Redemption podcast notes

I brought a couple of things for our podcast today. It doesn’t really work if you’re listening to this podcast. We will be putting this up on Youtube so you can see what I have.

Any guesses what this is. Let me shake it for a second.
Do any of you guys turn your cans in for money?
I used to do it but we got so little money I figured I needed to develop a drinking problem to make it work.

Let me give you another example. Anyone know what I have here. This one doesn’t shake. These are tickets. You get them at Chuck E Cheese. I remember bringing my son and he came home with a bunch of plastic junk and he said to her “Mom, look at what I earned at Chuck E. Cheese.” At that moment I thought, “Maybe I need to work with my kids a little on work ethic.” You can’t buy all this stuff with tickets. First they have to be redeemed at the ticket eater. If you look at each Chuck E. Cheese ticket they all say that they need to be “redeemed.”

Okay, I have another item. Any guesses. It’s change. Unless you are planning on doing a lot of metered parking or planning a trip to Vegas it probably isn’t a whole lot of good to you. I don’t park down town and I don’t go to Vegas because I’m a Christian, so I am going to take this down to Coinstar. This change won’t do me good until I have it redeemed.

This bag of cans, this cup of tickets and this jar of coins are all valuable, but only after they are redeemed. Same is true of us. We really are a worthless bunch. Bible puts it like this.

We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Isaiah 54:6

God is a perfect God and heaven is a perfect place and we are anything but. All the old ladies we walked across the street and all the homeless we’ve fed and the meals we’ve delivered won’t even get us in the door. They are just a pile of rags, a bag of cans, and a cup of tickets. Truth is, we need to be redeemed. I know you’re a good person and all, but we aren’t worth much until we’re redeemed.

Greg is the perfect example of someone who wasn’t valuable until redeemed. Greg, tell us your story.

None of us have value until we are redeemed. Jesus is the ticket eater.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death– even death on a cross!  Philippians 2:5-8  

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. John 10:18

He paid the full price of redemption

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:30

He frees us from our slavery to sin

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin Romans 6:6

I was talking to a friend of mine recently and he said, “Before I was a Christian I thought being a Christian was slavery. Now that I look back I can see that I was the one who was a slave. I was a slave to drinking. I was a slave to chasing women. I was a slave to money. It wasn’t until I gave my life to Jesus that I found out what freedom really was.”

He gives us a new relationship and a new future

When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. Galatians 4:4-7

Jesus came to be our redeemer. To buy back what was lost. To buy you out of slavery. To make you his child.