is a present reality. Redemption is not something that is far off from you, but you have been redeemed now. You have redemption. It is yours.
Now, Satan will try to whisper in your ear otherwise. That great deceiver will try to whisper in the Christian’s ear, “Oh, yeah? Really? You’re redeemed? Oh, I saw that sin. Oh, you know that covetousness you deal with.” Oh, Satan will whisper in your heart, “But you know your own pride. You know your gluttony. You know your lust. You know your dissatisfaction and discontentment. I’ve seen it. You can’t possibly be redeemed.”
And it is in those moments, Christian, when the accuser tries to steal the joy and the promises of God to you, you can tell Satan, “Get behind me, Satan. For God has said, “I am His.”” Do you believe it? Do you see, we fight against the temptations of our own heart and we fight against the whisperings of Satan in our ear that somehow that we are not His people by clinging onto the promises. When Satan comes, and the deceiver tells us our own hearts accuse us, we must go to the promises of God and say, “No. No, I have redemption. It is mine, because Jesus Christ paid for it.”
You have redemption. We must cling to that truth. Yeah, you’re gonna fail. You’re gonna sin. “For all have sinned and fall.” The same type of word is used here when we have, present, active, indicative. We’re going to fall. We are falling. Every single day you’re going to fail. You’re going to sin in thought, word and deed. It’s going to happen. The question is, who is greater, your redeemer or your sin? What will you cling to? What will you cling to when your conscience condemns you? It must be Jesus Christ.
Again, look with me at the full verse seven, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to His rich grace.” What was the cost of your redemption? It was the very blood of Jesus Christ. First Peter 1:18-19 tell us that you were not redeemed by corruptible things like silver and gold, but by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
Do you think that your sins could possibly be more powerful than the only begotten Son of God? No, the cost of your redemption was the most valuable thing possible, it was the second person of the Trinity who laid down His life for you. God Himself, incarnate, paid the price that you might be bought out of your sin, that you might be bought and brought into His family. This idea of redemption and the cost of redemption is that we in our sin, we racked up a debt. We’re the ones who racked up the credit card. We’re the ones who maxed out the credit limit. We’re the ones who put ourselves deep into the red. And it was the inestimable value of Jesus Christ’s blood that wipes the books clean. And with His blood we are credited perfect righteousness. It is Jesus Christ who has bought us back. And if it is Jesus Christ who has bought us back, then what could ever possibly separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus? Nothing. Neither height, nor depth, nor enemies, nor principalities, nothing in this world or in the age to come shall ever separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
Do you see? This is why verse eight says that He has lavished His grace upon us. I think it’s the ESV that translates verse eight that way. “In which He made abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence.” God has made His grace abound towards you. He has lavished His grace upon you. He hasn’t just given you a little bit of grace. It’s not like when you were saved, God said, “Okay, here’s just a little bit of grace. Now you keep the rest.” It’s not like God said, “Okay, I’m going to cancel the debts. The day that you said the sinner’s prayer, I’m going to cancel the debt and then you need to make sure that you stay in the black with your righteous deeds forever.”
That’s not how this works! God paid the full price and you were legally His. He has adopted you into His family as full heirs of the covenant. It is not your righteousness, but it is His righteousness. What grace upon grace He has shown us! This is what verse nine and ten tells us is the mystery that He has made known in the fullness of time. Look with me at verses nine and ten, “having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth – in Him.” See, God had a plan of redemption. We looked at the beginning of that last week that before the foundations of the world God predestined us, God chose you to be His children, to be His redeemed people. God did that in eternity past.
But that plan was hidden. That plan was given just a little bit of light in different times. In Genesis chapter three, we see that light break in just a little bit with the first mention of the gospel that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. We see just a little bit of that light. As we go through the Old Testament, time unveiled more and more of that plan of redemption. It became fuller and fuller in the light that God was going to bring His chosen one, His Messiah, and He would redeem His people from their sin. But it was going to take the fullness of time to do it. God was going to bring about every aspect of the administration that needed to happen. Jesus Christ was going to accomplish every single prophecy. Jesus Christ was going to accomplish every single promise and God was orchestrating every thing in history to work up to that point in which Jesus Christ would be born, live a perfect life, and die on the cross. See, it’s not like Jesus Christ just came. But Jesus Christ was sent by His Father with a plan. And it was Jesus Christ who was intricately involved in the plan of your redemption. It was here in eternity past that God chose you. And it was in present time through all the ages that God was working together His plan and the Bible tells us these are things that the angels longed to look into.
This might be theologically heavy for you. And that’s okay. It’s theologically heavy for me. It’s been theologically heavy for the last 2000 years since Paul wrote these things. But it’s true. And it’s good. This is God’s plan for redemption. I’d like to tell you that what you’re hearing today, though it might be difficult to understand, though we have to wrestle with these hard truths, this is the fullness of God’s glory that He’s showing us. These are things that Moses would have longed to have known. These are things that Jeremiah longed to have seen. When Ezekiel had all his visions, he had only a small glimpse of Jesus Christ. But in the Scriptures, brothers and sisters, you see Jesus Christ in all of His glory.
God brought about this plan, this mystery of redemption and what is the goal of that redemption? The goal of this redemption is far more expansive than just you being saved. We have a tendency in evangelicalism, right? We’re Americans. In this Western society we like individuality. We want to know that redemption is about me. I want to be saved. I don’t want to go to Hell. I want to go to Heaven. I want to be with God. I want to be redeemed. But notice, that’s not the main goal of redemption. Look at verse ten with me. What is the main goal of redemption? “That in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth – in Him.” Brothers and sisters, the goal of redemption is not just for you alone to be redeemed, but for God to bring all things back together, back to a better garden of Eden, back to a better new heaven, back to a better new earth that God would bring all things under the dominion, the rule, the reign of Jesus Christ, that in Him, in Jesus Christ everything might be brought back into perfection, both things that are in Heaven and all things that are on the earth. See, the gospel is not just about you being saved, but it’s about God undoing or redeeming all things back to Himself in Christ Jesus.
I’d like to leave you with a final idea of this redemption. We live in a day and age where there is American chattel slavery that is just a dark shadowy past for most of us. A blot upon our history. But for many Christians, African American brothers and sisters, this is a real reality for them. I was reading just this past week in a man named Albert Raboteau’s book on slave religion and how the slaves experienced and came to Jesus Christ. It was amazing that it was the slave owners who barred the missionaries from coming and preaching the gospel to the slaves because they knew that when the slaves heard of redemption, that they would know that they were valuable people in the sight of God. And the Maryland legislature even tried to pass a law in 1668 to say that even though slaves might become Christians or pretend to become Christians, they could still no longer become freed men because they were purchased; they were property and not people. But the gospel penetrated even into that dark light. The slaves would sing their spiritual songs. They worked in the field singing about the redemption that God had purchased, but one day that they would be free again. And even when some of these freed men would find themselves up in Northern cities, like in 1829 when they were in Cincinnati, it was even there that there were slaves who had found freedom in the North that they still were not completely free because in Cincinnati in that year they were sick and tired of their city changing. And so what did they do? They gave all the African American former slaves 30 days to leave the town or else. Yeah, they might have been free but they didn’t know what full freedom was yet. But they continued to sing their songs that one day that redemption would be made completely full and in its fullest sense. But even into the 1960s, we know that African American church in the South still cried out for this redemption. Yes, their souls were redeemed, but they knew that there was a greater redemption to come. And it was even in the 1960s that Martin Luther King say his speech when he would say, “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God that we are free at last.” They were longing for a final freedom, much more than just them being freed from the slavery of sin, but actually that God would redeem all things in Christ Jesus. That in the gospel of Jesus Christ, things in this world would be changed.
That is the fullest sense of the gospel that God is not just saving you individually from Hell, that God is not just redeeming you from your sin. Brothers and sisters, God is redeeming you into peace, into Jesus Christ, into a reality that He changes us, into a reality that He is working in us to conform us more and more in His likeness and in His image. It is that He is redeeming you and He is bringing you out of slavery. You’re going to struggle your whole life with putting that old slavery to the death. But that is the work of sanctification of growing more and more in holiness. Redemption is something that is both presently had and yet we’re waiting to see its fullest glory. I don’t know about you, but I thank God that redemption isn’t just here and now. That it’s not just a get rich quick scheme, that it’s not just a get out of Hell free, but it’s that one day Jesus Christ is going to bring all things back together again. That all things are going to be made new both in Heaven and on Earth. And that it is in Jesus Christ, through His blood that He is redeeming all things to Himself. Oh, Lord Jesus, please come quickly. How we long for that day when we know the fullness of our redemption. And when Jesus Christ will make all things right again. Thank God for His redemption.
Let’s pray, “Oh Lord, we thank you. Lord, we thank You for redeeming us at the cost of Your own Son. Lord, we pray, Lord, that we would dwell in Him. That in Him we would move and live and have our being. That, Lord, we would seek You and Your face. Lord, that You would let us know the truth of your redemption. God, please, by Your Holy Spirit bury the hope and the joy of Your redemption in our hearts and use us as vessels for redemption, as tools for redemption. Lord, please, let us see redemption in our families, in our lives, and in our community. In Jesus’s name, amen.”
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website: Sharonrpc.org. We’d love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa 52640. May God richly bless you this week.