Refresco: "SEVEN BLESSINGS OF GOD'S PEOPLE"

Our snowed covered Organ Mountains

Read: “In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”(Ephesians 1:7-8)

Relate:

Redemption isn’t a word that we use a lot these days, so let me give you a quick idea of what it means. Redemption means when someone pays a ransom to deliver somebody who is incapable of freeing himself. A picture of this in Jesus’ day was that of a slave market. A person would see a slave; somebody who couldn’t free himself, who had no power to do that, who had absolutely no rights, and would pay the price for that slave, he then freed him, redeeming that slave’s life. He’d set him free!

It literally means to loose somebody from some-thing. To set him free; to purchase him by paying a price. And that's what God has done. He’s liberated us! He set us free! He’s redeemed us! Jesus Christ purchased us by His own blood. He gave His own life for us. The truth of humanity is we are useless until we’ve been purchased. We’re like an item in a storefront or in a redemption store catalog.

Every time I hear the word redemption, I remember the redemption store mom and I used to visit. When I was a young boy my mom used to go grocery shopping every weekend and would come home with some S&H Green stamps. Does anyone remember those? She would look so forward to accumulating these stamps because when she filled the books that the store provided for them, she could then go to the redemption store and redeem them for a gift. I remember her excitement as she would let me know that she had filled the number of books she needed and was now ready to redeem them for the prize she had been showing me in the catalog for weeks.

As long as something just sits there on a shelf or on the pages of the redemption store catalog, it is useless. But, when somebody comes in and purchases it, it is now ready to be of use.

That’s the way you and I are. It may seem as if we have a use in this world but, when it comes to eternal significance and meaning in life, something that lasts not just for the time on this earth but for eternity, we are useless until we’re purchased by Jesus Christ. He literally picks us up out of sin and delivers us to the destination of redemption in our lives. This “picking up” is called redemption. It’s a picture of our freedom in Christ. Because of Jesus Christ, you and I have been redeemed by His love!

In these verses we find another word that is critically important to us: forgiveness. I want you to really see what it means to be forgiven. This word as used here, literally means “to carry away”. God carries our sin away from us.

This is not only a religious term but, it’s also a legal term. It literally means “to cancel a debt”. It’s as if you were behind on your house payments and you were going to loose it. Then one morning the mortgage holder knocks on your door and says, “We’ve been talking down at the office and we just want to cancel your debt on this house. We want to totally remove it.” Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Just take that feeling and multiply it by billions of times as you realize that is how Jesus Christ has canceled our debt of sin. We would have had to face God in judgment one day and He would have said, “Pay up!” knowing that the guilty penalty of sin is death. But the debts are cancelled. It’s a legal term for what God has done in our lives.

I have experienced a feeling similar to this. One summer my cousins and I were extremely bored and went looking for something exciting to do. We discovered that my uncle’s rental house was vacant and for some crazy reason we decided to break all the windows. As usual I was left holding the bag! My father was extremely angry at me and came up with a repayment plan. I was to work all summer long in his construction company to pay my debt. For some reason my dad’s heart softened. He called me into the kitchen and informed me that my debt had been paid in full and that he had taken care of my debt. My father loved me so much that he couldn’t stand the thought of me having to pay a debt which, in reality, I could never pay.

Christ paid for our sin debt with his own blood. A debt we could never pay. This didn’t come without a great price. Our freedom didn’t come cheaply. The canceling of that debt didn’t come without somebody paying the debt for us. The cost is the blood of Jesus Christ. That’s why we talk so much about the cross. That’s why we focus so much on what Jesus Christ has done.

The word “blood” is used over 400 times in the Bible. Just to put that into perspective – “faith” in the NIV version, is only used 270 times. There’s a lot of blood in the Bible! Blood is right at the very center of the message of the Bible, the very heart of Christianity. If you remove the blood from the Bible it’s like removing all the definitions from a dictionary. It would be worthless. It would be empty of it’s power! Don’t let anybody ever do that.

Reflect:

When have you been forgiven of a debt you couldn’t pay? Who forgave you? How did it make you feel?

Respond:

Grace is God’s voluntary and loving favor given to those He loves and saves. We can’t earn salvation nor do we deserve it. To receive it, we must simply admit that we cannot save ourselves; that only God can save us, and the only way to receive this loving favor is through faith in Jesus.
Have you accepted God’s salvation? If yes, when? If not, why not?

Request: