Gospel

If you have a Bible, please turn to the book of 1st Peter and chapter 1. We'll read two verses in 1st Peter chapter 1, verse number 18. For as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation or your empty way of life received by tradition from your fathers, he says you weren't redeemed that way, but you've been redeemed, verse 19, with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. When an individual repents and trusts the Lord Jesus, they experience God's redemption, a redemption that has been made possible through the precious blood of Christ, the Lamb of God.

I'm going to talk about redemption for the last half of this meeting and maybe to help you understand what it means to be redeemed. You can imagine if your family takes a holiday, a trip to the fair land to the south of Mexico, and you're visiting a market in one of the cities of Mexico and looking at a variety of things to purchase, and while you're going through the market and the stalls are very close together and it's very crowded, you get separated from your family. And people identify you as a foreigner and somebody or a group of people quickly snatch you up and they take you away into a van and they have taken you and kidnapped you and they are holding you for ransom.

And they say the only way we are going to let you go free is if your family pays or somebody pays the ransom price of $500,000. And when they gather together that $500,000 and they get donations from all over and somebody donates a large sum of money and they send down or they email an electronic transfer of $500,000 and then they set you free, at that moment you have been redeemed. A price was paid, a ransom price was paid to set you free from that captivity.

You need to be redeemed. I know you haven't been kidnapped by anybody in this meeting, but you are like a prisoner that is held by the power and the bonds of sin and you need to be redeemed. Or you could imagine a slave market, like many, many decades and decades and decades ago you would have seen maybe in the south of this country.

And people were at times brought on this slave display and there were some people that would buy a slave, they'd hand the money over, they'd take the slave and that person would become a slave in their possession and would work for them. But there were some people that would buy a slave and pay whatever the price was, $200, and they would give the $200 and they would take that slave and they would tell them, you're a free man now, here's a document that shows I, your owner, have set you free. I paid the price, you belong to me, now you are free from the slavery.

You have been redeemed. See, the Bible gives us different concepts or different words to illustrate what happens when somebody is saved. It speaks of being reconciled.

When we who are enemies to God because of our sin are made friends of God, when we turn to Him and receive His salvation, we are reconciled. Or if you could imagine someone who is guilty and they're put on trial in a courtroom and all the evidence is put on display and it is clear that they are guilty, yet when they have put their faith in the Lord Jesus, God says they are justified. They are set free from their sins.

Well, tonight we're going to think about a slave market. And the Bible teaches that people that have never repented and put their faith in the Lord Jesus, they are under the dominion and the power and the control of sin. And you need to be redeemed from your sins and set free by the Lord Jesus.

Maybe there's someone else here and you wouldn't consider yourself to be a hardened criminal in any way. You're trying to live a religious life. But you have found that religion itself has just proven to be a bondage to you.

And despite all your religious practices and all your attempts to turn over a new leaf and do the best that you can do, you are still left without that peace with God and you've got to be redeemed from the bondage of a dead religion. And maybe there's other people here. And you are trying to put on a front.

Trying to pretend that you've got some hope within you. But the reality is there's nothing. And you're living one of those empty lives, a vain life, without God.

Chasing shadows. Trying to amuse yourself and entertain yourself and occupy yourself with frivolous things. And the reality is that there is an emptiness, there is a shallowness to it all because you are still without the reality of God's salvation.

You need to be redeemed. How do you experience this redemption? Well, remember, it is captives, it is prisoners that are set free. And just like it is sick people that are healed and lost people that are saved, it is people that are in that bondage of sin that are going to be redeemed.

So the very first step for you to experience God's redemption is to be honest with God like we have been hearing. And for you to face the fact of the Bible that we are guilty sinners before God. That we deserve judgment for our sins.

And the only way you are going to be redeemed is if you turn and put your faith in a crucified and living Lord Jesus who paid the price for our sins with His blood. And the moment that we turn to Him and trust Him and Him alone, He sets us free, He redeems us by His blood. There is a hotel chain, a very large popular hotel chain called Starwood Hotels.

They own chains like the Sheraton Hotel and the Westin Hotel. And a few years ago, Starwood Hotels started a little marketing campaign that they entitled, Experiencing True Redemption. In my previous employment, I had stayed with them a couple of times, so I was on their mailing list and I get the little package and that headline, that advertisement slogan caught my attention.

Experience True Redemption. And what they are saying is, if you stay at our hotels and you earn lots of hotel points, and after you've got lots of points, you can redeem those points, you can trade in those points and stay at one of our luxury hotels, the Sheraton Garnavillo, and after you have traded in and redeemed those points to stay at one of our luxury resorts, that will be Experiencing True Redemption. Well, I took offense at their motto.

I still take offense, in fact, that the slogan, Experience True Redemption, has been trademarked by Starwood. I guess you're not allowed to talk about true redemption without giving credit to Starwood Hotels. So I wrote them a little email on their guest website, because their motto was too tempting.

And I questioned them and I challenged them on their understanding of what true redemption was. And I said that to experience true redemption, they have got to turn to the Lord Jesus and put their faith in Him who shed His blood on the cross for our sins, and then you'll be able to say, we're experiencing true redemption. I didn't think they'd bother to write back, but they did.

They emailed me back. Dear Mr. Kane, we greatly appreciate taking the time to write to us and we value the input and feedback of all of our customers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They didn't really get it.

They thought that experiencing true redemption was using points for a luxury hotel. They didn't get what true redemption really was. Do you get it? Have you been redeemed? Redemption from sins enables us to live righteously unto God, to be obedient servants of God, to live to the glory of God that we couldn't do while we were still in our sins.

You need to be redeemed. Let me talk to you about the cost of our redemption. Because you can't pay the price that is required for redemption.

Like if you have been kidnapped and the ransom price is half a million dollars, it's unlikely that you're going around with half a million dollars in your pocket. They're holding you prisoner and they say, well, the ransom price is half a million, can you pay? Sorry, I don't have half a million on me, can't do it. And there's nothing that you are able to do that will secure your own redemption.

You know that. There isn't a matter of just saying a magic prayer. It's not a matter of turning over and living a new life.

It's not a matter of making a commitment that you're going to be a superior religious individual. None of that can pay for your own redemption. No amount of money could pay for it.

There's a significant extra cost that the modern shipping industry has been dealing with the last couple of years. It's the cost of ransom payments. Ships that are often carrying crude oil or other some valuable cargo, they can save a lot of time in their ocean journeys if they're wanting to cross the Atlantic or go to Europe and they're coming from Southeast Asia perhaps.

If they can go through the Suez Canal in Egypt, it'll save them a lot of time. They won't have to go around the south of Africa. But to get to the Suez Canal, they've got to go through the Red Sea.

And to get to the Red Sea, they've got to go through the Gulf of Aden. And the problem with going through the Gulf of Aden is that there's a lot of pirates around there. Real life modern pirates.

And they take off from the coast of Somalia and they go out and they hijack those ships and they hold the cargo and all the sailors prisoner for a ransom payment. Just back in January, there was a ship, the MV Eagle. Twenty-four Filipino sailors.

And it was hijacked in the Gulf of Aden. And on April the 24th, just six or seven weeks ago, the sailors and the cargo were redeemed for six million dollars. The pirates got six million dollars, but as soon as they got that money, the sailors and the cargo were free.

The cost of their redemption, six million dollars. Do you got six million? No. Neither do I. And it wouldn't matter if you did have six million.

And it wouldn't matter if you had sixty million. And it wouldn't matter if you had six hundred million. God wouldn't take it.

God doesn't need it. God says your soul is more valuable than six million dollars. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? God says your soul is worth more than all of that.

So He gave His only Son. And His Son paid the price, the cost of our redemption, with His own precious blood. Redeemed through the precious blood of Christ.

And when you read of the precious blood of Christ, one thing it tells us is that Christ has died. He shed His blood when He died. When we were yet without strength, no ability to redeem ourselves, at just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

God has commended and proven and demonstrated His love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. But the precious blood of Christ also reminds us that His death was a violent death.

Remember, they beat Him. And they whipped Him. And they punched Him.

And they spat on Him. And they nailed His hands and His feet to the cross. And when He had died, they took His spear and plunged it into His side, and blood and water poured out.

It was violent. But the blood of Christ also tells us it was a sacrifice. And it wasn't that they took Him just as a helpless prisoner.

But He willingly went with them. And He willingly allowed them to take Him, because the Bible says in Galatians 2, the Son of God loved me and He gave Himself for me. And He bore our sins in His own body on the tree.

And once in the end of the age, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. The precious blood of Christ. It's a statement that tells us that the Lord Jesus is of great value.

His blood is precious. We naturally count some people's blood more precious than others. If they have done some great act for us, or if they are close to us, there are many police officers that die in the line of duty.

If that police officer was your dad, you'd count his blood more precious, because he means something to you. Well, God says this is the most precious blood. And every sinner that has been redeemed agrees that the blood of Christ is precious blood.

That sins require payment. That the payment for sins is death. The wages of sin is death.

We deserve that death. We deserve that eternal separation from God. But the Lord Jesus Christ has made payment with His blood, by His death, so that when we believe on Him, God redeems us.

He sets us free from our sins, because the blood of Christ has been shed for us. He's a great redeemer. A unique redeemer.

A lamb without blemish and without spot. It might sound a funny thing to some people to think of a great salvation or a redemption being accomplished by a lamb. It's very tender.

Very gentle. Very small. But maybe you know that story in the Old Testament in Exodus chapter 12 about the Passover.

When a whole nation of about a million people, they were redeemed. They were set free from slavery and the power of another kingdom. They were redeemed by the blood of a lamb.

Do you remember the story? When they took the lamb, the Passover lamb, and they killed that lamb, and its blood was put on the door post and over the top of the door. And the firstborn son that was in the homes that were covered by that blood, they were safe. And all through the land of Egypt, where firstborn son did not have blood on the doors of their houses, they died at the stroke of midnight.

Then the nation of Israel is set free through the work of a lamb that had died and shed his blood. They needed to find a special lamb that had no spot. Nothing wrong with it.

Maybe they didn't realize how special that lamb was until after they heard the cries from the families in Egypt. And they saw all these other families that were mourning, that were crying over the loss of their sons. And they realized that because their dad had put blood on that door and they were in that house, that they had been saved.

It was a special lamb then. The Lord Jesus is a very special lamb. He's called the Lamb of God.

John says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. A lamb without blemish and without spot. A perfect lamb.

A sinless man. That's what we needed. You see, he's so different from us.

We have many blemishes. I don't just mean the marks on our faces or on our bodies, but in our soul, in our life, our failures, our character flaws, our sins, our crimes, the wrong things that we have done. All of these blemishes we have.

But the Lord Jesus had no blemish. And this perfect man came and he shed his blood so that we could be redeemed. God took on human flesh for this very reason.

That he could pay for our redemption with his blood. Think about that. His blood was shed for you.

Consider the blood of Christ. Imagine if there was one of those sons in Israel and they see their father kill a lamb and their father's about to put the blood on the door and you, the firstborn son, say to your dad, Dad, don't bother. Don't bother.

I don't think it's for real. I don't think it's really gonna matter. Don't worry about it.

Forget the blood. Or imagine if the blood was put on there and the father says, Come on into the house. And the son says, Nah, I don't need to go in there.

I'm just gonna stay partying out here with my friends. Don't worry about that. I don't need to be under the blood.

He would pay a price for ignoring the value of the blood. So will you, friend. If you ignore the value of the blood, if you never repent and turn to the Lord Jesus, you also will pay a price.

The wages of sin is death. Don't overlook the value of Christ's blood. His blood, the blood of redemption, has been shed so that guilty sinners, trapped by sin, trapped by an empty religion, trapped by a future with no hope, you can be set free from all of that and experience true redemption by the grace of God and the blood of the Lord Jesus.

And the moment that you turn to God and put your faith in His Son, God applies the blood of Christ to you and He sets you free from your sins. That's redemption. Do you count His blood precious? Is the blood of Christ valuable to you? If you don't count the blood of Christ as valuable, then I can only conclude that you have never been redeemed.

And if you don't count His blood valuable, it's like you're walking by the shed blood of Christ and you're saying, it's just a common death. It's just a death like any other man. But it's not common, friend.

It's not common blood. It's precious blood. It's the blood of God's Son.

It's the blood that enables us to be redeemed from our sins. And if you would like to be redeemed, if you would like to be saved, I would urge you tonight to consider the cross. Face your sin.

Admit your guilt. And you think of why the Lord Jesus hung on that cross and why His blood was shed. Consider the cross.

Consider the Christ who shed His blood for our sins that you might also experience true redemption. Repent and trust the Lord Jesus tonight. Let's pray.