Every Spiritual Blessing: Redemption

 Welcome to another episode of the Carpefeide Podcast where if the shoe fits you wear it and if the truth hurts you bear it. I am Justin Gruber and I am Jesse Gruber and today we hope you will seize the faith. You can turn there. We are going to continue our every spiritual gift. Our study in Ephesians 1 here, this little section we've gotten caught in, the song of Paul, singing of the glories of God that he has given to us. Every spiritual gift that we receive from the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We are going to try to cover most of one verse today. Most of one verse. And the pages are only the notes are only one page which is convenient but as Sherman says, that doesn't mean anything. We'll see how long it takes us to get through Ephesians 1,7 like A and B. All right, our every spiritual gift tonight that we're looking at is the spiritual gift that we receive from God of redemption, the spiritual gift of redemption. And by now you should all be in Ephesians 1 so you can join us there. All right, the song continues on. We have already seen that we have been given a new identity as saints, saints of God. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. That's what it says in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And we have been given this from our Father. We have been chosen by God, made holy and blameless before the foundation of the earth. We have been predestined to adoption as sons. And we have been given grace upon grace upon grace from the kindness of his will. And that is what we have looked at thus far. At some point I'm going to string all the spiritual blessings because each title, if you notice, has a main theme of the spiritual blessing. But even as we cover that spiritual blessing, there's more spiritual blessings in the verse that we unpack. So hopefully by the end, once we get through the ceiling of the Holy Spirit and that eternal confidence that we have there, I'll try to string them all together. I'll numerate all the spiritual blessings that Paul sings of in this prose in Ephesians 1. That's where we're at. That's where we've left off. And what we have next is this really smooth transition in a song. It's beautifully smooth. And he's been building to this smooth over time, building to this transition over time very smoothly as we get to verse 7. Verse 7 starts off this way in him. And I'll just stop there. We should cover it in him. It starts off with in him. And the question is, but who? Who is the in him? And it's the in him in this transition that we have here that Paul has been building to. And he's already mentioned the in him verse 7 starts with. He starts with what has happened in infinite past. Chosen before the foundation of the world, predestined before the foundations of the world to adoption as sons. And he brings us now in this one verse into the immediate present. And so he goes from all of eternity past to right now in this immediate. And the tone starts to change from the past to the current present for all of us. He's been transitioning to this point for several verses now. He wanted to get us here. He walked essentially through what the Father, what God had done for us. From all of eternity past to bring us as his sons adopted, holy, blameless, and chosen. And he moves now into the current. And as he moves from the Father, he's going to transition to this in him. And as he's been transitioning for several verses, we're going to look at how he has led us to verse 7 in this point. In him, we have every spiritual blessing as it says in Christ. That was back in verse 3. If we move to verse 5, the in him is present there. We were predestined to adoption through Jesus Christ. And then in our verse that we covered last week, verse 6, it says in him, we received grace upon grace through grace in the beloved, capital B, beloved. All three of these verses are transitioning us to the immediate. What God had done from eternity past into the very present that we are currently in. The in him is answered very simply through Jesus Christ. And we are slammed into the immediate. Yes, of course, in eternity past, but also right now. You live and move in him. Jesus is him. I'm going to use a little phrase, the kids use Jesus is him. He is the him. He's the guy. And in him, we are currently living and existing. Let me read to you verse 7 now in full. In him, we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. Now, I'm only covering up to the forgiveness of our trespasses. So it's A and B. We're going to leave C for next week. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Jesus Christ is the in him in which we have redemption through his blood. Church is wild. The Christian faith is a wild faith. It's so removed from where we live and where we operate. It is not removed, however, in the immediacy of our study of Exodus. And we're going to have to recall Exodus tonight to really grasp a hold of this in him, redemptive nature through his blood. All right, redeemed through his blood. I love the word redeemed. I'm going to love the word redeemed. It's one of my favorite biblical words, the biblical word redeemed. It's essentially defined as a purchasing back. We are bought back. It is payment paid to pull us from slavery into free life. The ransom has been paid and we are released. It's that ransom idea that really got me because I don't know if any of you have been following what's happened with Nancy Guthrie. Savannah Guthrie's mom. But the idea of, I mean, the whole story is just crazy. The idea of kidnapping an old lady and holding her for ransom is just a wild story. It kind of shocks us because it's something so uncommon and for it to happen such a prominent figure to have this ransom paid and to understand that we see the Guthrie family in this intense, sad, emotional state that would willingly pay this ransom if they had any clue to know who they were paying it and that their mother was alive. Of course they would pay the ransom because they love their mother. But that's what redeemed means. We were ransomed. Now we see their faces on their videos and the sadness and the hurt and the turmoil of being willing to pay a ransom for someone they love. And then we remember that we were predestined, chosen, adopted to be sons of God while we were enemies. We were haters of God. And yet we are redeemed through his blood. That's when Christ ran some of us. He ransoms us when we hate him. It's such a crazy, it's wild. It's absolutely wild. And so we are redeemed through his blood. We are no longer slaves to sin. We are redeemed to sonship by Jesus. It's very fascinating. The idea that we are slaves. We had no hope. We were owned and controlled solely by sin. The weight of sin and death controlled us completely. And Christ redeems us from it. Not that we had hope. Not that we even truly understood or even desired this ransoming. Yet Christ ransoms us. Redeems us nonetheless. Two verses that point to this in the scriptures. Mark 10.45. We are actually going to have a whole bunch of verses tonight. But we will start Mark 10.45. These are the words of Christ who says, for even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Christ's life is the ransom paid to redeem us through his blood. He brews 9 verse 12. I'm trying to do a good job of holding my place in Ephesians. I normally don't do that. Hebrews 9.12 says this. And not through the blood of goats and calves but through his own blood. He entered the holy place once for all having obtained eternal redemption. The eternal redemption, the ransom bought by Christ for us redeemed moved from slave to free. And that in of itself should be a thought to go from slave to free is an overwhelming and truly in some ways a terrifying idea. And you never probably process that or thought about it. But the freedom that comes through Christ after being a slave to sin is total freedom. It's complete freedom. And it offers with it the fear what does a slave to sin now do with freedom. You have been granted a total freedom in Christ. And that should lead us to have to wonder what do I do now? More so importantly is how the freedom comes and it comes here in Ephesians 1 verse 7 in him we have redemption through his blood. It is Christ's blood that redeems us and this is how Christianity is wild. It's just absolutely wild. We talk about blood. We sing about blood. We sing about the blood of our Savior Jesus Christ. That's crazy. We keep in our current solid culture all of our blood inside when blood is outside it is very very like gross and icky. We push it away from us. Right? We push those things where people are wounded and hurt far away from us in society. We don't interact with blood yet we sing of it. We praise Christ for shedding it and it is his blood which is the payment the ransom the price to redeem us to buy us back from slavery from sin and from death into a total freedom. 1 Peter 1 verses 18 and 19. I know I'm moving because I have things I want to like expand and talk about. 1 Peter 1 18 and 19 says this. Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers. But with the precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless the blood of Christ. There was no gold or silver that could possibly have ransomed us from sin and death. Our slavery could not have been bought from the slavery of sin with any material good save the blood of Christ. And it is shed blood that's why we sing of it that's why we rejoice in it that has purchased us from life from death into life from sin and slavery to it to a total freedom. There was no other possible way to redemption but through the blood of Jesus. We walk through that blood into an eternal kingdom where the king we call dad lives. It's that walking through the blood. That's the word used here in Ephesians which of course while I was holding my place I decided I would neglect to hold my place. That's the word that Ephesians 1 7 uses to talk about our redemption. We are redeemed through the blood of Christ. It has this walking there was a book series put up by Ted Decker the circle series and in that it depicted a life lived that was in like an alternate reality to our reality here on earth. And in that reality you walked to God by literally dying by drowning in his water his living water and being brought back to life through it. And it's that idea that concept of walking through the blood of Christ to be redeemed that we are bathed in the blood of Christ. And in that we have these grotesque ideas of cultism and weird horror movie kind of stuff. That's where we think of it. That's where we think of it because it's ripped and mutilated and turned on its head because it's the way Christ truly does redeem us. Through his blood we are made holy. We go through the blood of Christ. That's how we approach his holy mountain. That's how we come to exist as sons and joiners in the kingdom. And when we do it that way it's not the blood of goats or cows or any other man it is only the God man's blood through which we find ourselves free. Totally and completely free redeemed through his blood. Through the blood is deep and abiding abiding and it should draw us back to Exodus thinking of that sacrificial system the cost and weight of our debt was greater than we could bear. Daily the blood flowed from God's temple daily morning noon and night pouring forth symbolizing the separation that slavery had. Of sin and death had on man. And we're so removed from it that we have no concept of that level and that weight and that cost of sin. If we could visualize the blood spilling moment after moment from God's holy altar to provide a gracious and temporary stemming of the weight of sin and guilt and shame. We would truly understand what it means that through Christ's blood is the eternal redemption that Hebrews talks about. No more blood should ever be spilled for only through Christ's blood on God's altar are we redeemed from sin and death. And because we're so far removed from it we don't understand the weight of it. This would have been something that would have been clear for those in the early church who were saved from the immediate actions of the temple sacrificial system through the blood of Christ no longer to ever spill blood for the remission of sin because Christ's blood was perfectly all consuming of that debt. And that's why we can do nothing. That's why we are so ardent. Right about the full redemptive nature of Christ's blood. That it is not one action any man can ever take that is making him holy that is making him good and right. Only the action of Christ alone and his shedding of blood actually makes us righteous. It's why we can never allow the thought that there is any work that we do that brings us in some way to holiness or to righteousness. So I reject that outright. It's why there's no amount of praying or Bible reading that can establish you as holy and undefiled only through the blood. That is how we are redeemed. Every action then should flow and pour through that redemption. That's where the action comes from. It is because of the blood that brings the redemption that we live in him. That shed blood as Ephesians 1 verse 7 says brings about this great gift in him. We have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses. It's the forgiveness of our sins. The forgiveness of our sins comes through that shed blood. This is how we move from this all of eternity past being chosen and predestined into the immediate where we can sit, stand and move in the present moment because in him we have been redeemed through his blood. And our sin is forgiven. Our debt was our sin and God was holy. This is the problem. Jesus is our hope against hope. Jesus shed blood alone. Pulls us through to the holiness of God. Redeems us from our slavery to sin and death. The scripture is clear and it goes from Old to New Testament. We're going to take a little journey. We're going to a little Bible journey here. He has made the way of total fulfillment of the promises of God. We are not partially but totally forgiven. What does that look like? Well, God has been expressing what that looks like throughout his covenants with his people. He has always told them what it looks like to truly be forgiven and only in this moment where we live in the immediate in the blood, in him redeemed. Can we understand what these verses truly mean? So we'll start in Psalm. Got a whole bunch. We'll get Psalm 103 verse 12. And we'll just walk through some Old Testament and get to the New Testament. There's a lot of Psalms, guys. Psalm 103 verse 12. Here's what it says. As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgression from us. There have been a lot of fun that is. How far away is East from West? 3000 miles? There's literally on the... What do they call it? It's called a flower. It's called something else. The compass itself. The little rose. It is called a flower. I didn't know. The rose. On the rose of the compass, East and West mathematically would simply be raised. They have a starting point and they travel eternally the other way from each other. And that is how far our sin is removed. It would be like to stand in one place to turn to your right and look. And then to stand in that same place and turn to your left and look, that is how far God has removed your sin from you. Where does it stop? It doesn't. It continues on. That is the total forgiveness through the shed blood of Christ. We'll move from Psalms to Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 44 verse 22. And Isaiah 44 verse 22, we read this. I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud and your sins like a heavy mist return to me for I have redeemed you. We had a bunch of fog Friday. Kind of rolled in. I don't know if anybody was out and about driving. We kind of rolled in pretty thick. And it got to the point where on some streets in Glacier where I was delivering at the time, you couldn't see down the whole block. Just one block ahead of you. It was thick up there. And that's how our visual understanding of our sin is. When God removed it, he removed it so that you can't you can't see it. It's not it's not there. There's something up ahead. What is it? It's not your sin. You can't see it. I have blotted it out. That's what God has done. That's what total forgiveness looks like. That's what through the blood we have been redeemed from. We'll go to Jeremiah 31 34. And here's what we read. And they shall not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying, know the Lord where they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them declares the Lord for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more. Truly only God can decide to not remember your sin. You ever think about it? Like we have when we remember something we remember it. But God can choose to not remember it. I will remember their sin no more. Which is great because we also know that it's not that God can forget it. God can just not remember it. What a gift is that he looks at you and remember all of this right in the immediacy. God chose us when we hated him in him. We have redemption through his blood and our sin is forgiven so much so that he will not remember it again upon us as we've to make us 719. This is a good you challenge. Micah's not a big book. Got it. Don't turn too fast. Now I'm in a back. Micah 719. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, that will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. One of the biggest challenges we face as man is actually not making it to the moon. It's making it to the bottom of the ocean. It's intensely pressurized down there. We have a real hard time getting to the bottom of the ocean. But that's on earth. We can make it to the moon. We can't make it to the bottom of the ocean. That's where our sin is. We can't get to it. That's where God has removed it from us. And then some people can't even go to the Titanic. So like I mean like sorry too soon. That's what the pressure and the weight of the ocean does and we can't get to our sin. That's how God has removed it from us. We'll go to Matthew 2628. Matthew 2628. Matthew 2628. For this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for you for many for the forgiveness of sin. Through the blood Christ poured it out. To forgive us our sins. The purpose of the cross was redemption. The shedding of his blood to radimus. First John 1 verse 9. If we confess our sins he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. How much unrighteousness does the blood redeem you from? All. There's nothing missing. There is no sin that is not present in the redemptive work of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. All sin is covered. And that's how we live. We stand through the blood redeemed from the weight of sin and death. Pulled back from slavery into the eternal covenant through Jesus in Him. And this is what's truly crazy. One of the... we're still in February. It's Black History Month. That's what February is. For our family it's just birthday month. But the world celebrates Black History Month. The understanding of slavery was a real problem in our country. Chattel slavery as Exodus tells us is an affront to God that is punishable by death. God, that's God's standard. God set that standard out. It has always been his standard. It's immutable in his word. We know it's a great evil. By the time we entered into the civil war era something had happened in our country. Truly, it was crazy. There was an industrialization that was happening in the north. An industrialization, that's where we're manufacturing things through large scale industrial economy. And what was happening is through the production of goods and through the growing of farming. The farming in the south actually became less economically beneficial. The cost of goods for them that they were producing was going down. Now at that point, you'll be told that since 1619 for almost 200 years, slavery was the chief function of which everything happened in America. In fact, we're just built upon slavery which is absolutely historically false. Yet what was happening in the south is, here's the truth about slavery. When someone is truly a owned property, when we take man and own them, the incentive to actually do anything as an owned individual is intensely low. You follow me? Your productivity is nil. What does it matter? There's nothing in it for you. What happened actually in the south, it's truly crazy and you won't be taught it in a normal history book. In our progressive religion at public school systems, slaves were being paid to even get them to work, which is crazy. In fact, a slave that actually was in a trade like blacksmithing actually made more money than their master on their farm. Because they would actually have the freedom to go into town and use their skills. Now it's crazy because you had the blacksmithing at a blacksmith shop, but if a slave could go into town and do the same work for less, guess who people were willing to pay? The slave, he was working for cheaper. Now he's making money on the weekends because he has his skill and because if he doesn't, he doesn't let him do it. He's not going to get me work from him on his farm. Now we have this weird system that was set up in the south. I'm telling you all that because here came the fear, what happens if a slave is freed? What happens? There was real fear because the slaves, they didn't know, they didn't have an education, they weren't given the same gifts. One of the true important things was to have your slaves educated. One of the things that George Washington did before he died was ensure that his slaves would be freed and educated because there was this fear that if a slave doesn't know what to do when they are free, what will they do? How will they live? I bring all of that up because I want you to hear something. When you are freed in Christ, you are totally free. And this fear should come in, this idea should come in, what then do we do? We are not educated in righteousness. We don't know what to do. We were slaves to sin and death. We had no hope, all we knew was sin. That's all we knew. But Jesus has no fear. Why? Because when we are freed from sin and death, we are in Him. In Him, the whole identity is shifted. We are no longer slave but free. And the response that stems from us walking through the blood is to live in Him, to live free in Christ, to move in Him, in Christ, in redemption through His blood. Our sin is forgiven. But all I knew was sin. No longer do you know sin. You know righteousness. The identity shift is so complete and this every spiritual blessing from heaven poured down on us, chosen from the beginning, predestined to adoption as sons, holy and blameless grace upon grace in the beloved. In Him, you have been purchased from slavery to sin and death. And through His blood, all of your sin is forgiven. And so dear Christian, it is indeed the kindness of our Lord that leads us to repentance. It is not the fear of our sin. We are when we are in sin, when we don't know Christ, the world at large has no fear of sin. And you know this, because what do they do with evil against God? They celebrate it. They cheer it on. They establish laws to protect it and allow it to grow in flourish. That is what we do in sin. And Christ has bought us back from that. We didn't know when we were in sin. We celebrated our sin. We rejoiced in it and He says, your mind, you're redeemed. I am buying you out of that slavery, that darkness and that death. Now you will live in me. I will carry you through my blood. You will become sons of the most high God. That's what redemption is. And that redemption happens in Him. The question is not, are you redeemed? The question is now, what will you do with your freedom? What will you do with it? And that is not to cause us pause to worry about what I will do with my freedom. It is to cause us to run to live in Him who has freed us from sin, who has freed us from guilt and shame and death. And so we move to response. We rejoice to be in Him because in Him we have so much more than redemption. We have identity, a name, a life and a purpose. May we represent as we see this kindness of the Lord. But even more may we rejoice stronger. For He has not made us free to fail. He has made us free to eternal glory with a purpose to glorify our heavenly Father. And the confidence that sin and death can never again threaten us because we stand in Him. That's how free we are. We can approach the throne of God. The scripture says to do it boldly. Boldly. We, haters, sinful, arrogant, proud are in Him redeemed. The sinful, arrogant and proud do not approach the throne of God boldly. Those enslaved to sin, gravel at the foot of the throne. But we are His children. We walk up boldly to the throne of God because we have gone through the blood of Christ. And we are seen as holy and blameless. God does not look at us and see a sinful, arrogant man. He has removed our sin as far as the East is from the West to the bottom of the ocean. Like a dense fog, He sees it no more and instead He sees His child. Now the question becomes what do we do with that freedom? We rejoice. We praise His name. We glorify God. Do we do that? No, we don't even contemplate it on a normal day. We don't even think about it. We do not think about us going through the blood of Christ to become holy and sinless. We don't process that our sin is forgotten or rather not remembered by God. And so often we still live as if there is guilt and shame from our sin instead of repenting and pressing forward. Jesse started our night talking about stoicism and the real sadness of stoicism was to fight for some perceived and transient form of honor. That was only subjective in any one man. God calls us to be happy, glad, warriors for righteousness. Why? Because a warrior who has no guilt, who has no fear and can approach the throne of the Almighty sovereign God because he is dead does not fight with fear. He fights with joy and that joy of the Lord comes because our sin is no more. It comes because through the blood we have been redeemed. And so in response, certainly and always repent. We are to always repent from our sin. But we do not repent from our sin to wallowing it. We repent in our sin to turn from it and press forward in what God has called us to do. In each and every heart, in each and every home, in each and every moment at our workplaces, in each and every moment with our relationships, growing and strengthening the church, growing and strengthening our families so that we see generation after generation of those who are not in the same way. So let us respond tonight. Let us spend some time in prayer. Let us repent. Let us rejoice. And given the opportunity to sing, let us rejoice all the louder because we have received redemption through Christ. We have gone through the blood and our sin is no more. Let us spend time in prayer now.