Battle Ready: "Free At :Last": Pastor Daniel Reese Ephesians 1.7-10

If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Ephesians chapter 1 still.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Still. Every January,

our country celebrates

his Martin Luther King holiday to honor him and as a civil rights leader.

For most of us, what we remember most about Martin Luther King,

what I remember most in school was his I have a dream speech that he gave on

the mall in Washington DC on August 28th, 1963.

His speech ended with these words.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

I don't have the soul that he does.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that, let freedom ring.

Ring from the stone mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of

Mississippi from every mountainside.

Let freedom ring.

When this happens and when we allow freedom ring,

when we let it ring from every village and

every hamlet from every state and every city,

we'll be able to speed up that day when all of God's children,

black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,

Protestants and Catholics will be able to join

hands and sing in the words of

the old Negro spiritual, free at last, free at last.

Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last.

Now, this morning as we continue our study through the book of Ephesians,

we're going to focus on freedom.

While the great, the kind of freedom that

Dr. Martin Luther King envisioned is certainly a worthwhile goal,

the kind of freedom that Paul writes about in this passage is far more significant.

Before we look at the passage,

let's take a minute to quickly review what we've gone over the last two weeks.

Two weeks ago, we saw that we have been set apart.

We've been set apart for salvation,

for service and for spiritual blessings.

Then last week, we began to look at some of those spiritual blessings.

Before we go any further,

let's see how we're doing on our scripture memory.

Let's see if we can remember the first six verses from the last two weeks.

You with me? Verse 1,

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus,

by the will of God to the saints who are in

Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus,

grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Last week, even as he chose us in him,

before the foundation of the world,

that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us.

For adoption to himself as sons through

Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.

To the praise of his glorious grace,

which he has blessed us in the beloved.

Amen. Keep working on that.

You'll remember that in the Greek,

verses 3 through 14,

comprise the longest sentence in the Bible.

In that one sentence, Paul describes for us

the spiritual blessings that God pours out into our lives.

One of the interesting things about those blessings is that we can

clearly see the differing roles of God the Father,

and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in bringing those blessings to us.

Now, while it may be true that the Bible never uses the word Trinity,

we can clearly see the work of the Triune God in these verses.

Last week, we began looking at those spiritual blessings,

and we clearly saw the work of God the Father

in pouring out those spiritual blessings into our lives.

It is God the Father who chose us.

It is God the Father who chose us to be holy and blameless,

and who predestined us to be a part of his family.

I hope that you've taken some time this week to think about that some more.

To think about the fact that you have been chosen,

and to humble yourselves before God,

and thank Him for choosing you in spite of the fact that we are all undeserving.

In those verses, we also have several references to the fact

that all that God the Father has done for us through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

For the next two weeks,

we're going to look at the work of God the Son in verses 7 through 12.

And then in a couple of weeks, we'll focus more on God as the Holy Spirit in verses 13 through 14.

So this week, let's look at verses 7 through 10.

In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.

According to the riches of His grace,

which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight,

making known to us the mystery of His will.

According to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ,

as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him,

things in heaven, and things on earth.

That's your memory for this week.

If we wanted to boil down last week's message to just one word,

that key word would be election.

That word describes for us the role that God the Father in showering us with spiritual blessings,

completely apart from our own works or our own worth, right?

God chose us to be a part of His family,

and He accomplished that by pouring it into our lives.

That's election.

This week, if we want to boil down this message to just one key word,

that word would have to be redemption.

Unfortunately, that's not a word we use very often in our culture today.

So it's very possible that many of us don't have a real good idea of what the word means.

But to Paul's readers, to those that Paul is writing to,

the meaning of the word was very clear to them.

The concept of redemption had its roots in the Old Testament,

where it describes the release of slaves, as well as Israel's release from Egypt.

The particular word that Paul uses here in verse 7 means to be loosed,

to set free or delivered by the payment of a price.

Redemption means to be loosed, to be set free or delivered by a payment of a price.

Probably the closest thing that we have to redemption in our culture today is a pawn shop.

If you're short on cash, you can take something of value down to a pawn shop,

and they will give you an amount of cash that is well below the value of that particular item.

Now some of us think our stuff is more valuable than it is,

but the reality is they're going to give you much less value for it.

Then you have a certain amount of time to go back and redeem that item by paying a price.

Usually the amount of cash you received plus a hefty interest charge.

Before you redeem that item though, it still belongs to you,

but it has been encumbered and you are not free to use or enjoy that item as it was intended.

But once you pay the redemption price, you are once again free to use that item as you choose.

In these verses, Paul describes the price, the process, the purpose of our redemption.

But before we look at those aspects of our redemption, we need to ask a really basic question.

Why do I need to be redeemed?

Why do you need to be redeemed?

Jesus answered that question one day when he was teaching in the Temple Courts,

in John chapter 8, starting in verse 31, it says,

John 8 · chapter mention

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him,

If you abide in My word, you were truly My disciples, and you will know the truth,

and the truth will set you free.

They answered Him, We are offspring of Abraham, and have never been enslaved to anyone.

How is it that you say you will become free?

Jesus answered them, Truly, truly I say to you,

everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

The slave does not remain in the house forever, the Son remains forever.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Although Jesus doesn't use the word redemption in this text,

His words certainly reflect the concept of redemption.

Paul is going to go into this much more in chapter 2,

but the Bible is clear that we are born into the world as sinners.

If you have children, you know this to be true.

Our children are a bunch of sinners, and we are slaves to our sin.

So in order to become a part of God's family,

I have to be set free from my sin.

I need to be redeemed, and so do you.

We need to be redeemed because we are a slave to sin.

I need to be redeemed because I am a slave to sin.

And the only way that is possible is for somebody else to pay that redemption price for me,

since I am incapable of paying it on my own.

The interest rate is too high.

The cost is too high.

It's as if my soul is in a hawk in a spiritual pawn shop,

and I don't have the ability to make the payment that needs to be made.

So someone else has to make the payment on my behalf.

That process of redemption is what Paul is describing here in these four verses.

He very clearly sees three aspects of my redemption.

The first one is the price of redemption,

and the price of redemption is the blood of Jesus.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins.

Him in this verse refers back to verse six, where Paul calls Jesus the one whom he loved.

So it's only in Jesus that we have redemption.

He is the one who paid the redemption price on our behalf.

Paul makes that clear in several other passages of Scripture as well.

1 Corinthians 6 says, you are not your own, you were bought at a price.

1 Corinthians 7, you were bought at a price. Do not become slaves of men.

And what is the price that was paid to free us from the slavery of sin?

The blood of Jesus Christ.

Peter writes about the price of our redemption as well in 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 18.

1 Peter 1:18

He says, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers,

not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ,

like the lamb without blemish or spot.

Now, when Paul or Peter write about the blood of Christ,

they're not saying that the physical blood itself has any mystical or magical properties that provides for our redemption.

That's a different denomination in a different part of the world.

The phrase, the blood of Christ, is just a phrase that is used to describe the painful,

agonizing, bloody death of Jesus on the cross.

That is the only way that our sins have been forgiven and that we could be freed from the slavery of sin.

There is certainly no way that we could ever pay the redemption price on our own, impossible.

So because of God's love for us, his son, his only son died on the cross to pay the

penalty for our sins and redeem us from the slavery of sin.

One other observation before we move to the next aspect, notice that the verb used here,

we have, we have is the present tense.

That's significant. Underline it, highlight it, circle it.

That's significant. If you'll notice all the other verbs that we have seen beginning in verse three have been past tense,

God has blessed. He chose, he predestined, he has freely given.

This is to stress that our spiritual blessings have already been made available to us through the work of Jesus on the cross.

But the fact that we have present tense, redemption indicates that redemption

is a benefit of the experience now, not just in the future.

Right? We have a tendency to believe and to think that redemption is all about the future.

Jesus paid the redemption price so that sins can be forgiven and I can spend eternity in the presence of a holy God.

Now that is certainly true, but there is a present day aspect to redemption too.

Because Jesus paid the price, I am free right now from slavery to sin. I am free.

That certainly doesn't mean I'll never sin again. If you know me, you know that to be true.

I'm still human. I still have my flesh nature, but that does not, but that does mean that I have tools at my disposal so that I don't have to sin.

Before I accepted the redemption that Jesus offered, I couldn't help but sin.

That was my nature and I was a slave to sin.

Radio personality, Paul Harvey, man, he has a good voice. Had a good voice.

Tells a story of how an Eskimo kills a wolf. Now the account is grisly, yet it offers some insight into the consuming self-destruction that sin brings.

First, the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze.

Then he adds another layer of blood and another until the blade is completely concealed by frozen blood.

Next, the hunter fixes his knife in the ground with the blade up.

When a wolf follows his sensitive nose to the source of the scent and discovers the bait, he licks it, tasting the fresh frozen blood.

He begins to lick faster, more and more vigorously, lapping the blood until the keen edge is bare.

Feverously now, harder and harder, the wolf licks the blade and the arctic knife.

So great becomes his craving for blood that the wolf does not notice the razor-sharp sting of the naked blood on his own tongue,

nor does he recognize the instant in which his insatiable thirst is being satisfied by his own warm blood.

His carnivorous appetite just craves more until the dawn finds him dead in the snow.

That's a picture of what we were like before our redemption.

But the blood of Christ redeems us so that we are no longer slaves to our own lusts.

Number two, the process of redemption is God's grace.

In accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

Last week, we saw that God pours out his grace on us. We compared it to a winning football team.

I got some nasty emails this week about that comment, so we'll just leave it like that.

But a winning football team who wins the Super Bowl.

Right? Some of y'all don't know it.

Paul gives us a similar picture of God's grace here. He writes that God lavished his grace on us.

God's grace is the process by which he makes redemption possible for his children.

Once again, Paul reinforces the principle that every spiritual blessing that we have in Christ is not a result of our own merits.

It's not a result of our own works. They are 100% dependent on the grace of God.

But Paul goes even further this time. He writes that along with God's grace, God lavishes upon us wisdom.

He lavishes upon us understanding. What Paul implies here is that part of God's grace is the ability to understand the ability to apply the things of God.

In a similar passage in Colossians, Paul prays that God would pour out this aspect of his grace on believers.

In Colossians chapter 1 verse 9 he says,

Colossians 1:9

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we've not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

And later on in Ephesians chapter 1, Paul is going to pray that the believers in Ephesus would cultivate the aspect of God's grace so that they can know God better.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

It is the wisdom and understanding that come to us when God lavishes his grace on us that allows us to understand the mystery that Paul writes about in the following verses.

And that leads us to the third aspect of our redemption. The purpose of our redemption is restoration.

So we've looked at the price, we've looked at the process, and the purpose.

Making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose.

Now I love a good mystery. I'm sure many of you do. I like movies, shows, books that you have to figure out how things are done.

How are they going to pull that off? How are they going to solve that crime?

Recently the mystery of my life is where did all my socks go?

I wear them, I put them in the hamper, Sina washes them, puts them in my drawer, but then they disappear.

Then I remember that I have kids. But that's not the kind of mystery that Paul is writing about here.

When Paul uses the word mystery in his writings, it almost always refers to something that God had not revealed in the past, but which he has now chosen to reveal.

Here's an example from one of Paul's other letters in Romans chapter 16.

Romans 16 · chapter mention

This is now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past,

but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God so that all nations might believe and obey him.

Notice how Paul describes mystery, the word mystery here.

It was something that was hidden in ages past, but now revealed and made known.

And that mystery is very clearly referring to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So in other words, God's plan for Jesus Christ to redeem us is a plan that was not fully known until Jesus Christ walked on the earth, until he died on the cross and rose again.

Although there were hints of the plan throughout the Old Testament, that plan could have not been fully known until Jesus actually carried out the plan.

This week I read an interesting story about Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Holmes was a doctor.

As such, he was very interested in the use of ether in order to know how his patients felt under the influence and what it was like.

He once had a dose administered to himself.

Now as he was going under in a dreamy state, a profound thought came to him.

He believed that he suddenly grasped the key to all the mysteries of the universe.

When he regained consciousness, however, he was unable to remember what that insight was.

But because of the great importance, think about this, because of the great importance, importance this thought would be to mankind.

Holmes arranged to have himself given ether again.

This time he had a sonographer present to take down this great thought.

The ether was administered and sure enough, just before passing out, the insight reappeared.

He mumbled the words, the sonographer took them down and he went to sleep confident in the knowledge that he had succeeded.

Upon awakening, he turned eagerly to the sonographer and asked her to read what he had uttered.

Write this down, this is what she said.

The entire universe is permeated with a strong odor of turpentine.

Man has long tried to determine and explain the mysteries of the universe, but Paul writes that it was God's will to make

the mystery known to us by lavishing his grace upon us with wisdom and understanding that comes along with it.

At first glance, this mystery, this plan of God seems to be limited to the idea of redeeming us from the slavery of sin and providing for us the forgiveness of our sins.

But in these two verses, we find that this is just part of a much larger picture that God had in mind.

God's overall plan is to bring everything in heaven and on earth together under the headship of Jesus Christ.

That's the ultimate plan. That's the ultimate purpose.

Paul has used the phrase, in Christ, in several equivalent phrases to show that God's Son is the one in whom we have been blessed.

But here, Paul makes it clear that Jesus is not just the means or the instrument of our redemption. He is, in fact, the focal point of all the created order.

The verb which is translated bring together in verse 10 is a word that's only used one other place in the Scriptures.

It's in Romans 13 verse 9.

Romans 13:9

It says, for the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet.

And any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Notice the words, summed up in 13.9.

That's the same Greek word translated bring together in Ephesians.

So from the context here, we can see that the word carries the idea of bringing something to the main point or to sum up.

So when we apply that to this passage in Ephesians, we see that God's plan for Jesus to be the focal point or the summation of everything in the created order.

That's the plan. So God's plan of redemption includes the restoration of the created order to the way it was before sin entered into the world and destroyed the perfect harmony that was created.

Paul described that initial Satan is led to Colossians in Colossians 1.16. For by him, Jesus, all things were created.

Things that heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and for him.

He is before all things and in him, all things hold together.

So you can't help but notice here parallels in Paul's words and Ephesians.

He writes about things in heaven, he writes about things on earth and that creation, Jesus held all things together.

But man's sin ruined that perfect harmony. God knew, however, that would happen and he had a plan to restore everything to the way that it was intended under the headship of Jesus Christ.

That's the plan of redemption that he has made known to us through the lavishing of his grace and is related to wisdom and understanding.

Although this plan has been put into action, it's quite clear from this passage and from our own observations that this plan has not yet reached its final consummation.

That will only happen when the times will have reached their fulfillment.

Although we can't know the timing of when that will occur, we can be assured that God will indeed bring all things together under the headship of Christ and he will restore his creation to perfect harmony.

Amen. It is only then that we will finally be able to say, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last.

Are you walking in freedom today?

Are you walking in freedom today?

Are you carrying things with you that you need to finally lay down?

Do you have shame?

That's heavy. Shame is heavy.

Are you carrying around your past mistakes with you? That's not freedom.

Are you holding a grudge against someone that did you wrong?

You need to understand those chains are on you. It's not on them.

Jesus brings redemption. Israel was in slavery for 400 years. They had no freedom.

There were generations of people in Israel that never tasted freedom.

They were born in slavery and they died in slavery.

Christ is offering you that freedom this morning.

We celebrate communion each and every month as a way to help us remember what Christ has done for us.

He has taken our shame. He has taken our guilt.

He has taken the things that bind us so that we can be free.

Free from addiction. Free from shame. Free from guilt.

Free from walking with our heads down. Free from broken relationships.

In Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ, there's an obscure detail

in the crucifixion scene that probably goes unnoticed by most people, but it is

a detail that says so much. When Jesus was being placed on the cross, the

camera comes close to watch as a large spike is positioned in the middle of Jesus' hand.

Then a mallet comes into focus and a rugged hand swings it to drive the spike.

Those are all things that you expect to see when you're watching the movie,

but there's something you don't see. You never see the face of the one who drives that nail.

You never get a glimpse into his eyes or heart of the one who so assuredly pounds away the spike

that's passed through Jesus' flesh and comes to rest in the wood on the cross.

You might be interested to know if you don't already that the person who plays that role in

the movie is the director himself, Mel Gibson, but why does he never show the face

of the one who put Jesus on the cross?

Why does he not give us the identity of the one who had the gall to put the Son of God to death?

He didn't show us that face because that face was his. It was mine. It was yours.

We are the ones who put him to death. It wasn't the Romans. It wasn't the Jews.

It was our sin that nailed Jesus to the cross. Colossians 2 says,

when you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature,

God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,

having canceled the written code with its regulations. That was against us and that stood opposed to us.

He took it away, nailing it to the cross. When we come around the Lord's table,

we take time to remember Jesus' sacrifice made for us.

A sacrifice made for even the ones who drove the nails in his hands.

Your freedom was paid for on that cross.

And yet so many of us are walking around with chains. The bale's been paid.

Your item in the pawnshed has been redeemed.