Christ Our Redeemer

Good morning! Welcome to the Vineyard. If this is your first time, my name is Kevin and I’m the pastor here. Our vision at the Vineyard is simple - we want to embody Jesus to our neighbors. This happens by growing in three ways, through what we call our pillars.

First, is Presence. We want everyone to experience the presence of God. This is what transforms us to love him and others. God’s presence is where we become fully alive. We want you to know the Father.

Then, Formation. God doesn’t just love us; he is forming us to be his people who can carry his life and love to those around us. Formation is where we learn to embody the Jesus way of life. We want you to imitate the Son.

Finally, Mission. Being on mission is how we join God in the work he is doing to bring his reconciliation, justice, and mercy to earth. This is how he is bringing healing and renewal to the world. We want you to partner with the Spirit.

Presence. Formation. Mission. Be thinking about your next step. Where is God calling you to go deeper with him?

Pray...

Intro

We are in the season after Epiphany which celebrates the manifestation of Jesus to the world. Specifically, we are continuing to look at how Jesus is revealed to us in the Old Testament. This morning we will hear the good news that Christ has come to redeem us from the disease of sin and death.

Read Isaiah 49:1-7

I have a cousin who began to lose her vision several years ago. She had horrible headaches and became increasingly dizzy and disoriented. Her vertigo caused her to be continually nauseous and vomit, causing her to lose her appetite and lose a lot of weight. After being examined, it was discovered that she had a golf ball-sized tumor in her brain that was pressing on her optic nerve.

Now suppose that the doctor, after making this discovery, had only treated her symptoms? Maybe he prescribed some strong pain reliever for the headaches, maybe something to help with the nausea so she could eat. Maybe he sent her to a optometrist to get some glasses to help improve her vision. But what if that was the extent of his solution? They would have sued him for malpractice, right?! All those thing may have been good things to pursue to help alleviate her short-term symptoms, but what she needed was for him to deal with the root of the problem. The tumor needed to be cut out.

My hypothetical story helps to illustrate the dilemma Israel finds itself in. You may recall from last week that they are now an exiled people, carried away to a foreign land because of their sin and their failure to keep their covenant with God. God has already come to them with his promise that eh would lead them out of their place of exile and restore them to their land.

The question on the people’s mind, however, is that while restoration is great, how will God deal with the sin that got them there in the first place? Their exile is merely a symptom of a much greater problem, the problem of sin. How will God deal with that?

The problem of sin

If we are honest with ourselves, we are faced with the same problem. Like a tumor, we too have sin in our lives and the result, if not a literal exile, is a kind of spiritual exile away from God’s presence and blessing.

But we need here a better understanding of what the Bible means when it talks about the problem of sin. Most often we think of sin as primarily breaking God’s rules. God, for whatever reason, came up with a list of do’s and don’t’s, and sinning is doing what is on the don’t list, or not doing what is on the do list.

We need to ask ourselves, why did God say don’t steal from others? Is it just that stealing ticks God off and breaks one of his moral rules? No, it’s because all sin carries a death consequence. Not only does stealing harm the person you steal from, but becoming a thief ultimately harms you. It burrows into your soul in such a way that it brings about a spiritual deadness to God.

Let me suggest that the things we often think of as sins - lust, greed, gossip, envy, pride - are merely symptoms of a much greater problem. The Bible, while sometimes referring to the symptoms as sin, also understands sin a more than breaking a list of moral rules. Sin is ultimately something broken inside of us that is producing these symptoms. To use a fancy word - it is an ontological problem, a problem in our being. Listen to the apostle Paul’s words about sin: Romans 7:20 “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

Paul says that sin is something that lives inside of us. It’s more than a moral problem - it’s a condition that needs to be cured. It is a disease, a tumor, that needs to be removed, and all our effort to try and stop the symptoms without dealing with the root will be pointless.

The Servant-Redeemer

Back to our Isaiah passage, in order to deal with the root problem of sin, God promises to raise up a Servant Redeemer. Redeemer is a word we use in church often, but sometimes we need to re-explain what that means. This is a legal term and it often has to do primarily with buying someone out of indentured servitude. If an Israelite had to sell themselves into servitude because they couldn’t pay their bills, there was a provision in place that a close relative could pay their bill on their behalf so they could go free.

God’s promise to the nation is that he is raising up a Servant-Redeemer - someone who is like a close relative - who will redeem them from the slavery and power of sin and bring them to a full restoration to God. In our passage it says he will “bring back Jacob” and “gather Israel to him”. This is redemption language.

But the mission of this servant will go beyond just Israel. He won’t only restore the tribes of Judah to the Lord, but he will be a light to all the nations - to the Gentile world - to us - so that his salvation will come to everyone. There is this hint in the passage that this Servant will be despised and rejected by his own people and by the nations, but that God will see him raised up above them all to a place of highest honor.

Through this Servant God would deal decisively with the problem - the disease - of sin that had landed Israel in exile in the first place. But like the other Servant Songs in Isaiah, the identity of the servant remains hidden.

The Lamb of God

Read John 1:29 “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

In saying this, John is pointing to Jesus and saying “here is the Servant. Here is the redeemer that God promised for the world.”

Notice that Jesus doesn’t deal only with the symptoms of our sin. Sin is singular. He is dealing with the root of the problem. He is not a band-aid over our gaping wounds. He doesn’t merely cover our sin; he takes it away.

He does this as a lamb. But John isn’t referring to a cute, cuddly farm animal. He is seeing Jesus as the sacrificial lamb of the Exodus whose blood was spread on the door frames of the Israelite homes so that the angel of death would pass over them. He is the lamb that redeemed Israel from their bondage in Egypt. The blood of this lamb doesn’t merely address the symptoms of our sin - our greed, lust, anger, envy - it cuts is from us completely. By his death, sin and death are defeated. Sin with its death producing consequences has lost its power. In Christ we are redeemed and death no longer has any hold over us.

I would stop here and just ask if you have ever accepted this free gift from God. To allow him to forgive your sin - to remove from you the disease of sin. He wants to restore you to relationship with him and to bless you. Lead them in accepting Jesus… (next steps slide).

For those who have already said “yes” to Jesus offer of salvation, what does all this mean. Let me close with two things. First, you are free from the disease of sin, which means that by the power of the Holy Spirit you can walk in freedom from its symptoms. And you have the assure that when you fall back into an old way of life, Jesus continues to redeem you from its power. The author of the letter to the Hebrews writes, “Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:25, NKJV) I like that language of uttermost. It means that Jesus’ redemption of you wasn’t only a one-time event; he is committed to your full freedom from the power of sin so that you can be all that you were created to be. By his ongoing redemption we are on the path to our fullest satisfaction and fulfillment.

But our redemption also means that we are called to take up the mission of our Servant-Redeemer. We are now called to be servants for the sake of the world. We are giving the privilege of announcing to the world that redemption is possible, that the power of sin and its corresponding shame and death, can be removed. We are to tell others of the cure we have received and that they too can have a life that is restored to God.

Friends, Christ has redeemed us from the disease of sin and death. In doing so he redeems our identity. We were once sinners, people infected with the disease of sin. But now we are his saints. My prayer this year is that we will grow in our ability to live out of our new identity. Amen.