Paid in Full

All right, guys, we will go ahead and start finding those seats, start to get a little bit settled. We’ve had a great start to our morning so far, and for all the family and friends, and you’re watching this for the very first time, it’s like this every Sunday. Yes, yeah, it’s like this every Sunday. Yeah, so, so excited to see everybody here today, and obviously just great to see a church family coming together and getting to celebrate with a couple of our friends this morning making their faith public through baptism. You know, they, they displayed in action what we’re all about to pray for here in a moment.

If this is your first time with us, then this might be a little different for you, but we take a, a portion of our service every Sunday for congregational prayer. You know, we don’t just want to be a church that prays occasionally; we want to be a praying church. So that’s why we are very seriously pursuing these rhythms of praying during every Sunday morning worship service. So if you’re new with, with us, and praying out loud is a little odd for you, that’s okay. You could just kind of sit by yourself and pray quietly, but if May, if you’re, if you’re willing to come with us in it, then I encourage you, buddy up with a neighbor here in a moment and pray. What we’re going to pray for is our church’s spiritual depth in 2025. We’ve done this a number of times already on Sunday mornings; we’re just going to continue to do it. It makes sense that we would continue to pray for more of what we got to see this, this morning with a couple of our friends making their faith public and how they’ve experienced God taking them deeper in their relationships with Jesus. So we’re going to keep praying for that. So here’s what we’re going to do: I turn it over to you. You grab a neighbor and you pray for a moment for our church’s spiritual depth, and then I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment. Okay, thank you, guys. Y’all take it away.

For, for, for Father, Your word, Your word has this rhythm to it, Lord, where You call Your people to Yourself, they walk with You for a time, they fall away, and they try to come back, and they usually do, is reinstate some sort of religious thing. But God, what I was reminded of this morning, just reading my own personal time, God, You desire knowledge of You more than sacrifices. You want our faithful love for You more than You want our offerings. God, You say in Your word in the Book of Revelations that the prayers of Your saints are like incense that sit before Your throne. May You be pleased by our prayer, Father. You want to use this church, and I pray that our spiritual depth would match what You want us to do. And Lord, where the gaps are, I pray that You would fill those gaps. Lord, thank You for three more this morning, make drawing this line in the sand where they get to say, no matter what happens, I won’t live perfectly, but on that day I knew I made my faith public through baptism. Pray that You’ll protect them from the lies of the evil one. I pray that You protect us right now. Holy Spirit, would You get a hold of me and my words? Would You be the one that is preaching and communicating to this church, and not me? God, I don’t have the capacity to, to save or to sanctify. Yeah, I don’t have the power to do those things, but You do. Your gospel is the, it’s the power of salvation to the Jew first and to the Gentile, and Your word is living and it is active. It is a two-edged sword that cuts straight to the core of us. Would You cut to the core of us this morning? You break us down and You bind us up. Lord, speak. We love You, and it’s in Your name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Will you go ahead and turn to Ephesians chapter 1? Ephesians chapter 1. If you like to title sermons in your note-taking, you can title this “Paid in Full.” As you’re turning there, I want to tell you, I, I came across an interesting story this past week. People magazine. I’m not a frequent reader of People magazine, but heard about it nonetheless. People magazine created a sort of self-reporting assessment. Their creative team or whatever devised this, and they created this thing, and they sent it off to people and people did this self-assessment. Now, it wasn’t an assessment about how well people are keeping their New Year’s resolutions. It wasn’t a self-report about education level. It wasn’t anything about that. They called it something interesting. They called it a Sinex, an index of sin. People magazine created a self-reported assessment about sin. I’m not sure why they thought they were the authority on such things, but now what they did was they graded out sins according to supposed badness. Maybe you put white lies over here, that’s not so bad, but you know we all shouldn’t tell white lies, and maybe premeditated murder goes over here, and you kind of put everything else up on the spectrum right there. And they created this thing and they sent it out to people, and some people took the bait and they self-reported their sin using the Sinex created by a magazine company. Would you believe, of all the people that completed this assessment and put it back in, do you have any idea how many times they said they sin a month? Just take a wild guess. 10? What else? 140? Someone on this side, even it out, sir. A thousand? And thousands? And Lee, what are you saying? 20? 4.64 times a month. The people who completed the Sinex sent out by People magazine said, in what I’m sure was very pious tones, they sin an abominable 4.64 times a month. You see, the problem of sin in America is not a lack of committing sin; it is a lack of owning sin. We in America have a total self-denial of sin. Now, Mr. Harold was more on the money. We sin thousands of times a month. We sin at least multiple dozen a day. However, if the people of America were to put the Sinex mirror up to their lives, what they see in the mirror is just a measly 4.64 times a month. I’m curious, what would you say if the People magazine Sinex showed up in your mailbox this week? How many times a month would you say you sin? You know, if I’m being honest with you, I know that the thousands is a lot more appropriate for your pastor and your preacher this morning than anything close to 4.64 times a month. Honestly, God has a far more realistic grade of us as well, but praise the Lord, He’s also got good news for sinners like you and me. This morning we’re going to continue our Ephesians series. We have called this “In Christ.” The book of Ephesians, just 155 verses, just a couple chapters, probably just a couple pages in your copy of God’s Word, but in it, Paul, the author, this apostle, this guy who used to hate Jesus and hate Christians, who was hunting them down, delivering them up to trial and persecution and even death, Paul is radically saved by Jesus and starts planting all these churches around what at that point the known world. He plants one in a city called Ephesus in modern-day Turkey, and the people of Ephesus grouped together. They are the Church of the Ephesians. That’s where you get that from. And Paul, after some time, he is sitting in prison himself for preaching Christ. Paul is sitting in prison and he writes this letter to this church. He writes what is just a couple of chapters but is an incredibly deep dive theologically about our identity in Jesus as well as some incredibly practical encouragements and exhortations about our activity in Jesus. We are only on verses 7 and 8. I mentioned last week, verses 3-4, if you’re to look down at your Bible, verses 3-4 is this mosaic of spiritual blessings that all born-again believers in Jesus have. And Paul, when he was writing this, it’s in the Greek, it’s just one long run-on sentence. Paul just starts and he cannot stop himself as he’s just talking about all the incredible things that God in Jesus Christ has accomplished for us, which means a lot of things. But man, if you are a follower of Jesus and your life is hard today, if you got news this past week that you weren’t intending on getting, if something came up in your life, know every follower of Christ, though life may be hard, you are also deeply blessed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Last week we looked at blessing number one, that’s verses 4 through 6, is the fact that we are adopted as God’s sons. We are chosen, chosen in Jesus. That happened before we could ever earn it, and it happened to a degree that we could never turn it away.

Today we’re going to look at the blessing of redemption. The blessing of redemption. If you are a notetaker, I want you to write this down: Redemption is a total ransom for real sinners. Redemption is a total ransom, but it’s only for real sinners. Look at verses seven and eight with me, and you’ll see. Actually, I’m going to—I’m going to read verse three and then jump to seven and eight to put it in its context. Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. In Him, in Christ, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding.

Redemption is a total ransom for real sinners. Redemption is an interesting word. It’s something that guys like me and Al can toss around with some level of comfort, but it may not actually matter a whole lot Monday through Friday. But redemption is something that you and I encounter on an almost daily basis. I define redemption simply as buying back or rescuing something that’s lost. It’s buying—buying back or rescuing something that’s lost. Like, did anybody get a gift card at Christmas time? You’ve used that thing. You’ve gone to Starbucks or Chick-fil-A or Amazon, whatever you used—used it for. You have redeemed funds. Funds were lost being spent on a piece of plastic, and you have redeemed those funds at the appropriate store. You have committed redemption.

Redemption also happens, though, when we rebuild broken relationships. There may be some sort of relational fracture between you and a friend or a family member or a church member, and you experience redemption as that broken relationship is made whole as well. Redemption has a very serious—that’s pretty serious—but a much more serious element. It’s like ransoming captives from slavery and bondage. When the people of Israel were saved out of Egypt, when they were exodus out of Egypt, they said that they had been redeemed. Redemption—it is a total ransom. And see, there’s always a cost for redemption. The cost to redeem a gift card—well, you just think about the 20 bucks you spent on it. It’s just a one-for-one thing. You put 20 bucks on it, you get 20 bucks off of it. Really simple, right? What’s the cost to redeem a broken relationship? That’s good. It’s going to take some humility. It’s going to take an honest conversation. It’s going to take some time to come together and see eye to eye.

You see, the Bible says that we are all slaves of sin. We are totally unable to free ourselves from darkness and disobedience, so our souls need to be redeemed. And what’s the cost of that redemption for our souls? Jesus and His blood. Anybody ever wondered why Jesus had to die? Like, if we’re being honest, you ever wondered that question? Like, I come to church and I see the stained glass windows, and I—I just—I—I—I’m—I’m not so sure. We sing about Amazing Grace in a few minutes. We’re going to sing Nothing but the Blood, but what’s the deal with the blood sacrifice? Why in the world did Jesus have to die? If you’re being honest, maybe you’ve asked that question before. First Peter says this: We have been redeemed from our empty way of life, not with perishable things like silver or gold or $20 down on a Starbucks gift card. No, we have been redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. You see, Christ shed His blood for us on the cross. He was the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world by sacrificing Himself. Jesus’s blood sacrifice was the payment for our redemption. Jesus had to die because God takes sin seriously. Sin is so serious that God had to shed His blood for us to be redeemed. Yes, sin—sin is serious. God takes sin seriously. Man, the natural follow-up question: How about you? Do you take sin seriously? I’m not trying to get you to one of those preacher zingers, but if sin was so bad that it sent Jesus Christ to the cross, we ought to think about fighting it and its effects in our lives. The question: Do you—do you tolerate it in your life? Do you justify it? Do you whittle your monthly sin quotient down from the likely thousands down to the 4.64 times a month? Do you take sin seriously? If God’s the boss, and God does, and we serve Him, it’ll make sense that we ought.

to as well. Amen. God couldn’t just ignore sin. That’s why Jesus had to die. That is the purpose of redemption. Jesus came to redeem us. Now see, redemption—it is a total ransom. Redemption is a total ransom. You see, only God could pay off that ransom, and He does so. Look at it, verse seven. He does so with the riches of His grace. See, our good works, our religious effort, could never pay the price of our redemption. We needed someone to pick up that tab for us, and only God had the sufficient funds to do so. Baptism is awesome. Tossing some money in the plate’s awesome. Telling a friend about Jesus is awesome. But Isaiah says that our righteousness is like filthy rags to the Lord, and every time we think that we’re putting a—let’s call it a righteous coin on the scale against our sin, it drops back every time because our sin is so much more. We could never pay this price. The wages of our sin was death, and what can dead people do for themselves? What can dead people do for themselves? Nothing. You can’t save themselves. They can’t earn their way out of punishment. They can’t do enough good deeds so that God would forgive them. Only God could pay off our ransom, and He does so with the riches of His grace.

But take heart, because God was not stingy with His riches. No, He richly poured those out. Look at verse eight, and just consider the fact that there is only one person in this universe who has grace enough to accomplish your redemption. It’s God, and that one person who has the ability doesn’t hold that over us, saying, “Hey, I’ve got the ability. You’ve got to do something to make me happy. You’ve got to appease me. If you do some good things for me, then I will help you.” That’s not what God does. God takes that rich grace and He just starts dumping it out on us richly. He is lavishing us with grace. He is totally covering us with grace. God reminds me of my grandmother. I go—or I would grow up and I would go to her house for Thanksgiving or for dinner, and she would always know my favorite foods, and she was never stingy with those things because no matter how much I put on, she always said, “Son, you are just a little too thin,” and she would just want to keep lavishing food. She would just keep piling the food on my plate. She was richly pouring out all that food, and then Thanksgiving break would be over, and I go back to school, and I take my little tray through the lunch line, and man, I’m making negotiations with those lunch ladies to get three more grapes on my plate. Miss Paula knows exactly what I’m talking about. God is not like a lunch line lady, and if you were one of those, I’m not making any judgments on you. God’s not a lunch line lady who is like just like very particularly portioning everything out, trying not to run out. That’s not God. God’s much more like your grandmother who was just lavishing you with food and probably sent you home with the future treats as well. Anybody still have a grandma that does that? Okay, two of us. All right, that’s God with us. God lavishes, so that means that the redemption that God gives us is total. It’s total, and God did this with His wisdom and His understanding.

You see, the gospel—the Bible says it’s foolishness to those who are perishing. It’s a stumbling block to those that want to earn God’s kindness, but the good news of God’s grace is wisdom to those who reach out and receive it. It was wisdom from my friend Michaela who reached out and received it, though she had heard it all her life. It was wisdom for Christina who grew up knowing all about Jesus, but she finally embraced it for herself. It was wisdom for Christa who could finally recognize that I can’t do it on my own. I’ve got to have somebody fill me instead. The gospel is God’s wisdom. It is the wise, wisest, best possible way to save, by God sending His Son to pay a price that we could not pay, and doing it richly. God’s rich grace poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. Man, that promises a total ransom. It’s not a partial ransom because God couldn’t actually cover the bill. It wasn’t a partial ransom because God was selfish with His funds. It was a total ransom because God had all the resources, and God fully covered it, and God did so in wisdom. You can have redemption today, and that is God’s wisdom for your life. I keep using this word, redemption. What’s that actually mean? Tomorrow, I think the rubber of redemption meets the road of your life in a couple ways. I was describing what redemption means a few minutes ago, and I said that redemption is also ransoming captives from slavery. You see, when it comes to sin, there’s multiple different types of slavery that we live in. Some of us live in a slavery of our shame about our past sin. You know, it reminds me of my own story. So I grew up like our friends this morning. I grew up a Baptist Church and knew a lot about Jesus from a young age. I was at Sunday school every Sunday, you Wednesday night activities, you know, I did all the RA’s, and we built the little cars and all the stuff, and Sunday morning sermons, and I didn’t really understand the very emotive preacher, but you know, I was right there with him, and you know, I grew up learning a lot about Jesus, and I even got baptized as a child. But it wasn’t until I was 15 that the gospel really became real for me because a friend helped me see that I need to be saved, like I’ve got sin, and not just the 4.64 times a month type, more like the thousands type, and I could never do anything to get rid of it. Like I finally understood that as a 15-year-old. So I started following Him late in high school, and I at that time I had been in a romantic relationship with a girl, and most of my sinful expression was in that context. So I get saved and get on to college, and the more I get to meet Jesus, the more shame I feel about that past relationship. It was crushing. It was like a monkey on my back that I could never get off. I had been enslaved to shame about past sin. I wonder if that’s you this morning. You’ve given your life to Jesus, you know Him, you know what He did for you on the cross, but there’s still these moments from your past that you wish you could get back, these things you keep thinking about that like files on a computer that you can’t actually delete. And I’m just here to say you don’t have to wallow in that. You don’t have to live in the self-imposed prison of shame over your past sin. You don’t have to. God has done everything necessary to cleanse and to forgive you so that you could walk in freedom. And if that is an experience you’ve never had, then I would encourage you at the end of the service come forward and let’s just begin a conversation for me to pray for you. So God in redemption releases us from shame, but He also, I think, I believe He releases us from our present bondage to sin. Here’s what I mean by that. I mean like there are sin struggles you have that you can’t break. There are things that you do on a daily or weekly or monthly basis that you in your own power are not able to free yourself from. We all live in something like that because here’s the deal: only God’s redeeming grace can break the chains of sin that hold you. Christian habits can help curb your behavior, but only God’s redeeming grace can transform your soul and can take all the darkness of your heart and get it out and take all the shackles of your sin and break them off. There are so many people in our community and in our lives that live in bondage to something. Man, I’m thinking about like relational fractures, I’m thinking about financial debt, I’m thinking about anxious self-dependence, I’m thinking about substance dependence and abuse, I’m thinking about sexual sin, I’m thinking about all types of things that we are trying to get ourselves out of. But sin is like a straight jacket, and once it’s on you, you’re not supposed to be able to get yourself out, and you fight and you try and you strain against it, and all you do is you tucker yourself out and you feel worse than you did before. God’s redeeming grace is how you have that freedom. Man, how are we going to get the news of God’s redeeming grace to the people of our community? I need us to see that as something that we are responsible for, for us to Be a beacon of hope to a dying world. We’re gonna have to start praying and thinking about the people of our community that don’t know Jesus and don’t know the freedom of being His redeemed sons and daughters. But see, redemption—it is a total ransom, but only for real sinners. Look at verses seven and eight with me again. I’m going to read them again. In Christ we have redemption through His blood, according to the riches of His grace that He richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. Anybody notice I skipped something there? I read it again correctly this time. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding.

You see, redemption is only available for real sinners. That means people who admit that they are trespassers. That word trespass is interesting. It’s only used 23 times in the entire Bible, at least in this context. It means to step over God’s moral boundary. I probably don’t have to explain what trespassing means to Sauldam Baptist Church, right? Literally, let’s play this one out. Do I have to tell you what it means to trespass? What happens if somebody comes trespassing on your property, say about 1:00 tomorrow morning, this tonight or whatever, and they start making some racket or they start acting a little devious? What’s going to happen? I heard a lot of mumbling. I did not hear, “I’m going to pull something on them.” Right? Here’s the deal. You going to sick the boys on them? Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, you probably got the right answer. It’s fine. I’ll need you to need to pick it up. All right.

Before the Lord, we are all trespassers. God’s got some stated moral boundaries, and we, in our audacity and arrogance and our pride and our sin, we look at that line that God has drawn, which He’s clearly communicated in His Word, and we say, “You know what? That doesn’t apply to me. I’m just going to walk right over that bad boy.” And all of a sudden, we’re walking, walking around where we’re not supposed to be, doing things we’re not supposed to do. Before the Lord, that’s us. We’re all trespassers, and we do it in a variety of ways. Some of us, it’s extremely overt, and it’s really easy to see. Others of us, it’s hidden in our hearts, but we are all trespassers, which means that to claim God’s grace, you’ve got to admit that you need it. I’m, I’m saying that again because I got one brother that heard that. To claim God’s grace, you got to admit that you need it, that you’re a trespasser, that you’ve broken God’s boundaries, His rules, that you are a sinner against God’s standard. Before the Lord, that’s all of us. But redemption and grace is only available for those that put their hand up and say, “You know what? 4.64 times a month—that’s bogus. My life is like hundreds and thousands of months.” You got to admit that you are in need of God’s grace.

When Paul’s writing to the people of Ephesus, they may have been thinking about all the folks that were worshiping the false god of Artemis down at the temple. I talked about this a few Sundays ago. These people who were worshiping the idols of fertility and romance and family, and they were taking animals and slaughtering them at this temple so that this false god would, would bless them with a family. Now, that may not be us, but man, how many of us in our community bow down to the idols of family and sex, if we’re being honest? How many people that we hang out with, that we talk with, are actually living their lives in order to be blessed by some sort of power, that they would receive a family? That’s so many people. Or think about this: when Paul’s writing to the people at Ephesus, they’re also thinking about this Imperial Temple. It is a temple literally constructed to Caesar and the king. They would take their animals and they would sacrifice them there so that the god who is represented through Caesar would bless them with power and prestige and influence. Man, we’re not doing that, but how many people live their lives in order to get power, to be powerful, to be influential? All of us, man. One of the hardest parts about sharing the gospel in America is that we don’t have these temples, we don’t have these idols. So when I’m talking to guys at the YMCA or if I’m hanging out at a coffee shop and I strike up a conversation, I’m trying to help them see like, “No, man, what you are living for is empty, it’s worthless, and it can’t provide you the satisfaction you need. That’s only found in Jesus Christ.” But a claim that you have to know that you trespass God’s holy boundary 4.64 times a month, this just not true. We had a couple of our friends get up a few minutes ago that said, “Take that number up. It’s not 4.64, not even 46.4. My sin quotient, my Sinex reads a little higher.” And ultimately it doesn’t matter. Lies over there, premeditated murder over there. Before the Lord, sin is sin, trespass is trespass, pride is pride. The question is, have you been redeemed? Not do you know about Jesus, not have you put money in the plate, not even have you been baptized. The question is, have you been freed from the power of sin in your life? Yes, or is there some sin still hanging over you, still holding you, still enslaving you that you need to be redeemed from? What can wash away my sin? What can make me whole again? Not for any good that I’ve done. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can free us, friends. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can make you right with the Lord. Nothing. And God wants to redeem every single one of us. God does not want any to perish, He doesn’t want any to die apart from His grace. If you are here this morning and you are not 100% sure that you have given yourself to Him and that He has saved you, then please don’t leave here today without [inaudible] just doing some business with the Lord and praying to Him right now. We’re gonna wrap up our service by singing that song, “Nothing but the Blood.” And as we do so, I want you to consider, consider this: Do I believe that? Not do I know it, not have I sang that. I want you to ask yourself the question: Do, do I believe this? Redemption is a total ransom, but it’s only for real sinners. Pray with me. God, we need ransom, we need redemption, we need to be freed from our sin. And Lord, if I’m being honest, it is so easy to fool myself and to justify my bad behavior. It’s so easy to look at Your stated boundaries and for me to have the audacity to walk right over them. I pray You convict me earlier of that, God. I pray for us in the room who may or may not actually know You, and I pray that You would help all of us to taste that redemption this morning, please, Lord. God, we love You. I love You. I want to love You more. This is a, a church sanctuary filled with people that want to love You more. Would You take us deeper in You? Would You free us more from the presence and the, the power of sin in our lives as we look forward to the day where there’s no more sin, there’s no more tears, there’s no more pain, there’s no more death, none of that stuff, because You have done everything necessary to rescue us. Lord, we love You, and it’s in Your beautiful name we pray. Amen.