Jesus is the Redeemer

We will be spending our season of Lent and Easter Sunday focusing on Jesus and the various ways that he is portrayed throughout the various letters of the New Testament. We are calling this sermon series “Jesus is…” and we begin today with Jesus is the Redeemer. Our scripture is 1 Peter chapter 3:18-22. The words will be on the screen.

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Please pray with me…

The word redeemed is not mentioned within this scripture so let’s begin by defining what it means to be redeemed. Being redeemed is God paying the price for us to be free from sin. This occurred through the death of Jesus on the cross.

Our scripture says it this way, the righteous suffering for the unrighteous. Someone who has done no wrong willing to pay the price for the ones who have sinned against their God. We are able to be forgiven because Jesus is our redeemer.

When I focus on the word redeemed what comes to mind is when we use a coupon and receive a certain amount off of our purchase. They redeem the coupon. This is what Jesus did for us. He redeemed us through the cross.

The cross is the coupon that allowed us to be given freedom from sin. But God didn’t just take a little bit of money off. God chose to redeem us completely. Meaning that we were set free from ever having to pay the cost for what we have done against God.

Sin no longer has power over our lives. Jesus paid it all. Jesus paid the price for us on the cross. In doing that Jesus redeemed us from our past, present, and even our future. We no longer need to be weighed down by the weight of our sins.

There is a reason why we had to be redeemed and that was the actions of Adam and Eve. God gave Adam one exclusion when he created him and gave him dominion over the earth. He could not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We have the serpent tricking Eve into eating from the tree, but we have Adam, the one given the message from God standing right behind her and eventually also eating the fruit from the tree. They committed what is called the “original sin” against God.

When they ate from the tree that God had forbidden them to eat from, they brought sin into the world. A perfect place suddenly became corrupt. A place without flaws suddenly became filled with flaws.

Their sin came at a cost. Their sin led to God no longer being able to walk with them on earth. They lost some of the connection that they had with God. God cannot be close to impurity. Therefore, God had to take a more distant approach to his creation. Redemption had to take place.

We can receive a further understanding of what it means to be redeemed by looking at our first reading. We have God speaking to Moses. Moses was sent to Egypt by God to free from the Israelites from slavery.

Moses has now spoken to the Egyptian leader, and it seems that things are not going well. But God makes him a promise. God tells Moses…

“I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. 6 Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.”

God frees the people from slavery and offers another way for them to be connected and closer to him. He helps define for them what actions they would take that he would consider to be against him. He creates laws and commandments for them to follow.

The commandments were an attempt by God to keep the people in as right of a relationship with him as possible despite the nature of sin that had been passed down since Adam and Eve. We have the Jewish people having to regularly perform various tasks. They were to perform sacrifices to God in order to bring themselves back into the good graces of God.

It was God offering the people that he loved an opportunity to return to being right with him. The problem with laws is that they create a situation that can cause them to be broken. Before God made the ten commandments there were no official laws to break.

Right and wrong was about listening to God. When laws were written down and when the ten commandments were put onto the tablets suddenly there was a tangible way to sin. It stated clearly within the Ten Commandments that a person was not to steal. Therefore,if a person stole it now became a defined sin.

It was impossible or someone to keep all the laws no matter how hard they tried. So, by creating the laws God was creating opportunities for the people to sin and it became recognizable. It no longer was a guessing game if something was right or wrong. The laws defined the actions.

This would lead to the need for more sacrifices to redeem the sin. God offered them a Day of Atonement in which they could make a sacrifice for all the sins that had not been covered through the previous sacrifices. God attempted to bring the people as close to him as possible.

The problem with making sins recognizable was that it led to guilt and shame. The guilt was the internal acknowledgement of failure to live up to the expectations of their God. Guilt also was expressed internally but also was expressed within the community for a person’s failures.

Jesus redeemed us from the law. Jesus removed the power of the sin. Jesus through his actions on the cross allow us to no longer have to face guilt and shame for our actions. What you have done against God has been forgotten by God.

This means that you also need to forget about it. Don’t allow yourself to feel guilt for something that God has already forgotten about. Don’t let those around you to place shame upon you for something God has forgiven.

We have been redeemed of the sins that we had committed and those that we will later commit. Jesus allowed for us to be brought back into a right relationship with God through grace. We have been forgiven.

This does not mean that we should feel free to break the commandments and do whatever we want whenever we want. We should still choose to do our best to fulfill the commandments given to us by God.

It is when we fail that we discover the difference. We are forgiven directly from God. Our sin is removed and forgotten by God. We are free of the law due to grace. It is grace that allows for what Jesus did on the cross to be free. It doesn’t cost us anything. Grace is the unearned and undeserved love of God given to us at no cost.

This means that we don’t have to do anything to deserve or to earn the coupon that Jesus redeemed for us. We didn’t even have to try to find where we put it. We didn’t have to locate it on an app. Jesus did it all. Jesus died so that our sins could be forgiven. God’s grace prevails over the sin that had taken over the world.

There was only one way that humankind could receive redemption and that was through a perfect human. In the book of Titus chapter two beginning in verse 11 it says that “The grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

By redeeming us from the law Jesus allows us to be able to have a personal relationship with God. He secured for us the opportunity to spend eternity with God. He also allows for us to be able to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that we can live lives more pleasing to God.

Jesus shows us within scripture what that means. There was a time when you would see the acronym WWJD, What Would Jesus Do. It sounds good as a slogan but is it really possible? Are we able to reach the same level of righteousness of Jesus?

I used to be against this slogan just for that reason. We are setting an unrealistic goal. We are trying to do the impossible if we attempt to reach the standard offered to us by Jesus. I believed at the time that we should instead say WWDD. What would the disciples do?

This gives a human standard that was reachable. When we look at what the disciples did in scripture, we have examples of what we also should be able to accomplish. But as I have spent time in scripture and time with God I recognized that I had missed the point.

WWJD is not about reaching the example of righteousness offered to us by Jesus. The goal is to not give up. The goal is to strive to ask God to help us do better each and every day. The goal is to recognize that we are not good enough, that we always can do more.

But we seek to do more not because we have to, but because we want to. We should want to become as close to the one who redeemed humankind as we possibly can. We should choose to pray to God, to study his word, and to serve him each and every day.

Lent is a great time to start. It is a time of preparation. Americans and I have a feeling most people around the world consider the New Year as the time for new beginnings. We call them New Year’s resolutions. Statistics show that they usually last around a month, so if you are still going strong with yours than you are doing good. You are beating the odds so to speak.

As Christians Lent should be our time of setting spiritual resolutions. It is a more than a month which means that if we make a change and keep it up for the whole time, we are able to beat the odds of a regular resolution.

But what hopefully can happen during this Lenten season is you will be able to recognize how meaningful your spiritual change has been and you might want to continue it after Easter. You may develop a new spiritual habit that will continue to bring you closer to God.

That would be my challenge for you over Lent. Find a way to bring yourself even closer to God. Spend time regularly during Lent practicing this new thing and hopefully you will find that it is something that you will want to continue after Easter.

Jesus wants to continue working with us even today. He redeemed us but he knew that his work was not done. Verse 22 reminds us that he “has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

He is there in heaven trying to help us. He has never left us even though he did leave the earth. He never quit loving humankind even though it seems like much of humankind has quit loving him.

We are able to discover through scripture that he continued to work with the disciples after he left earth and ascended into heaven. His connection to them never waned. That connection exists even today. It was why he left us a helper. He left us the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us. To lead us into the calling that we were designed for.

Before I started preaching regularly, I always believed that John 3:16 was overused by pastors but now that I am one, I find that I am using it a lot myself. John 3:16 begins with the fact that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.”

Why did God do this? We are answering that question today, so that we can be redeemed. He offered up his son to pay for our freedom from sin and from the law. We can decide how we are going to respond to what God did for us.

We can move forward in our lives knowing that God is with us. We can fulfill our calling through the guidance and direction offered by the Holy Spirit. Lent is often a time that we give up something for God. We choose to show God that we care for him above that thing that we desire.

But what if we added something in the place of what we have taken away. What if we take the time that we would use focused on that thing we desire and develop a way for us to become closer to God.

Jesus loves you so much that he was willing to die for you to allow you to be set free from the power of sin. This is a message that we have that we can share with those around us. A message that can allow others to also no longer have to feel the guilt, the shame, the weight of sin upon their lives.

Let us be willing to share the message of Jesus. You are redeemed, the price has been paid. Come follow me.

Please pray with me…