The Blessing of Redemption

Main idea: Bless God—declare your worship—for your redemption!

Psalm 107:2

1. Cherish Christ’s death as the means of your redemption.
2. Rejoice in the forgiveness that is the result of your redemption. 
3. Marvel at the lavish grace that is the fountain of your redemption.

• Automated Transcription
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  This morning we are back in our study of Ephesians. Though I was here on Mother's Day and did a Mother's Day sermon, here I'm back in Father's Day, but I'm not going to do a Father's Day sermon. So we're back in our study of Ephesians. I'm just following instructions, so if you'll stand with me for the reading of God's Word, a very short but very rich text this morning, Ephesians one seven and eight. Actually, just the first phrase in verse eight, there we read in Him, that is in Christ, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us. This is God's word. God, we would ask your help. Thank you for the time, the privilege of gathering in your name, of singing praises to you of being called by your name of being adopted as sons, and we would ask your blessing on our time of worship and instruction that you'd stir our hearts to faithfulness and loyalty and devotion and greater love and appreciation for you. We pray that as well, for Christians and churches all over Spokane and the Inland Northwest, that God, you would bless the preaching of your word, that you would stir the hearts of your people, that you would build them up. I pray specifically for Sam Kramer, Harvest Liberty Lake, that you would bless his teaching, his training, his desire to be equipped and serve your people well. Just pray that you'd accomplish much through him in that town, and bless our time in the Word this morning to the glory of your name. We pray. Amen. You may be seated. Ask any grandparent about their grandchildren, and you will quickly hear gushing praise, perhaps beyond believable praise about how smart and talented and cute and kind their grandchildren are meet up with a man in the trades who has just purchased a new truck and you are going to hear braggadocious statements about things like horsepower, towing capacity, payload, ground clearance, whatever we value and delight in most, we speak of often, and we speak of it highly, don't we? Whatever we value and delight in most, we speak of often, and we speak of it highly. Praise is the overflow of our delight in someone or something, and the mouth is the press secretary of our heart. Our mouths stand at the podium of our lives, so to speak, and tell others what we value and what we cherish. So, what should fill the heart and flow from the lips of God's people. It should be the blessing and the praise of redemption, and that's what our text is about this morning. As, as we have learned, this entire opening section of Ephesians is God's call to prayer and praise for the heavenly spiritual blessings that are ours in and through Jesus Christ. That's how Ephesians one verse three begins. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and we learned a few weeks ago from Dan that when Paul says, 'Blessed be God the Father, he is saying, 'Bless God, he's saying, 'Speak well of God the Father, because he has showered you with undeserved blessings, spiritual blessings, heavenly blessings. If our mouth does indeed speak often and well of whatever and whoever we value and delight in, then certainly we need to listen to Paul's call and follow Paul's. Example to bless the name of the Lord for all that He is and all that He's done and all that He has promised. The scripture often calls us to praise and bless the Lord because of our salvation and redemption. One of my favorites is Psalm 107 The psalm begins, Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, or shout it out those whom He has redeemed from trouble. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Speak well of God the Father, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. What are we to bless the Lord for? As we come to verse seven, well, it's our redemption, isn't it? Which we just read in Him we have redemption.
  
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  Now, last week we learned in verse four that we have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and we have been chosen to be holy and blameless before God, and we learned that God's love has granted to us an exalted position of sonship of adoption as sons with all the rights and privileges of being in God's family, who chosen holy blameless adoption, can those things be true? Do those do those realities sit perfectly square with my experience? Even, even Paul said in Romans seven, I know nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. We, we know ourselves too well, don't we? Though we know our position, yes, we learned we're adopted sons of God. There are many days when we feel like the black sheep of the family, and we've, we've got the evidence to prove it. We are still on earth, we're still fallible, we're still sinful. You do not always feel, or even act like exalted sons, or holy and blameless children, and the question that we inevitably have is, How can we, how can we ever be brought into such an exalted state and condition, chosen, loved, holy, blameless, adopted, given my past, given my present, what could God possibly do to make me holy, blameless Son of God? And the answer is redemption in Christ, this spiritual blessing that makes our position and calling possible and practical is this glorious transaction and theological reality known as redemption. That is the next in this list of spiritual blessings that we are called to magnify and praise God the Father for. He has blessed us by choosing us, predestining us to holiness, adopting us as sons, and now we read redeeming us, taking filthy, bankrupt, enslaved sinners. He has, he has bought us out of our slavery to sin and has redeemed him for himself, and so following Paul's call here, and Paul's example, we are called to bless God, and not just declare your worship. I changed it later to express your worship. It's more than just what we say, it's the response of our whole lives. It should set our hearts on fire, more than a guy with a new truck and a grandparent, for sure. So, as we consider and meditate on our redemption, we should bless God, express our worship, expressing our understanding and appreciation for all that God is and does and promises, and that expression should come in both word and deed, if what we say we know and understand is true, if we really believe we're chosen before the foundation of the world in love and predestined to be holy and blameless and adopted as sons and redeemed and forgiven, if what we say we know and understand is true and it's truly embraced in our heart the result is going to be a life that longs to honor and obey our Master, our Lord, our Savior. That is what it means to live a life of worship, to put God's worth on display in word and deed. And so we're going to see three ways and three. Reasons to bless God for the reality of our redemption. Number one, we should cherish Christ's death as the means of our redemption. Cherish Christ's death as the means of your redemption. The Christian is redeemed through Christ's blood. In Him we have redemption, is the first thing he says, we have it, we possess it. If we have put our faith and trust in him and in his work, in his death for us, we have redemption. Jesus Christ did not come to tell us what we have to do in order to save ourselves. He came to save us, he came to do something for us, to act on our behalf, on our behalf, and we're reading of God's intervening, right, intervening through his choosing and predestining and adopting and now redeeming those he has set his love upon, if you've put your faith and trust in him, you have redemption. What, what is redemption? It's, it's pretty important we get the meaning of the word right. It means deliverance or rescue or liberation by the payment of a ransom or a redemption price. Deliverance or liberation by the payment of a ransom or a redemption price. It's illustrated in many ways in the Old Testament and New. Most importantly, it's a term used for setting a slave free.
  
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  It's also a term used for paying the fine to have someone released from prison, and in terms of our sin and our condition, the idea of slavery, bondage, and the idea of imprisonment fits well for the for the unsaved person. It is for this purpose that Christ has come to offer this redemption price, this ransom, Matthew 20 verse 28 The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. How is he serving the race of mankind? To give his life as a ransom for many. He came to set captives free. He came to redeem us from the wages of of sin, Romans 623 The wages of sin is death, but because of redemption, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. It's important that we understand, remind ourselves, and put ourselves back into that precarious position in which we we stand or stood before faith in Christ. It was a lost and hopeless condition apart from Him. The wages for our crimes against God is a death row sentence in the courthouse of divine judgment, being confined to the prison house of sin is not like a hotel stay where you can walk up to the desk and say I'm checking out now, no, no, this is this is where you have been put and placed and locked, chained, you have no right to check out, you are in the bondage of the warden, the prison house, and it's a just confinement. You deserve to be jailed, and you cannot pay a sufficient price on your own to be released alive. The only similarity between a hotel and a prison is a price has to be paid, but the price to get out of prison, in this case debt in our trespasses and sins, is more than we can imagine. It's infinite. You're bankrupt spiritually and can't pay it on your own unless you give your life. It's a morbid prison, spiritual death row, we said, where everyone's consigned to die. Death is actually the only price that could get you removed from this place. You're confined and enslaved justly and forever, and sentenced to death because of your crimes. I mean, this is this is the bad news, right, that makes the good news of the gospel so delightful, so worth cherishing, that we can never say to the judge of the warden, you're right, I'm guilty, I feel awful about it, I promise I'll never do it again, can I go now? No, no, you cannot. The sentence has been passed. The liability for your guilt must be paid, and the sentence is death. And anything less than the payment of death would be unjust. But what if another. I could satisfy the requirement of death. That's exactly what the gospel does, isn't it? That's exactly what Paul describes has happened through this redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Turn over to Romans chapter three, and you see Paul described this: how we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Therefore, we are imprisoned, we stand guilty and charged and sentenced to death for our sin. And he very hopefully, in verse 24 says, but we can be justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That's our only hope, apart from paying the death penalty ourselves. Redemption in Christ Jesus is our only hope. How does, how does God accomplish this transaction? Verse 25 God put forward Christ as a propitiation in His blood. There's a fancy theological word propitiation means a satisfaction for something. I accept your gift, I accept your offering. And so, Christ's death was a satisfaction for the wrath of God. His wrath upon us is deserved, but because of the death of Christ, He will set us free, a propitiation by his blood, a satisfaction for you and for me to be received by faith. He says now Paul, describing this in Romans three, as you get to verse 26 he's making it very clear why he's describing this transaction, because it's to answer that question, can someone pay that price for me? And the reality is, someone must pay that price for you, or you must pay it for yourself. Death is the only way out of there.
  
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  And so it says, verse 26 God made redemption through Christ possible to show His righteousness, that God might be just and the justifier of one who has faith in Jesus. The sentence of death has been passed and must be paid when Christ pays it on our behalf, and we put our faith and trust in Him. Justice is satisfied in the heart of God, and freedom is purchased for the heart of those who put their faith and trust in Him. That's redemption. You have been bought, and the redemption price has been paid, which the scripture is pretty clear, like expressing your worship, giving your life to Him in response, is is the most obvious thing we could do. It creates an obligation, if you will, that once we were enslaved and imprisoned with a death sentence over our head. My hope and prayer is that if you're feeling, I think I still have that death sentence over my head. I don't think I've ever understood what Christ has done for me. And I urge you to put your faith and trust in Him alone. Talk to me, talk to someone that you're here with. One way Paul describes the condition and plight of the unbelievers, ensnared, captured in Second Timothy 226 that we've been, we've been ensnared by the devil, captured to do his, his will, but redeemed, we're freed from the snare, we're freed from that capture, from that bondage, and having, having been redeemed, he says in First Corinthians six, you've been bought with a price, that redemption price. You are not your own. You've been bought with a price. So, glorify God in your body. That's that's what I meant earlier, appealing to bless God and express your worship in word and deed, to glorify God in your body, in your mouth, and in your behavior, in your words, and in your walk. Let the gracious act of having been redeemed through the blood of Christ motivate this life of praise and thanks and blessing of God for who He is and what He's done, because you've been ransomed, rescued, delivered, liberated from sin and its consequences, and the death row sentence, and if you are truly in Christ, if you have truly understood and embraced these truths and realities through faith. There's there's a change, there's a growing freedom from sin. There's a loyalty bought with the precious blood of Christ that motivates and energizes you, which leads us to ask the next question, How, how was this redemption prayer? Transacted, what was the redemption price paid? Well, we know that the wages, the sentence is death. We just read in Romans 325 how God put forward Jesus Christ as a propitiation. So the only way to satisfy God's sentence, death sentence, is that he must die, and the way Paul put it in Ephesians chapter one is in him you have redemption through his blood, that's the redemption price, his blood poured out causing him to die, and we know that's the price Christ paid his death on the cross. The entire reality of the transaction harkens back to the Old Testament sacrificial system. The Old Testament sacrifices, which, which we read about briefly, even this morning in our liturgy, that Old Testament system was the model. It was a picture, it was. It was a forerunner and a prefigurement of what Christ, the Lamb of God, does as He takes away the sin of the world. The writer of Hebrews speaks of those Old Testament sacrifices, and how the priests had to constantly, continually, year after year come and offer these bloody sacrifices and the constant continual offering of animals as a payment for sin, shedding of blood of animals taught them that there was something about this system that was inadequate to appease God's wrath for my sin. It's, it's necessary to temporarily stave off His wrath, but it's inadequate to stave it off for others, because I have to keep coming continually, day after day. We read Hebrews nine when Christ appeared, verse 11, as a high priest of good things that have come, that better thing has come through the greater and more perfect tent. It wasn't the earthly tent in the wilderness or the the the next iteration of a temple in Jerusalem.
  
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  No, no, he entered through a greater and more perfect house of God once for all into the holy place, not by the means of the blood of goats and calves, but by the means of his own blood, and here it is, thus securing eternal redemption, the blood of a perfect sinless sacrificial lamb, Jesus Christ secured an eternal redemption. No more continual offerings in the temple, because Christ has died in place of sinners, not a lamb, not a bull, not any animal, the perfect spotless Son of God, He came, and He bore the weight and the consequences of our, our sin. That's when all of our sin put on Christ. In the same way that Old Testament Israelite would lay their hands on an animal, and then to symbolize the putting of their sins on that beast, our sins were placed on Christ, and therefore his death was a payment, not for his own sin, he had none. It was a payment for those sins of his chosen, beloved, adopted ones that he paid for with his own blood, with his own life, there's lots of ceremonial language here. All of this is couched in religious spiritual experience, so to speak. But what we're talking about here is real. It is real, God Himself, our creator, the one who has made you, knit you together in your mother's womb, the one to whom you owe allegiance and obedience, because He is your creator, the one who had condemned you and me and everyone to death for their sin, who could have justly consigned our souls to an eternity in hell, but he didn't, because of his love for us, or his lavish grace, as we're going to see, because of his love for us, he came himself. He sent his son, the incarnate God, to become a member of the human race, so that he could identify with us, and so that he could take our sin upon him, who knew no sin, so that he, as the divine God-man, could stand in that holy place, enter into the holy holies, and be put forth his death as a propitiation for our sin. God himself did that for you and me, and. In time, in real life, a literal Jesus paying his life and entering into the very presence of God to be our advocate and appeal to God the Father. This is my beloved, the one whom you've chosen. We've paid the price for their soul. Greater love is no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends. That's what Jesus did for us. And blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us through His blood. Amen. Let the redeemed of the Lord shout it out. Do you know that He's redeemed you? Can you, can you hear these realities? I hope you can't hear these realities and continue indifferent or unstirred, or not find motivation and desire to be loyal, faithful, obedient, and to speak right. Blessed be God, the Father. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, in Him you have redemption through His blood. So cherish Christ's death as the means of your redemption. Number two, how else are we to bless God? Express our worship as we think about our redemption. Number two, rejoice in the forgiveness that is the result of your redemption. Rejoice in the forgiveness that is the result of your redemption. Many things are true because of a redemption, but the principle one, the immediate and prominent blessing of redemption that Paul mentions here is the forgiveness of our trespasses. What, what is forgiveness? Like, like redemption, defining it should be helpful. It's a word that also kind of comes loaded with its own illustrations. The term here used here technically means to release someone from something, and in the case of sin or trespasses, it's to release someone from the liability of their guilt for sin. Forgiveness is the removal of guilt. It's a removal of the penalty you owe, in this case, the penalty of death that you owe God because of your sin. It doesn't undo the sin, but it releases you from the guilt of that sin, from the sentence, the penalty, and again you're released from the consequences, because the penalty has been paid by another right through his blood.
  
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  Christ has paid your penalty and allowed that sense of death to be removed, and so you can be forgiven, you can be released, you from the sentence, as when I say removal of guilt, I'm not talking about guilty feelings. I think that's a different, a different thing. We, we often experience sorrow and shame and regret and guilty feelings for the things that we've done, but here I'm speaking of guilt as the position that we're in the declaration that is made, the condition that isn't contingent on our feelings at all. Someone can be guilty and before God and not feel it at all. We've all met people with a seared conscience. Perhaps you've yourself lived with one for some time with God gloriously in the matter of our sin against Him. When the redemption price of Christ's death on our behalf is paid, we receive total, total removal of guilt. The liability is gone, the penalty is dismissed, the debt for our sin is paid in full. The payment for your sin is not partial. Your forgiveness is not probationary. It is not temporary. It is not pending. It is, it is full and final and complete and lasting, God no longer counts the believer's sin against Him. That's the forgiveness of your trespasses, isn't that rich? I'm gonna go through. I want you to get a better picture of what, what is this thing that God does in the forgiving of our trespasses. Yes, the penalty is gone, but in the mind and heart of God, so is our sin. I give you seven quick pictures of God's forgiveness. I get these from Robert Jones' book, Pursuing Peace. They're just passages of scripture that illustrate God's forgiveness, Psalm 103 11 and 12, as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is this is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. Sweet, we're in Spokane. God takes my sin all the way to Miami. Is that what He does? No, we live on a round planet. Start heading east and tell me when you reach west. I mean, if I'm going that far, I'm going all the way to the Bahamas, baby. No, I'm going to keep going, and I'm going to just keep going, because once you head east, you'll never get to west. That's the idea. You can just keep going and going and going as far as you can envision, and you will never find your sin, because that's where God put it, in that unfindable place. If you're a flat earther, I feel bad for you. Psalm 130 verses three and four. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared, reverenced. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sin, that's what that means. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, if you wrote down the list of my sins as they happen, who could stand? And he's saying the answer is no one. No one could stand before a holy God if he kept track of our sin, but the record of our sin is not there because the guilt of it has been paid in full by the atonement in Christ, Isaiah 118 God says, "Come, let us reason together, says the Lord, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Sin being pictured as this gross and glaring blood-stained garment, and he says the glaring stain of sin is removed by God, so that our garments are bright and white and unstained Isaiah 3817 Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness, but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction. For you have cast all my sins behind your back. This is the testimony of King Hezekiah in Isaiah 38 believing that if he just stayed angry enough, it would be a reason for self protection, but God delivers him from all of that and casts all his sin behind his back. That's the effect of God's forgiveness, that God can never see our sins again, because they're behind him, they're out of view entirely. Is the image the metaphor?
  
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  Isaiah 43 verses 24 and 25 You have not bought me sweet cane with money or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. God, God is lamenting the disobedience and and the indifference of the Israelites, you're not worshiping me, you're not offering sacrifices, instead you have burdened me with your sin, you have wearied me with your iniquities, but How does he respond? Because he's a gracious God, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. He uses this image, vivid image of God blotting out our transgressions. You, he wipes clean everything that has been written about our sin. He just wipes it clean and will not remember our sin anymore. And the idea of remembering in the Old Testament isn't isn't so much knowing and forgetting as it is calling it to mind and acting on behalf of the thing that you call to mind, like God remembered Hannah, and she conceived and had a child. God didn't say, "Oh, I forgot. I promised she'd have a baby next year. That's not the idea. It's that he called it to mind in his, in the proper time, and he acted on Hannah's behalf. But God will never call your sin to mind and act as though it's still there, that it stands between you and He. He will never do that. Your sins I will remember no more. Isaiah 44 I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. Another metaphor, our sins are are swept away like a, like a cloud. Are I like to think of it as the mist, the morning mist, or the fog, we're encouraged to think of our sin like the fog that just burns off when the heat of the sun hits it, never to be seen again. Where does the fog go? If you're a meteorologist, I would love to know, but I never see it. End. Once it burns off, it's gone. Our sin is permanently invisible. No memory of it in the mind and heart of God. And Micah seven, who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in his loving kindness, his steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities under foot. He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. I like this one, because it's more violent. Yes, his loving kindness, his mercy is there, but he takes our iniquities and he tramples them under foot. He grinds them into dust, and he scoops up that ground up iniquity, and he casts it into the depths of the sea, where it sinks to never be found again. What would motivate such a total wiping away of sin by the very one against whom our crimes were committed? That's the reality. Paul's painting, you can't demand that God forgive you, you. You can't coerce God to forgive you. You cannot bargain for forgiveness. You wouldn't be able to compel God for any reason, or even guilt him into it, as though he is unjust. No one deserves forgiveness. What could possibly motivate God to totally and completely erase the debt and the guilt of our sin. It had to come from the very heart of God, that God, who is rich in mercy and abounding in loving kindness, who has set his infinite and saving love upon you, it could come from nowhere else than the fountain of God's lavish and magnanimous grace and mercy and kindness, and that's the third reason to bless God and express our worship as we think about redemption, cherish Christ's death as the means, rejoice in the forgiveness of sin that results, and third, marvel at the lavish grace that is the fountain of your redemption. Do you, do you marvel at it? Are you amazed at that, at the lavish riches of his grace, the forgiveness that God grants, that He has pursued and purchased through the precious blood of Christ, has been granted. Paul says here according to the riches of His grace, verse eight, which He lavished on us, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us.
  
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  There's nothing in ourselves that makes us worthy of redemption and forgiveness. It's all of God's grace, it's all of all of his gift, his loving kindness. He redeems us and forgives us, because he is lavishly rich in his grace, he showers, he drowns us in. It has nothing to do with anything we deserve. I think the Apostle Paul understood this. The Apostle Paul, if you did not know previously, was went by the name Saul. He was a he was a proud self-righteous Pharisee, religious hypocrite, and was bent on violence against Christians. Had received marching orders to go to the city of Damascus and arrest anyone who was naming the name of Christ and throw them in prison with the eventual goal of murdering them, and God simply broke into his life on the road to Damascus, Acts chapter nine. You can go read it. God just simply stepped into his life and rescued him from this life of violence and murder and hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Later in Ephesians, over in chapter three, verse eight, he's going to be talking about what a, what a gift of God's grace it is that he was made a minister of the gospel to me. Verse eight, he says the very least of all saints this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles, the and here he calls it the unfathomable, the unsearchable riches of Christ. He talks to these unsearchable rich. Is that gives me an out to have to try to explain them, and of him being less than the least of the saints, lavished. We are swimming, we are immersed, we're, we're overflowing, surrounded by the grace of God. That's why I use the image of His lavish grace being the fountain of our redemption. It's as though a fountain is just pouring out for us all the time, and a never-ending and enduring spring of God's favor and goodness, it is the fountain, the spring, the motivation, the energy behind his redemption is forgiveness. Then, in a sense, even the ongoing strength and joy that he gives to us each day, his grace lavished on us and Martin Lloyd Jones talking about this kind of questions. Do we really get it? It's hard to preach on stuff like this, because I feel like, like, get it a little, you just never feel like it's deep enough in your soul to bring forth the kind of worship and praise that God really deserves. Lloyd Lloyd Jones says, "Do we really know these riches of grace and glory? I'm increasingly convinced that it is our failure at this point that accounts for many of our troubles and problems and failures. Our lives as Christians are too often bound in shallows and in miseries. How different we are from the New Testament people. Where is the note of triumph and of joy and of praise, and of thanksgiving, are our hearts moved and ravished. I study this, I write this, and I say, man, I want it to be, I want it to be more moved, I want it to be more ravished. He goes on to quote Isaac Watts' famous hymn, When I survey the wondrous cross, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. He's saying, if I owned everything in the entire world, and I gave it back to God, as thanks for His redemption, it would still be not enough, or the whole realm of nature, mind that were a present far too small, love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all. All that, that captures that same theme we've been given the lavish riches of His grace. God's redeeming love is so extraordinary that it must evoke wholehearted praise, wondrous amazement and faithful devotion. Well, that is an attempt to capture and explain some truths that are more glorious than I think our flesh can grasp and describe. Paul's aim here in Ephesians chapter one is that we grasp these things deeper and deeper and deeper. Don't let this be the end of your, your meditation and consideration of these things.
  
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  We said at the beginning that what you cherish and value and rejoice in and marvel at is always going to be the subject of your blessing and praise, and Paul's purpose in describing all of these things is is doxological, which means it's aimed at our displaying the glory of God, of speaking the glory of God, of putting the glorious worth of God in display, on display in our, in our worship, and in our words, and in our walk, all these descriptions, and we're not done yet. They are bent on our bringing glory to God, of blessing the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is speaking out about the glories of God in redemption, and the mouth, our heart's press secretary should speak of that which the heart cherishes, that we value, that we delight in, and I pray God will help you value and delight and cherish the redemption that's in Christ through His blood, the forgiveness. Resources of your trespasses is your heart set on those, is your mouth poised to speak it? Because you cherish his death, you rejoice in that forgiveness, you marvel at that grace. I pray that it is God. Thank you this morning for what it is that the living Christ has accomplished on our behalf, he didn't just die, he died, entered in through the holy place, was put forth as a propitiation, a satisfaction for our sin and accepted by you, God. You raised him for our justification, and we can now walk in newness of life, having been united to him in his death and his resurrection. All expressions of your glorious grace that we should have hearts and minds full enough to speak of, help that be our response. Help us to see the lavish grace of God as a motivation to be gracious and merciful to others who perhaps have wronged us. Our wrongs against you are infinite, infinitely more criminal. Help us to be gracious to others by your with your help. We thank you in your name. Amen.

Brian Sayers

Brian is the Pastor of Counseling & Equipping at Faith Bible Church. He is passionate about the local church, and equipping the saints to effectively serve one another. Before coming to Spokane, he spent 14 years serving God's people as a pastor in rural New England (Vermont & New Hampshire).

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