Am I out of the light? Jack? Jack? Okay.
They said, “I’m in the light that I’ll shine like Moses.” And Jack said that he wanted to give a truer picture of me.
Let’s go ahead and open up to 1 Peter 1. I’m going to start with verse 13.
Peter writes:
Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts as in your ignorance;
but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct,
because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”
And if you call on the Father, Who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear;
knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers,
but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,
who through Him believe in God, Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
And then in 1 Peter 5, verse 12:
By Silvanus, our faithful brother, as I consider him, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God in which you stand.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the salvation and the redemption that You have given to us through Jesus Christ. Thank You for the cost of it. We thank You for the efficacy of it, Lord, that we stand in the good of these things.
And Lord, this morning, as we come to Your Word, we ask just this: that Jesus Christ would be revealed to us. Lord, that we would see Him this morning, and in seeing Him, Lord, that we would be put on good ground. We ask this in Jesus’ name.
My brothers and sisters, you know that I’ve been speaking out of 1 Peter. Again, I’m not really doing an exegetical study, but rather sharing the things that have stood out to me in reading this. I think this is my third or fourth time through this, and I didn’t really think I’d be doing this this long, so forgive me.
Last time, we covered verses 13 through 16. My note said this: it was an exhortation to build up your life as a Christian. In other words, the end of building up our life as Christians—what our lives look like as Christians—is that we are holy as God is holy. That’s the bottom line.
It’s not this kind of thing that you are working up with your might and main, trying to do what’s right and trying not to do what’s wrong, as though that were holiness. But when He says, “Be holy, for I am holy,” it is kind of like, “Be Mine. Be wholly Mine.”
Just like we would say, when I married my wife, that’s what I wanted from her: “Be mine. Be wholly mine. And let me be wholly yours.” That’s kind of what it is.
But when we were looking at this last time, I said you have to go back to what we read before to see the motivation for being holy. In everything, we need a motivation. We are people who need to be motivated. If we are not motivated to do something, we don’t do it. That’s the bottom line, isn’t it?
We have to have some kind of motivation—and not one of these carrot-and-stick motivations where you never get it. You know what I mean? Something is held out in front of you, and you are always trying to get it, but you never get it. Then you just get frustrated with the whole thing and give up. It’s not that type of thing.
Last time I said you have to look at what comes before, because what you have as a motivation to keep you holy is what you see ahead. At the beginning of 1 Peter, he talks about things like an inheritance that is yours, kept for you, undefiled, and that does not fade away.
It’s there. It will never be moved, and it’s going to be yours. You have that assurance. Because of that, you say, “That’s my motivation to keep holy.”
Or there is the idea that we receive, as the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls. Because of that, that is our motivation, because there’s an end. That’s what I like about Peter saying that there’s an end.
You get to the last place. It’s not that you are always going and going like that carrot and stick, but you reach it and get what is yours. You get what you are promised: your salvation. And that is that we will be like Him.
It’s like getting ready for basketball season as a kid. You made yourself ready. You knew you were going to go through hard times—the conditioning and everything—but you knew the season had a date. On that date, you would begin. All your training had a purpose, and that is what motivated you to stay faithful to what you were doing.
So there is a looking forward. But today, our motivation really comes from looking back.
I know there are Scriptures that say you should not look back, but we need to take those Scriptures in context. A lot of those are saying that if you look back—like anyone who puts his hand to the plow and looks back—isn’t worthy. That means, “I’m going on, but I want to look and see what I’m missing. Shall I go back?”
Or in Hebrews 11, it says that if they had thought about the country they were leaving, they had plenty of time to go back to it. That is the negative kind of going back. It makes us not go on any further.
It’s like coming out of Egypt and saying, “Oh man, I sure miss the leeks and the garlic. I wish we were back in Egypt.” That kind of looking back is detrimental. It makes us stop on our pilgrimage.
Peter talks a number of times about being sojourners or pilgrims. We are pilgrims; we are going on. We read about and sang about full salvation today, but there is another song: “Marching to Zion.” We are marching to Zion. We are going forward. We are going uphill, because Zion is a mountain.
That is where we are going, okay? We don’t want to look back and say, “Oh gee, I sure liked the lowlands. It was sure nice down there.” No, we want to be looking ahead.
But there is a place where we look behind for motivation, and that is what I want to talk about this morning.
Here is the idea of looking back. You know what John Newton said shortly before he died? He was eighty-two years old. He said, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I’m a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.”
Now, that is a looking back. I can remember myself being a great sinner, and I still see myself as that sinner. As I look back, I can also see Christ being a great Savior.
And you know what they had written on his grave? This is, again, a looking back:
John Newton, clerk,
once an infidel and libertine,
a servant of slaves in Africa,
was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
preserved, restored, pardoned,
and appointed to preach the faith
he had long labored to destroy.
That’s what he had on his grave. That is a looking back. But when you look back, you can see what Christ has done to you. As he looked back, he understood that Christ had preserved him, restored him, and pardoned him. Then there is a kind of looking forward: Christ appointed him to do something.
Brothers and sisters, that’s what this is about. We do look back for motivation. “I’m going to do this because somebody did this for me. This person gave me a second chance.”
A lot of times, as young people, we get older and remember what our parents or grandparents said or did for us. All of a sudden, we look back and remember it. The memory of it is not condemning, but it is a way of picking ourselves up and saying, “I remember. I remember this. I remember her prayers for me. I’m going forward.”
That’s faith. “I’m going forward.” That is faith.
So what are we looking back to? That is really the gist of everything here. In verse 18, it says, “Knowing that you were redeemed.” This is what we look back to: knowing that we are redeemed.
That’s a big thing, okay? Redeemed carries with it a bunch of meanings that we want to talk about. But this is the whole thing: our looking back for motivation to go forward is to know that we have been redeemed.
The idea of “knowing”—which I think is the Greek word oida—means that I have seen, I have experienced, I have perceived it, and I understand that I have been redeemed. I know it. There is no doubt in my heart that I have been redeemed.
Some of you look back in your Bible and have the day you were saved written there. How many times, when you are in a downtime, do you open that Bible and look at that just to say, “I’m redeemed. I remember that day”?
I don’t remember the exact date. I know it was sometime in August, and it was a weekday. It was about five o’clock in the afternoon. That is all I remember as far as that goes.
But I can tell you that from that moment, when I sensed the Lord coming into me, that is indelible. There are times when I get so down, because I have kind of a depressive part of me, and that is what I cling to: just that thing, “I know I’m redeemed.”
That, in a way, is a hope and an encouragement to get on the right ground and, by faith, stand in that and say, “Lord, You redeemed me. I know. It cannot be taken away from me.”
His redemption cannot be taken away from me. Rewards can be taken from you, but this redemption can never be taken away. It is an eternal thing. It is an eternal redemption.
Now, we want to look at this word redeemed. Not to overemphasize things, but there are two words for redeemed. One is the Greek word exagorazō. That’s pretty good, huh? I want some exagorazō beans in my soup.
Exagorazō has to do with the price being paid—whatever price is paid for ransom or redemption. That is one meaning of redemption.
The other word is lytroō, and that has to do with deliverance: being delivered from something. Although the word for redeemed in this passage is lytroō, both concepts of redemption are in this passage.
It says that we have been redeemed, not with corruptible things, but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish. So we have both: this deliverance and this idea of payment.
In looking at knowing that we are redeemed, we want to consider four aspects of this redemption:
It is God’s redemption. What does that mean? It is God’s redemption. We can say that we are redeemed, but it is God’s redemption. It is God Who purchased it. It is God Who redeems. It is His redemption.
This redemption was all planned out. This passage tells us when it was planned out: before the foundation of the world. Before man was created, before the earth was created, God, in His omniscience, knew that man would fall.
God knew. That is Who He is. He is God. He knew, and He planned then to redeem man, even knowing that the first man He would create would fall. He planned out that redemption.
This was the counsel in the Godhead. I know that is big language, but the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were fellowshipping, because that is what the triune God does: He fellowships.
Knowing that this was going to happen, there was fellowship concerning, “What should We do? What will We do?” In that place, They planned to redeem man. The Godhead planned to redeem man.
This was not something where God was going along and then suddenly saying, “Oh man, this isn’t working out the way it should work out. I’m going to have to do something different.” There is nothing like that there.
God knew. This was something He planned from the beginning. It was not like a shotgun reaction: “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know Adam was going to do that.” He knew, and He planned redemption for man.
This redemption is foreshadowed all throughout the Old Testament. You go throughout the Old Testament and see the foreshadowing of God redeeming man.
Probably the greatest foreshadowing we have is in Exodus, when He redeemed the whole people of Israel in Egypt from slavery and bondage and delivered them. There is that word: delivered. He delivered them out of that place and put them into the promised land, the place He had always intended them to be.
You can go as far back as Genesis 3:15, which speaks of the child of the woman crushing the serpent’s head. You can see it in Abraham: “You are going to be a father of many nations,” and then, “They are going to be four hundred years in Egypt as slaves.” All these things are foreshadowed.
It is foreshadowed not only in the history of Israel but also in the prophets. Isn’t that what we have been reading in Hebrews? God has spoken in many and diverse ways through prophets.
What are these prophets talking about? The prophets are really talking about this redemption that is going to be completed. Especially if you get into Isaiah after chapter 40, or into Jeremiah and Ezekiel, there are references to this redemption.
So this is something that was planned, foreshadowed, and made known in type throughout all the Old Testament period, up until the manifestation of Christ.
Really, when I say the manifestation of Christ, people did not fully realize that He was the Christ until He was raised from the dead. There were very few who understood before that. But when He was raised from the dead, there was no doubt.
Remember the two on the way to Emmaus? They were saying, “We thought that He was the One.” They were disappointed, and then He appeared to them raised from the dead.
The prophets had spoken about this whole plan being manifested to us. God planned redemption, and it is all part of God’s purpose for man.
We talk about eternal purpose. We talk about the church, Christ, and all of this. Within all of this eternal purpose is the redemption of man. That is a big thing.
It is the redemption of man because man is God’s vessel to show Himself. That is what it was from the beginning. Man was to be God’s vessel, so that people could say, “I see God because of His creation, because of this man.” We are to carry that image with us. That is why we were made in His image.
Now, the object of His redemption. There are two ways you can say it. His objective is the deliverance of mankind as a whole. Man is being delivered. This is a big deliverance.
He is being delivered from something—not just someone, but something. My Bible says:
Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers.
Mankind has passed down traditions of what reality is supposed to be. What has that done for us?
This is what we have been born into. It says, “Aimless conduct,” but what we have been born into because of the fall of man is a realm of futility. Nothing is carried out to what it is supposed to be.
It is a vain manner of life. Vain means unproductive. It does not produce what we want. Aimless conduct—aimless. What does aimless mean?
I am a basketball player. Can you imagine me shooting aimlessly? I would be all over the place, wouldn’t I? Okay?
Just to put this in a different way: when I was a junior in high school, I took an elective course. You get a couple of electives, so I took a course on utopian novels.
Why are you laughing at me? Utopian? What’s a utopia? That’s right, there is the Utopia Tech. Utopia is supposed to be like the perfect place, where everything is right—the place you want to be.
But the actual Greek word utopia means “there is no place.” You know that? There is no place. It is a pipe dream.
I took this course because it was around 1969 or 1970. You know what we were thinking about: peace, love, and everything.
We read two novels that I really remember. One was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. He wrote it in the 1930s. It is a story about what is supposed to be a perfect world, a utopia.
You go through the whole thing, and it is not perfect. It ends up with the guy at the end hanging himself. That’s a great utopia, okay?
The other one we read—and I have no idea why Mr. Stennett, I still remember his name, Mr. Stennett, had us read it—was The Stranger by Albert Camus. I do not see how that is utopia, but it is an existentialist novel.
Existentialists believe there is no purpose, even in living. What do you think I was like after taking that class? I was bummed.
In looking back, taking that class was part of what the Lord had in saving me. When I realized that if I believed this guy, there was no purpose in life, I thought, “Why live? Why even try? Why even do anything? Why not just eat, drink, and be merry—just dissolve?”
But it was out of that that I had some friends. I was really in a depressed mood, and some Catholic friends came along and started saying, “Hey, come on, let’s go to church.” I had wanted nothing, but anyway.
The whole thing is that we have been delivered out of this place I am talking about: this place where there is nothing but futility.
You read Brave New World, and in the end it is futility. Nothing is what it was thought to be. It is not the way it should be. That is why the guy killed himself.
We have been delivered out of that place. We have been delivered out of this existential darkness, out of this mindset, out of this vision of the present and the future—or whether there is any future at all.
We have been delivered out of that. We have been taken out of that and put into a whole different realm and mindset. That is part of our redemption. That is our deliverance.
We are delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love. We should be finding out what that kingdom is, because we have had plenty of time to find out what the other kingdom has been like. Some of us have spent too long in it.
Now we want to look at the price. The price, it says, is precious. That is really what I want to consider: it is precious.
What does precious mean? When I was looking in Vine’s Greek dictionary, it said a couple of things. Precious means costly. It means dear. It means accounted as valuable.
We say all these things and talk about these things all the time, but sometimes I think the meaning of the words escapes us. So we want to look at what this really means. It is precious—to whom?
First, it is precious to the One Who is paying the ransom. This price is precious. It is costly. It is dear to the One Who is paying that ransom.
It is okay that it is dear and costly because the thing He is ransoming must be really beloved. He must really value the thing He is redeeming, or ransoming.
It is also, and I like this one, accounted as valuable to the one receiving the ransom. Sometimes we do not even think about that.
For that ransom to be taken and accepted, it has to be acceptable to the one who is holding the other for ransom, right? There has to be that.
And then it is precious to those being ransomed. All of those things are precious.
The first thing we want to talk about is that it is precious to God, because number one, He is the One paying the ransom. Number two, He is the One accepting the ransom.
I never thought of it that way—that God is accepting the ransom. It is not like the devil was accepting the ransom. I do not think the devil ever would. “No, you can’t have them back.”
But it is God Who placed the ransom and said, “This must be fulfilled for man to be redeemed. This must be fulfilled.” I read that in Matthew Henry. God is both the Ransomer and the One Who accepts the ransom. I thought that was really interesting.
It is precious to God because of this: the price was the Son. It was not corruptible things like silver and gold. That is easy to part with.
It is easy to part with money. We do it all the time, don’t we? We part with things we do not need. That is nothing. Corruptible—it does not matter. But if you had to give your child for something—remember Rumpelstiltskin? You have to give your child so he can turn this into gold, right?
Now, this ransom has been foreshadowed. If you remember Genesis 22, God said to Abraham:
Take now thy son, thine only son, and make him an offering.
That is a high cost, don’t you think? Do you think Abraham went into it saying, “Oh yeah, sure. No problem, God. I’ll give You Isaac. He’s a teenager now, so it doesn’t matter.” Get what I mean? Okay?
No, I think Isaac was about thirty years old when this happened. Here was the one in whom all the promises were wrapped up, and God said, “Offer him to Me.” Abraham did not go into this lightly.
But he also did not go into it without hope, because Hebrews tells us that he believed that if he offered up his son as a sacrifice, God would raise him from the dead.
He had to come to that conclusion because he knew God was not a liar. From his experience with God, he knew that. That did not make it any easier for him. You understand that, right? But he went ahead with it because he believed that would happen.
Now, look at Isaac. Where is Isaac in this? Is he heading for the hill? Where do you find Isaac? By his father’s side. Doing what? He has the wood, and he has the fire.
Then he asks, “Where is the offering?” Abraham has to tell him. And Isaac did something that I think would have been the hardest thing in the world. Here is a thirty-year-old man: he let himself be bound and laid on a crude altar, readying himself to be killed.
That is what Isaac did. That is a son. A lot of times we look at this through the father’s eyes. Let’s look at it through the son’s eyes also, because the Son had something to do with this.
In Hebrews 10, I think it is verse 3, it says that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. Why were they killing all these bulls and goats? Because it was foreshadowing. It was looking forward to the sacrifice.
Then in that same place, it talks about the Son coming and saying:
It is written of Me in the volume of the book:
I delight to do Your will.
When you look at this, an animal for sacrifice is innocent. It has done no wrong. It is innocent. But the Son is proved. See what I am saying?
Not that He is just innocent. If it only had to be innocence, why did they not crucify Christ as a babe? Why did they not crucify Him as a three-year-old? He was proved.
He learned obedience through the things that He suffered. Hebrews 2, right? All these things are in here for us. But it says He is a Son. This is what pleased the Father.
This is why it is precious to the Father: because He is a Son. He is proved.
In Luke 2, Christ is twelve or thirteen years old, being bar mitzvah. What does He say? He realizes, He is conscious of Who He is—that He is God’s Son. What does He say when He is conscious of this?
He says, “Do You not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Now that is the Son, right? “I am about My Father’s business.”
When He comes to minister and comes on the scene to be seen as the Prophet He was to be, He steps into baptism. What do you find? God cannot hold Himself back and says, “This is My Son, My Beloved, in Whom I am well pleased.”
Then you find the Mount of Transfiguration, where He could have walked right into heaven as the perfect Man. God says, “This is My beloved Son.”
What does Jesus do instead of walking right into heaven? He sets His face like flint to go to Jerusalem—which meant He was going to His death—because He knew the will of the Father was that He become that Lamb.
It is a Son. This is the preciousness to God. He has a Son, but the Son is an offering. We find Him obedient that He might be forsaken.
Isn’t that the weirdest thing? “I’m obeying that I might be forsaken. And I’m being forsaken that I might taste death for every man.” Because that is the will of the Father.
This is why it is precious. It is precious to God, and this is why it is acceptable to God: the acceptance of the ransom. This is why it is acceptable—totally obedient to everything.
We always see redemption as showing God’s love for us, and it is. We should never get away from that. But there are facets of this redemption.
I was reading one man, I think his name was Jowett, an old fellow from about the time of F. B. Meyer. He said, “We must also see the severity of God in redemption.”
God was severe in what He asked. He was severe. It was a hard thing, so hard that even the Son asked, “If this cup can pass, let it pass. But if it cannot, let Me drink it. Your will be done.”
Our redemption is the righteous demand of a holy God for mankind. In our being redeemed in this way, we have a redemption in which the holiness of God is not compromised.
God is not compromised. He is not just forgiving us. It is not just forgiving us. His holiness is not compromised because of what He did. This is our redemption. This is why it is precious to God.
But it is also precious to us. Why would it be precious to us? We can say, “Oh gee whiz, I’m saved,” and this and that. But really, the preciousness is this.
You remember Romans 5. Who would give up his life for someone? Maybe you might give up your life for somebody who is righteous. Romans 5:8-10 says that God showed His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, He sent Christ to die for us.
He is precious to us because we have someone here Who was a man, and as a man gave up His life so that we could have something. That is the preciousness to us.
It was like our brother, someone in our family, doing something for us in this way. Knowing that we were in bad straits, having nothing against Him, He went and paid that debt, even at the cost of His life.
I like some literature, and I know Bob Doordish likes literature, so I will give you Charles Dickens, since you like Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities.
A Tale of Two Cities takes place in the French Revolution. There are a couple of main characters. One is Sydney Carton, who is a lawyer who has kind of given up on life and become an alcoholic.
Then you have Charles Darnay, who is a French nobleman, rich and wealthy. They both love the same woman, and she agrees to marry Charles Darnay. Of course, I would too. He is rich and wealthy.
What happens in the story is that Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay are doppelgangers. Do you older people know what a doppelganger is? Lookalikes. They look pretty much alike. You have to get really close and say, “Oh, okay, you are Darnay. You are Carton.”
You guys ever seen your doppelganger? In the mirror.
What happens in the story is that Charles Darnay is accused of some things, and he is going to go to the guillotine. The guillotine is going to have his head chopped off.
This is great for Sydney Carton. He looks like the guy this gal loves. The Lord has provided, you know?
But what happens is that he knows the girl loves this man. They have already had a child. So he goes into prison and swaps places with Darnay. He kind of drugs him, because Darnay does not want him to do it.
They change clothes, and then he gets passage out for them, and they go back to England. Then he gets executed in Darnay’s place.
We would say that Darnay’s estate was saved by this act, right? In the Bible, we would call this a kinsman-redeemer.
A kinsman-redeemer is someone of the family who comes in. A kinsman-redeemer is somebody who restores an inheritance, property, and a name. But he has to be related to him.
Why did Christ become man? To be our Kinsman-Redeemer. When we see that, it makes Him precious to us.
Sometimes I think we think of Jesus as a teacher, someone who is almost unreachable or untouchable. Yet here we see Him as a Kinsman-Redeemer.
The kinsman-redeemer comes from the book of Ruth. He restored everything that was lost to Naomi’s family—everything that was lost.
Here, our Kinsman-Redeemer is restoring everything that has been lost to us by the Fall. Everything is being restored to us: our inheritance and our name.
It is a wonderful thing when you think of it. Matter of fact, Sydney Carton went so far as doing this in the book: he gave his name to Darnay so he could get out of there and live under his citizenship. He gave his name to him.
He thought of everything, didn’t he? He did the whole thing.
You know what else was really cool about this? In the end, we talk about looking backward, but he was not looking backward. He was looking forward.
In the end, there is a place where he is talking to himself—actually, he is talking to a young lady who is going to be executed with him—and he is encouraging her to die well with him.
He says, “I see these people growing old. I see the fruit of their relationship. I see all these things.” His conclusion was, “It is a far better thing that I do than I have ever done before.”
When you see this and see the preciousness of it, all of a sudden you see that when Christ was doing this, there was no thought for Himself.
For the joy set before Him, He endured—for us.
Again, in Hebrews 2, what do you see? “I am not ashamed to call them brethren.” Here we are, the sinners that we are, the ones who are accused of crimes—and rightfully so—and He says, “I am not ashamed to be a man.”
A perfect Man. Because of what He has done, the work He has done, and the acceptance of His redemptive act, He says, “Here am I, and the children whom God has given Me.”
That is just a wonderful thing. This is the preciousness of our redemption.
We were studying Hebrews 2, and it talks about, “What is man?” The whole thing is what man is supposed to be. What does it say? We do not see this right now because man has fallen, right? But we see Jesus crowned.
The whole thing is this: He restores us to this place. This is why it is precious. A man took our place.
A man sits on the throne today. A man intercedes for us because He knows how to be a merciful High Priest. Why can He be a merciful High Priest? Because He is a man. That is why.
So now, He has taken on our humanity with His deity as well. Restored.
Lastly, the fruit. What is the fruit that comes out of this redemption? Really, what it says is that our faith is now placed in God.
That is the fruit of our redemption. We are now believers in God. You know what it really took for us to be believers in God? It was not Jesus’ death. It was not His birth. It was not His life. It was His resurrection.
Without that resurrection, all those other things meant nothing. So when He was raised from the dead, now we can look back and see His life and say, “Oh, this is Him. This is the Christ. This is the Redeemer.”
Now I see Him incarnate. Now I see that life lived before men—perfect and blameless. Now I see that sacrificial death. Now I see it because He is raised from the dead.
I did not see it before, just like those brothers on the way to Emmaus: “We thought He was the One.” He had to say, “Did you not know that the Christ had to suffer before He could receive His glory?”
When we look at this, the plan that was planned before the foundation of the world is manifested to us through this resurrection.
The resurrection sealed to us, to the world, and to heaven Who Christ is: that He is God; that He is the Son of God incarnate; that He is Emmanuel, God with us, God living among us.
That is like it says in the Gospel of John: He lived among us. He took on flesh. He is the Lamb without blemish, slain for us, slain for God, that He might redeem and bring many sons to glory.
He has risen in triumph. He is God victorious in what He set out to do in redeeming man. He has ascended and is seated at the right hand on high until all enemies are put under His feet.
He is forever making intercession for us, making this salvation even more sure for us in reaching that place.
This is why we look back. Seeing this, we can say, “As I see all the things behind, now I can go forward. Now I have hope.”
When I feel low and feel like I cannot do it—“I’m just such a doofus. I’m such a failure”—I look back and say, “God redeemed me.” That is what I stand on. I am redeemed.
Because I am redeemed, we look back and keep these truths in our hearts.
I always use Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. I have talked a lot about Jean Valjean having those silver candlesticks given to him. But when you read the book, he never sells the candlesticks. He keeps them. He keeps them forever. They are one of his treasures.
When Javert is going to come after him, he is hiding all his valuables. What is one of the things in his bag? The silver candlesticks. When he comes back, he still has those silver candlesticks. They never leave him.
The idea of our redemption should never leave us. We should always be carrying it with us, always checking in on it and looking at it afresh to see what we have and to see what was.
It is this that has redeemed us from our aimless ways. By this precious, costly, dear gift, we are transformed and set free.
By this, we offer ourselves as bondmen to the living God, to serve Him forever.
We should forever say, then:
I will sing of my Redeemer,
and His wondrous love to me;
on the cruel cross He suffered
from the curse to set me free.I will tell the wondrous story,
how my lost estate to save,
in His boundless love and mercy,
He the ransom freely gave.I will praise my dear Redeemer,
His triumphant power I’ll tell;
how the victory He gives
over sin and death and hell.I will sing of my Redeemer,
and His heavenly love to me;
He from death to life hath brought me,
Son of God, with Him to be.
Let the redeemed of God say so, and say it often.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we do want to thank You this morning for our redemption. We thank You, Lord, that we can look back and see You working throughout all our lives because You love us, and because You would not compromise Who You are in redeeming us.
Our redemption has been costly, Lord, and we realize it. We want to thank You for it. We want to ask You to forgive us when we take it for granted and think that it is something not as great as it is.
We ask that You would help us always to come by this redemption, by this Redeemer that You have given us, and put our faith in Him when we are low, so that we come back and get on the good ground that we are redeemed.
We have been redeemed. We are redeemed, not with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of God. Thank You, Lord, we pray, in Jesus’ name.