God by the blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, and has made But when you do a doctrine about the death of Christ, I said it last week, you're going to deal with several things relating to soteriology and Christology, all that leads to the salvation of Christ. And the substitutionary atoning of death, that was one we did last week. Reconciliation in relation to God, we did that a couple weeks ago. And reconciliation in relation to the world. And that love tonight is redemption that they just sang about. means that that relationship that was hostility has now become harmony and peace between the two parties. Romans 5 and 10 said, for when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Much more, we are reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. So death of Christ is not just an act of love toward sinners, amen. It actually accomplished some things. It accomplished our salvation. And it had not been that there would be no eternal value to it, amen? And the death of Christ, it provided a substitution. He was a substitution, but that substitution, what it did tonight was it made a payment for sin, amen? Praise God. All right. We're going to start all over tonight. Revelations chapter. I'm just kidding. Amen. For the sake of live stream. They can probably hear me through it. Yelling through the other mic. It is the substitutionary or vicarious atonement that simply means Christ was sufficient to be the substitute to suffer. But what did he suffer for? What was he paying? Well, we know the Bible says the wages of sin is death, amen. There needed to be a payment there. All right, Gabe, it's not going to work. I'm going to have to adjust some of that, amen, to make it fit that screen. Good try. Praise the Lord. Come on down and fellowship with the rest of us, amen. And the price was paid so that we could be reconciled back to God, amen? And that leads us to the subject tonight of the price that was paid. It is redemption, amen? I'm going to tell you a story, but I'm just going to read it to you. There's a story told by a man named Paul Tan that illustrates the meaning of redemption. He said that when A.J. Gordon was pastor at the Church of Boston, he met a young man. out there in front of the sanctuary in the city. And that little boy was carrying a rusty cage where there were several birds fluttering inside of it, just little street birds, if you will. And Gordon inquired and said, son, where did you get those birds? The boy said, I trapped them out in the field. He said, what are you going to do with those birds? He said, I'm going to play with them. And then I guess when I'm done playing with them, I'll just feed them to the old cat that hangs out behind our house. That's when Gordon offered to buy them. The lad exclaimed, mister, you don't want these. They're just old nasty birds. They don't sing very well. They're scared to death, amen. Gordon replied, I'll give you $2 for the cage and for the birds. And the little boy said, man, that's a good deal. I tell you what, I'm going to do it, but you're the one getting ripped off and I'm getting a bargain. And the boy takes off walking down the road, wishes them having a good time, happy with his two shiny coins. And then Gordon walks around to the back of the church property, opens the door, that small little wire cage, and lets those little struggling birds soar into the blue. The next Sunday he walks into his crowd, he pulls out the empty cage, puts it on the pulpit, and began to illustrate a sermon about redemption and Christ coming to seek and save that which was lost, and about paying his own precious blood for the soul of man. He said that boy told me the birds weren't songsters, they couldn't sing, they weren't nothing. But the preacher said when I released them, I could have swore I heard them as they swung their arms up to heaven flying, singing redeemed, redeemed, redeemed, redeemed, amen. They were held captive by something and somebody cared enough to set them free, amen. That's exactly what redemption is for you and I. We were born in sin, amen, and we owe the that you and I could not pay, amen? But somebody, but somebody, but somebody that loved us paid a price that we could not pay. And he did it solely because so that we could go free and be free from our sin that held us captive. We're redeemed in relation to sin tonight, amen? Redemption simply means liberation because a payment has been made. were set free because the payment that we owed was taken care of. And what makes it so powerful to us is the payment that was paid. And I'm going to get to that at the end of the first point, or the end of the first sub-point in point number two. The fact that it was the life of the loving Lord Jesus that paid to redeem you and I. And I know it's just empty words, y'all. You can preach this stuff until you're blue in the face. But to really understand the cost of redemption would change some lives. To really understand, I may not even put it in here, I'm going to try and remember what's flashing through my mind right now when I get to the proper point. But it's just so difficult to understand. I believe by the first century they forgot. I believe the church was on such fire there in the beginning. We know Satan attacked it in the first century over and over the deity of Christ and attacked all that the humanity that they attacked everything the deity of Christ and then they attacked who Christ was in the second third century and over and over again he was attacked and attacked and attacked. Amen. Give me one second. I got to pull this up on my phone real quick. But He was the price that was paid for you and I to be redeemed tonight, amen? So we see first, let's pray. Father, we love You. Lord, I pray You'd help us tonight. God, we thank You, Lord, for redemption. God, we thank You for the blood of Jesus Christ that paid that price, Lord. We don't deserve it, God, but You paid it. Lord, help us. God, the main point of the thrust of the message tonight, help us realize, God, God, all that you have done for us by the way of redemption and help us, God, live like we appreciate it. Live like, God, we're thankful for it. Father, we love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen and amen. Tonight, first of all, I want you to notice we see pictures of redemption through our Old Testament. Amen? We preached on typology on Sunday, and this Sunday we're gonna preach on typology again, probably by the way of redemption, amen, and we'll preach on that. But all through your Old Testament, there are different pictures of redemption. I mentioned Exodus the other day, and we might preach on that, but throughout the Old Testament, we see different forms of redemption, if you will. We see that there's one that is a family obligation related to the payment of a price. Many of you preachers, many of y'all ought to be able to know what that is, amen? The book of Ruth, amen? The kinsman redeemer that had the responsibility of redeeming the family's property that had changed ownership and marrying a childless widow to raise up children of her dead husband, amen, if she had no brother. That was the responsibility of the kinsman redeemer to go in there and do that over in Ruth 3 and 9. It says, and he said, who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth, thy handmaid. Spread therefore thy skirt over thy handmaid, for thou art a near kinsman. And he came to redeem those things. Amen. It's a picture. I told somebody the other day, I said, I just ain't that deep. I ain't never got it all. I ain't never been able to preach out of the book of Ruth. Amen. I just don't see the typology as well as other men do. But it's there, amen. It's a picture of redemption in the way of family. There's another one that's redemption in the way of ransom or the payment of a price in the Old Testament. Exodus chapter number 13 says that thou shalt set apart under the Lord all that openeth the matrix. I just read that in my Bible plan yesterday. And every first thing that cometh of a beast which thou hast The male shall be the Lord's, and every first thing of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb. You see, it was a payment, amen. That was a lamb that was being paid. There was no obligation, so it seems closer to our redemption in a way of grace, amen. The kinsman redeemer was required. There was an obligation for that. But here, there's no obligation. Then we see another usage that refers to a sum paid. to redeem a forfeited life over in Exodus 21. I'm not going to get into all that. But all those used in the Old Testament signify a deliverance of something by the payment of a price tonight. A deliverance by something because a price was paid. And although there's not much of any association in the Old Testament with sin, there's two or three verses, but it's a payment of a price so that something could be delivered. I don't think we really understand what redeemed really is. If one were to look at the Levitical offerings, they could see that picture of sin. They could see the picture of redemption and all those things. But the fact of the matter, that blood and that sacrificial system, you know how it worked? They sacrificed that animal. That blood was the payment every time. Am I right? We've seen the picture of the blood since in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned. God had to kill that animal and the blood had to be the payment for the covering of the sins on that person. Then we see that all the way through the Old Testament, the typology in the pictures over and over, the priest's sacrifice, an atoning sacrifice as a payment for the sins of the people, and the price that was always paid in that Old Testament was the blood. And that blood caused or made able that reconciliation of that sinner back to God by paying the price that was owed, amen? But you see, there was a problem. Hebrews chapter number 10. It says this, for the law, having a shadow of good things that come and not the very image of the things, can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshipers, once purged, should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sin every year, for it is not It's not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin. So you see what the Bible is saying. God had a plan for them, I guess, could cover their sins to make them safe, if you will, but it always costs the blood, amen. It always costs the blood. That's why over in Hebrews 10 and 9 it says, Then said he, lo, I come to do thy will. God, he taketh away the first that he may establish the second. What's the second tonight? It's Jesus Christ, it's His blood, amen, by which we will be sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, how many times? Once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifice which can never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down at the right hand of God. There's only one thing that could redeem us from hell, that could redeem us from Satan, that could redeem us from sin and everything we owed because you and I was born in sin and the only thing, the only thing, it's not the blood of bulls and goats, amen? It's not the blood of martyrs, it's not the blood of apostles, But it's the blood of the lovely Lord Jesus Christ, amen? How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works? It's not your works, it's the blood. It's not your baptism, it's the blood. It's not the sacraments, it's the blood. It's not a wafer, amen? It's the blood. It's not how faithful you are to the church. It's the blood. It's not your tithing record. Amen. It's the blood. There's nothing that will make you right with God but the blood of Jesus Christ. How people get confused on it, I have no earthly idea. Amen. And secondly, we see the proof, amen? We see the proof of the redemption in the New Testament. We saw the picture in the Old Testament. That's what it's for. I've been preaching a lot on dispensationalism and Pauline doctrine. I want to make sure we all know and understand that Old Testament is for us, amen? It ain't to us, amen? And we gotta understand where to place things, but it's for us. And we, man, you can see Christ in about everything you can find back there, amen? And we see the proof of that redemption that we saw pictured in Old Testament, we now see the proof of it in New Testament. There's many uses of the word redeemed and we're King James guys we don't need to dig into no different types of words but we see it being used in a simple transaction over in Luke chapter 9 except we go and buy meat for all these people when he's getting ready to turn to Lose and he's talking about that's the word for redeemed unless we go buy this and take care of this and give it to them but the use of the word as it relates to soteriology is used about three different times in New Testament. First, we see it in his work of redeeming. Christ paid the purchase price for all of mankind. Christ paid it all. Amen? It says in 2 Peter 2 and 1, But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privilege shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them. and bring upon themselves swift destruction. Somebody could slap a Calvinist right there. Because the Bible just said he died and paid the purchase for the lost man and not just the elect. The price itself is clearly stated to be what? The blood. We read Revelation 5 and 9 and they sung a new song saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and open the seals thereof for thou was slain and has redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. What a picture that paints. The blood, the life-giving substance inside our creator was the payment that gave us a new life. And because we've been bought with that purchase price, guess what we're supposed to do, y'all? We're supposed to serve Him. This is really my whole thrust. 1 Corinthians 6 and 9, What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God? And ye are not your own. Why? For ye are bought with a price. What's that? Redemption. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. Read that Sunday morning, didn't I? For he that is called in the Lord being a servant is the Lord's freeman. Likewise also, he that is called being free is what? Christ's servant. Because he set you free, you're his slave. That's what that word means. You're His servant. You are bought, 1 Corinthians 7, 23, ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men. That's what it says. Y'all don't want me jumping around talking about debt and all that, do you? You're a slave to a man if you are indebted to him. He says be ye servants not of men but of me. That's why some of these old timers preach against debt. That's why they definitely won't plunge a church into debt to build their big monuments and do all their big things that they're doing. I'm not against it, I'm just saying, that's why the old-timers preach against it because you are in bondage, servitude, slavery to that man because you owe them. Why you think so many men, their wife and kids come set in churches, they're out there working overtime to pay for all the people they're in bondage to. But 1 Corinthians 7.23 said, you're bought with a price, you're redeemed, you're saved, be not the servant of men. He said, be my servant. That's big right there. Are we really aware, church, of the price of our redemption? And if you are, are you really serving Him to the degree that you think you ought to because of what He did for you? There's no way we really wholeheartedly feel. It's like my dad going through what he went through and just saying, man, I love my family. Man, I did not realize how much I do not want to leave this world. Saying, I love my family, I did not realize How much I care about could y'all imagine man because we really just don't understand if we could really see I mean I wish we could get in a Flux capacitor in a whole DeLorean somewhere and hit 85 mile an hour and go back and look at Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary and watch him set there and die for us and watch them pluck his beard out and watch him beat him in the face and watch him give his life on the cross of Calvary, watch him walk around, I'd love to travel with him, I'd love to see the miracles, I'd love to see what all he did in his life, in his ministry, and then watch him die for me. You thinking them guys that watched him die for him were lazy slobs that just come to church three times a week and did nothing else? Daniel jokes, and we play around, and I was telling him about our Baptist spread. I think we got probably 80, 85% of our people here, 90%, some that drive an hour maybe ain't here tonight, and there's a couple other people. We was talking about that Baptist spread, because y'all don't, y'all probably don't realize this or see this, but probably even in these churches in Charleston, we'll say that, churches in Charleston, even those churches, probably got a 50% spread from a midweek service to a Sunday morning. And I don't want to say I'm proud that ours is minimized, but the fact is, Daniel says, people don't come to your church unless they're all in, Sparks. I ain't never heard no preaching any other way. I ain't never grown up under anything else different where we're trying to build some monument or we're trying to build something just fluff up and swell up a number in the morning. I don't know to increase tithing dollars or what it's for. But listen, what in the world have we cultivated in Christianity in America? Most, listen, most professing Christians, I'm not talking about y'all. All right, I believe our church is different, amen. That's arrogant, but I do. Most professing Christians, go talk to somebody at work and they'll tell you. Most professing Christians said a prayer as a child at some point, barely lived for God in their teen years, got married and settled down, sowed their wild oats before they got married, then got married and settled down, Now they attend a church half-heartedly. Maybe some come every service, maybe some don't. Some even go as far as maybe even tithing, amen. But they don't do anything extra for the Lord. They don't tell others about the gospel of Jesus Christ. You've got to beat them in the head to get them to even read their Bible for a chapter or two a day and to have a real prayer life. would be a pipe dream, amen? And their kids are almost completely secularized. They're raised like the world. They do everything the world does. They ignore the doctrines. It's in this book that makes them anything peculiar to the world. And they fit in with everybody around them. And it's rare that that even continues for one or two generations. And then they look down and their grandkids are hellions, amen? And they're dead. They hate God. They don't want nothing to do with God. And that's the real world of Christianity. in America today. I mean, what a good description of people. People are not even affected or do not even understand the fact that the price of their redemption was so high and so costly. Because if they did, more people would be giving their lives and serving God. People could definitely be faithful to the house of God. People could definitely read their Bibles. Come on, this is child's play. This is cakewalk stuff. People could definitely get up and pray 10-15 minutes a day. But you know as well as I do, that is not modern Christianity. Modern Christianity's kids are running straight to the world because mom and dad won't read the Bible and they won't pray and they won't be faithful to the house of God. Churches like ours get made fun of, we're legalists, we're bad guys. And I'll say this, this thing ain't a business. You understand our Sunday morning crowd now, when I first got here it was down to like 30 or 40, but in that first year it was up to 120. When Michael was here, we was counting 20 kids in the teens and 120 upstairs. We have less than that 10 years. Well do I feel like a failure? Well the devil tries to tell me I am sometimes, but no I don't. I can tell you in an evening service like this, we're double or triple what we used to have. Used to go from 100, 120 down to 25. That's not growth, y'all. And folks will really make fun of what I'm about to say. And I've heard them say it just not too long ago. But contextually, who we are, where our location is, what God's been doing in the past 10 years. If we began to all of a sudden bust at the seams on Sunday morning, this place just loaded up, amen? And especially if the evening services didn't trail along and have the exact same number of people coming, I would really start to question what I'm preaching and if I've let up on preaching the Word of God. Have I really been stomping the heads of the snakes? Satan wants to destroy this thing, am I right? So yeah, I could say if all of a sudden we started growing by leaps and bounds, I'd be afraid. You know when you hit a deer on the road, amen? And it lays there and all of a sudden two days later it's three times as large. I really like the videos of the whales. I don't know about y'all or the elephants. That really explode, amen. They sit there for like a week and all of a sudden they're like twice as big. Have you ever watched the video of the monkey playing around on that elephant, amen, biting on that elephant? All of a sudden that thing goes boom, blows up. That's what's going to happen to a lot of them churches. A lot of gas build up inside. That's all it is, guys. We want real, Lauren walked in on that, she's like, what in the world's going on in here? We want people. I heard one pastor say, if you got a pastor that says he ain't interested in growth, you better run from that church. Well, I am interested in growth, but it's growth for you, and for you, and for your family, and for your children. And if we never have a huge number, I don't give a rip. I want to see God bless our families. This thing ain't a business. We're not running it like a business. We're not reading books from churches on the West Coast anymore. I used to. We're not reading church growth books and trying to figure out how to have the big days and get the most people in here and do all this kind of stuff and all that. We're going to preach the book and watch people grow. And as you grow, you'll win people to Christ in your family and at your workplace and around you. And then we'll see growth, because people will come wanting to learn what this Bible says. Amen right there. Y'all got me clean off everything I'm trying to preach. There's a large percentage of folks that aren't going to be completely faithful to God in this Latter-day Saint church age. There's a large percentage of professing... You know what that's saying to me? Here's another way to say that. There's a large percentage of professing Christians that live like they do not understand the price of redemption one little bit. He paid so much for us. I got a bunch more on here, but I'm just stuck on this. Come here, Lorne. I almost feel like I'm doing that redemption song again, but I want you to do, Jesus paid it all. Do we understand what God paid for us? He bought the church with his blood. He bore the curse of sin on the cross so that the curse was removed from you and I. And the believer, we've been completely removed out from under the law because of his blood. And I can't get over it or say it enough. You can't be saved tonight unless you accept the payment that Jesus Christ paid for your sins. The blood of Jesus Christ. Turn it down if you can, Blake. For as much as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things of silver and gold, for your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish, without spot, He gave His life for you. You're redeemed from something, the marketplace of sin. You're redeemed by something, the payment of the blood of Jesus. And you're redeemed to something, a state of freedom and liberty that we're teaching about in Galatians. And you're called to renounce that freedom from slavery to the Lord who redeemed you. And He owns you, that verse I read earlier said, and you owe Him. Do you serve Him for that? Can I read you one more story and then we'll be done? The price of redemption. Imagine you're walking through an old dusty marketplace, when all of a sudden, loud commotion catches your attention. You approach a crowd, gather around a merchant stall, and in that center you see a young boy. His eyes are filled with fear, trembling, and he's chained up. He's a slave boy. The merchant holds up a price tag shouting out a sum that nobody there could even afford. The crowd murmurs, and everybody knows this boy's going to be sold into slavery, and his life is forever changing. But then, from the back of the crowd, a man steps forward. He's known, respected, and a leader in the community. Without hesitation, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a sum far greater than the price the merchant even asked for, lays it down on the table, and the merchant's eyes widen. The crowd goes silent, and the boy is freed. He stands up, tears rolling down his face, and he looks at the man who paid his ransom. This man could have walked away. He could have spent his money elsewhere, for himself, for his own family, but he didn't. He saw the boy's value, and because of his love, he paid that price. Now imagine, as that boy grows up, that stuff really happened, you understand that, right? I mean, you can read Hosea in different books in your Bible, and things like that. Now imagine that boy's growing up. Every day, as he goes about his life, he'd never forget that man who freed him. who gave everything to redeem him from slavery. In fact, every time he looks at his hands, he sees those chains, those handcuffs that held him, but now he's free. And life's given him a purpose because somebody loved him enough to pay that price. That's kind of what Jesus did for us. We were slaves to sin. You understand that, right? Every drug addict, every pornography, everybody out there so fouled up, locked up, Charles Manson, all these psychopaths. You could have been the same person. You had the same propensity. Don't be arrogant. Don't think, well, I come from a good family. My brother's not saved. My cousin's not saved. They're a doctor. No, you had the same propensity to be Jeffrey Dahmer. And honestly, your brother is doing fine or whoever it may be. They're going to burn in hell just the same if they don't have the blood. He said, that's what Christ did for us. We were slaves bound by chains, couldn't break free. But Jesus, out of His love, paid the price. But here it is. He didn't pull out cash out of His pocket. He had all the money. He had everything. God had everything. He formed the plan. But you know what He did? He gave His life. He died. He gave His only begotten Son for you and I. So that our chains could be removed. And the question is, how should we respond now? Like the boy who was set free? I mean, to me it sounds like there's a double application. We ought to just realize that the chains are no longer on us. Just be thankful that somebody paid it. Thankful enough to serve Him and live for Him. But the fact of the price of the payment ought to be what really motivates the saved person to serve the Lord. That boy could never forget the price paid for his freedom. We ought to let our lives be a living response to redemption tonight. You hear me? Our lives, a living response to redemption. Wholehearted service, devotion, and love. Jesus paid it all for us. How could we do anything less than give our all back to Him? I don't know what a successful pastor is. I don't know how to do it. But all I'm concerned with is some people of God giving their lives wholeheartedly to serving God. Things are still going to get hard. We're still going to have hospital visits. We're still going to have all that. But man, it's a whole different life. And it's like you cannot convince people. Maybe one day the price of your redemption will touch you in a way that you say, I want to live my life for God completely. I want to do everything I can. Do I know what that is? What that perspective will of God is in your life? I don't know. I do know you ought to read your Bible and you ought to pray and you ought to be faithful to God. You ought to do everything you can for Him. So where are you at tonight? Lauren, what page is that? You got it? 119. 119.