[0:00] If you have a Bible, you can turn to the Old Testament, to the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 11. It's quite a lengthy reading.
[0:30] We're going to read from Exodus 11 verse 1 all the way through to chapter 12 verse 30. Listen to these words. Now the Lord had said to Moses, So Moses said, This is what the Lord says.
[1:38] The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt,
[5:40] This is the word of the Lord.
[6:22] Let's ask for God's help as we study this this morning. Gracious God, we read long passages like this with difficult stories in some way.
[6:34] And yet we know this is your divine word. And that in your divine word is truth and more than truth is the power we need for transformation and change. And so as we study this morning, won't you open your word to us?
[6:48] Won't you allow us to see the glory of the gospel? And won't you change us by what we see? We ask for the special mercy by the power of your spirit, Lord.
[7:00] For Christ's sake. Amen. So we're in week two of a series where we're looking at images of the cross in the Old Testament.
[7:11] We've got a couple of weeks going up to Easter. And so we're saying, hey, let's do something a little bit different. Instead of going to traditional passages in the New Testament of Jesus getting closer and closer to his crucifixion and his death. Let's actually go to the Old Testament and show you all the very clear images of the crucifixion of Christ really foreshadowed in the Old Testament.
[7:33] Now, last week we looked at Abraham and Isaac. This week we come to another passage that is clearly, I think, and hopefully you'll see that about Christ.
[7:43] And that is the Passover during the time of the Exodus. But I don't want to start straight away. I want to start first of all by talking about a little country on the other side of the Atlantic from us, kind of in the region of the Caribbean.
[7:58] The little island nation of Haiti. Now, I actually first came, well, I knew this country was there because I had pretty decent geography. I liked maps as a kid. But I first kind of knew more about this country when I met church planters in the U.S. who were planting churches in Haiti.
[8:12] Wonderful, wonderful people who were planting churches in very difficult conditions there. But you might not know much about this country unless, of course, you're a very, very avid follower of the news.
[8:23] If you are, then you would have maybe heard that in 2021 the president of Haiti was assassinated. You might remember also in the news the catastrophic earthquakes that took place there in 2010 and again in 2021, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
[8:39] Today, Haiti is one of the most impoverished and dysfunctional societies on the planet. It is riddled with poverty and corruption. It is a country governed by warring gang leaders.
[8:53] There is no real functional government there. Now, what I didn't know about this country until very recently, and I stumbled upon this in a long-form journalism piece in the New York Times, but Haiti was the first modern country comprised largely of slaves to become independent and to run off their French slave masters.
[9:15] So this happened in 1804, which is 30-odd years before Britain abolished the slave trade. What the article, though, also focused on was not this well-known fact that they were the first country to do this, but the not-so-well-known fact that this country actually paid a really cruel, horrible ransom price for their freedom.
[9:38] So under the threat of being reinvaded with the ships in the harbor ready to launch their cannons onto the country, under that threat of being reinvaded by the French, the Haitians were forced to pay a ransom price of roughly $580 million in today's money over the course of seven decades back to the French colonial powers.
[10:01] They had to pay it over several decades because the original amount that was demanded by the French far exceeded the amount of money that they would make in an average year just in their general economy. And so they had to borrow money to pay back this debt, which meant that they remained in debt for decades and were unable to put that money back into invest into their own economy.
[10:23] And so modern economists today have suggested that if the money had been reinvested into the actual Haitian economy, it would probably have amounted to $21 billion today, roughly three-quarters of their entire GDP. Now you can only sit here and you can speculate where the country might be today if they didn't have to pay that incredibly cruel ransom price.
[10:45] It was truly, truly an awful ransom price to pay for freedom. And I put freedom there in inverted commas because what kind of freedom is it really when you're swapping one kind of enslavement for another kind of enslavement.
[11:02] Now the tragic story of Haiti strikes me as something of a parable of the human quest for freedom. Because we want to be free. We so desperately, desperately want to be free.
[11:15] To throw off kind of all the restraints in our lives that we think are making our lives complicated and difficult and strained and even unbearable. And what we do is we chase all sorts of different things to try and procure that freedom for ourselves.
[11:28] So we dive into all sorts of stuff and we give our energy and our attention and our resources to procuring sort of things that we think are going to get us freedom. We dive into our careers hoping that we will get financial freedom there.
[11:39] We dive into romance and relationships hoping that it's going to remedy our enslavement, our perceived enslavement and loneliness. We dive into or we passionately pursue pleasure in a desperate attempt to break out of the prison of monotony that we feel like our lives are trapped in.
[11:57] There are so many different ways that we try and secure freedom for ourselves. But what we so often find, and maybe you're sitting there and you're thinking, yeah, this is what I've found. But what we so often find is the minute we throw off one set of restraints, an entirely new set pops up and we find ourselves enslaved again but in a different way.
[12:18] Every time we try and gain freedom, we find ourselves paying some sort of cruel, debilitating ransom price that we didn't realize was there. I'll give you one silly example of this.
[12:29] When I was in high school many, many years ago now, I remember really not liking the constraints of being in high school.
[12:41] Your schedule was under this strict regimented regime. You go to school every single day at the same time. Your classes are in the same slot all the time. You wear the same uniform every single day.
[12:52] Even in summer in Durban, you still have to wear a blazer and a tie. There are a whole lot of things you're not allowed to do because you're not 18 yet. And I remember, I consciously remember during those times thinking how liberating it's going to be when I graduated from high school and become a real adult.
[13:14] But you and I both know, I think, that the minute you get out of school or out of university, you get lumped with this thing called responsibility. Heard of that thing? This hidden cost that you didn't realize was there?
[13:28] So yes, now technically you are the master of your own schedule. You're over 18. You can do whatever you want to do. But you've got to get a job because mom and dad aren't paying for your food and for rent and for a shelter over your head.
[13:40] You've got to manage all your basic admin that you didn't know existed. Like you've got to file tax returns now. You've got to set up medical aid. You've got to start planning for your retirement even though it's decades away and do all that sort of complicated stuff.
[13:53] And the older you get and the bigger your family gets, the more layers of complexity there are that just kind of get added to that. So you're not in school anymore. You're free.
[14:05] But that freedom comes with a price. That is the nature of the world we live in. You can't throw off that ransom price. And in a world where we are all trying to desperately find true freedom, the story of the Passover, I think, has life-changing implications for us.
[14:23] And so I want to try and show you that this morning. Now this story actually comes to us in the context of enslavement. In the book of Exodus. The book, particularly the first half of the book, is about how Israel are rescued from slavery in Egypt.
[14:38] And one of the most memorable parts of the narrative is the ten plagues that God sends upon the Egyptians to force a stubborn Pharaoh's hands so that he'll release the Hebrews.
[14:50] And it's in the last of the ten plagues, the tenth plague, that we find the occasion of Passover. Moses warns Pharaoh that if he doesn't let the people go, God is going to go throughout the land and he's going to strike down the firstborn of all families, human and animals.
[15:06] To the Israelites, what he says is he tells them, take a one-year-old lamb, it can be either a sheep or a goat, without any defect, then sacrifice it, eat absolutely everything or burn whatever's left, there mustn't be anything behind, and then take the blood and paint it on the doorframe of your house, on the sides and on the top.
[15:26] If a household has blood on the doorposts, then when God passes over the land, in order to strike down the firstborn sons, he'll pass over those particular houses, nobody in that house is going to die.
[15:39] It's through the blood of the Passover lamb that the firstborn sons of Israel are saved from death. Now as Christians, we've always seen this ancient story as a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, the true Passover lamb who rescues us from death.
[15:57] And that's not just us kind of like reading back, sucking our thumbs and reading back into the Bible, because if you go to the New Testament, you've got several inferences and explicit statements about this, that Jesus truly is the Passover lamb.
[16:10] So in terms of inferences, there's the fact that Jesus substitutes himself in our place, like the lamb does in place of the firstborn. There's the fact that Jesus died as an atoning sacrifice during the Passover festival.
[16:23] That's going to make you go, oh, hang on, something's going on here. And then we have just straight out explicit statements in the New Testament. The Gospel of John, John chapter 1 verse 29. The next day John, that's John the Baptist, saw Jesus coming toward him and said, look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
[16:41] And he says a similar thing in verse 36. The apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 5 verse 7, get rid of the old yeast so that you may be a new unleavened batch as you really are.
[16:52] For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. So he's absolutely explicit. Jesus is the Passover lamb. There are several occasions in the New Testament where Jesus is likened to a lamb of God or a lamb without blemish or defect.
[17:07] The Bible is pretty clear, I think, that the Old Testament story of Passover and the lamb in particular is really something of a vision of the future reality that is Christ and then his atoning sacrifice on the cross.
[17:21] And so I want us to think about how the Passover lamb makes us free. Truly, truly free. Two headings for you, two short headings here. Number one, ransom. And number two, cleansing.
[17:33] Ransom and cleansing. Here's the first one. Go down to verse 3 again. I just want to read over some of these details again so you get a sense of what's going on there. But verse 3 of chapter 21, I think it is.
[17:46] It's the next chapter. Tell the whole community of Israel, not 21, sorry, 12. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, each man has to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.
[17:59] If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people that are there. And you are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.
[18:11] The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats, and take care of them until the 14th day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.
[18:23] And then they are to take some of the blood, put it on the sides and the tops of the door frames of the houses where they eat the lambs. The same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs and bread made without yeast.
[18:36] Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over the fire with the head, the legs, the internal organs. Don't leave anything till morning. If some is left till morning, burn it. And this is how you to eat it.
[18:48] They've got to eat it ready on the run, with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste. It's the Lord's Passover. And on that same night, I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I'll bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.
[19:04] I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
[19:16] So it's kind of an outline of the key details of the Passover and how it works out for each Israelite family, what they've got to do. Now, a lot of people read this, and think of the story, and tend to think that the 10th plague is really a punishment for Egypt, and Pharaoh in particular, for not letting Israel go.
[19:32] And there's probably maybe even a primary sense in which that is true. Back in chapter 4 of Exodus, God tells Moses to say these words to Pharaoh, Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, let my son go so he may worship me.
[19:49] But you refuse to let him go, so I will kill your firstborn son. So there's a sense in which the 10th plague is kind of an eye-for-eye justice kind of punishment, but that's certainly not all that it is.
[20:03] And the way you can see that is to think about it this way. What would have happened to an Israelite family that didn't paint their doorposts with blood? They would have lost their firstborn son.
[20:16] That is, the 10th plague would have indiscriminately affected them as well. So the 10th plague can't just be punishment for fear in Egypt. There is something bigger going on here.
[20:29] God, I think, is doing more than just dealing with the interactions of two nations here. He's giving us an object lesson about the true state of humanity since the garden. Remember, Exodus is part and parcel of what we call the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses.
[20:46] It follows straight on after Genesis, the first book, and it's the continuation of many of the themes and the ideas that Genesis sets up for us. And so in Genesis 3, we have the clear teaching that Adam and Eve and their descendants after them are in a state of sin, under the threat of death.
[21:03] They're enslaved to sin and death. Remember what God said to Adam in the garden. This is in Genesis 2, verses 16 and 17.
[21:15] God says, You are free, he says. You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.
[21:27] God gives Adam a law, law to obey. Adam transgresses that law, and he plunges himself, and he plunges this world into death, into enslavement.
[21:38] Now you fast forward to Exodus chapter 11, and the fact that the 10th plague doesn't only threaten Pharaoh and Egypt, the obvious transgressors in the story, but even the Israelites, well that's a nod back to Genesis.
[21:54] It's a reminder that we're still living under the threat of death. We're still enslaved because of transgression. We're still in Adam, as the Apostle Paul will later describe it.
[22:05] We're still enslaved to sin, and the threat of death hangs over us. Now let me pause for a second, and say a word about the notion that we are all sinners.
[22:18] We're all enslaved to sin. That is not a particularly well received idea in today's culture. In fact, many segments of today's kind of progressive culture would actually go so far as to say that the teaching, and the propagating of the idea that we are all by nature sinners, is actually somewhat psychologically harmful and destructive.
[22:37] You really shouldn't do it. I shouldn't be saying what I'm saying up here. Now it hasn't always been that way in the culture. Previous cultures, and particularly cultures that were not as materially well off as our present culture is, didn't seem to have that much of a problem accepting the idea of human sinfulness.
[22:54] Part of what I think has happened is this, is not so much that our view of sin has changed, although I think stuff has changed there, but I don't think the big problem is that our view of sin has changed, but our view of God has changed.
[23:07] As we've become more affluent as a culture, and we are, historically speaking, the most affluent culture that has ever lived, but as we've become more affluent as a culture, there's been a shift in the way that we think about God.
[23:19] See, because when you live just kind of one bad harvest away from utter starvation and the ending of your life, and raiders can come over the hill at any moment and kill you and kill your family, when you live like that, you tend to become a lot more dependent upon the power and the providence of God to anchor your life.
[23:41] You become very, very, very much aware that you exist purely by the mercy of God in this very cruel and unjust world. And you become very, very much aware of the fact that you exist to do God's bidding and not the other way around.
[23:55] But with our material affluence and our power and our independence, we've tended to forget those things. On the whole, we've now shifted all over to self-reliance.
[24:11] And that's affected how we view God. Our dependence on Him is diminished, at least in our perception of everything, and at an experiential level. And so what else then can we use God for? We don't want to get rid of God, so what do we use God for?
[24:22] Well, how about He exists to make our lives happier? To pour out blessings and good things on us. And so we flip it around. God exists to serve me. This is what the well-known sociologist of religion, Christian Smith, calls moral therapeutic deism.
[24:40] Maybe you've heard that term before, moral therapeutic deism. There are five key points that he uses to summarize this thing, moral therapeutic deism. Number one, God exists, who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
[24:54] Number two, God wants people to be good and nice and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. Number three, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Number four, God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
[25:11] And number five, good people go to heaven when they die. Now those points underlie a lot of what passes for Western Christianity today. And because of the kind of broader influence of Christianity upon the culture, it's what undergirds the assumption of a lot of secular people today about how they think about God and how they think about Christianity.
[25:32] God is there to serve me. He's there to make me happy. He's there to improve the quality of my life. That's what he's there for. And so naturally then, an idea like we are all inherently sinful and stand condemned to die.
[25:43] Well, ideas like God are not very popular. They're pretty repulsive. And so we have a hard time getting our heads and getting our hearts around sin. But I want to suggest that it has a whole lot more to do with our diminished view of God than it has to do with the accuracy of our assessment of ourselves.
[26:04] In fact, our repulsion at the concept of human sinfulness might be more of an indication of our own narcissism than of ultimate reality. We secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, think that the world revolves around us.
[26:19] And the idea of our holy God, sinful humanity, and the punishment of death puts a kind of big spoke in the wheel of our self-absorbed fantasy.
[26:30] So let's not be too eager to dismiss the biblical idea of human sinfulness. Now our status as sinners, our enslavement sets up a problem for us, and that is that the threat of death still hangs over us.
[26:47] Because they're in the garden, it's still here, it's still here in Exodus. God warns us in the garden that sin would lead to death. The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 6 that the wages of sin is death, and so death hangs over us.
[27:01] Sinners essentially block the way between us and God, the way back to the tree of life, where we'd be able to eat and live forever in that true freedom that was originally offered to us, that God originally created us to have.
[27:14] And instead, death is now this impending reality for us all. And we're powerless in the face, but there's nothing we can do. We're powerless.
[27:24] When you were a kid, do you ever have the experience of being pinned down by a bully, someone bigger and stronger than you?
[27:38] Often that bully was just your oldest sibling maybe. I was the oldest sibling, so. But did you ever have the experience of being pinned down by a bully, someone much bigger and much stronger than you? You feel nothing but helplessness in that situation.
[27:51] There's nothing you can do but endure that beating because you don't actually have enough strength, physically, you just don't have enough strength to overcome gravity and this oppressive bully sitting on top of you. Death is an oppressive bully.
[28:07] It's an oppressive bully. I first really experientially understood this when my father died. So I was 11 years old and my father died in a helicopter accident.
[28:17] And I clearly remember the morning after he'd been in hospital for about six weeks, I think, before he passed. And I remember the morning after he had died when my mother explained to us what had happened.
[28:31] And I clearly remember in that moment that the thing that I felt more than anything else was not grief or sadness. I definitely felt those things. But the thing that I felt more than anything else was helplessness.
[28:44] Total, utter helplessness. My dad was gone and there was absolutely nothing I could do to change the situation, to make him come back.
[28:56] I felt so utterly helpless in the face of death. See, death is an oppressive, oppressive bully. And we are helpless under the weight of its impending reality.
[29:10] Now, if you've watched a lot of high school movies, then you know that the only way that you get the bully off your back is by paying them off, right? With your tax shop money.
[29:21] Or by doing their homework or something like that. You essentially pay a ransom. It's kind of similar here. You don't get rid of death without a ransom. Here in Exodus, that lamb acts as the ransom.
[29:37] It's killed and the blood is painted on the doorpost so that death, when death passes over, the firstborn in the household is spared. That is, they are ransomed from death.
[29:48] The price has been paid. The sacrifice of a lamb without blemish and the one sitting then under the inescapable threat of death, the firstborn son will be set free. Passover lamb is the ransom payment.
[30:04] But friends, death is a much, much greater threat than any high school bully you will ever encounter. It needs a much bigger ransom than any of us can actually afford.
[30:15] It needs the blood of the true Passover lamb, the true lamb without blemish and that is our savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. Only with his blood really painted on the doorposts of our hearts can we be ransomed from death.
[30:31] And what I mean by that is it's only through faith in the substitutionary death of Jesus on your behalf that you can be ransomed from the threat of death and be set free. Christ, Christ the true Passover lamb, the object of our faith has at enormous cost ransomed us from death.
[30:53] That's what the Passover teaches and tells us. I know a lot of people wonder if Jesus really will save them from death because death is such a scary thing.
[31:04] It's such an unknown thing that lies there and what lies beyond it is even more scary. It's a hard thing to deal with emotionally, existentially. We worry then about the quality of our faith.
[31:15] Am I really trusting in Jesus to save me? I know Jesus promises me all these things to save me from death if we trust in him but my faith is weak. What if my trust wavers and there are kind of good days when I'm feeling super confident in Jesus and then there are really, really bad days when I'm not trusting him at all.
[31:32] We worry about those sorts of things. I want to tell you what that is. That sort of worry is actually, when you put it away, it's actually a veiled attempt to wrestle the bully of death off by yourself in your own strength.
[31:48] That's what it is. It's to fight the bully off yourself. It's not, listen to this very carefully, it is not the depth and the quality of your faith that saves you from death. it is the object of your faith that saves you.
[32:01] The true Passover lamb who ransoms us. It is the object of our faith who saves us. I've told this story many, many times in this congregation but I'll tell it again because it fits here and it's not my story.
[32:15] I got it, I think, originally from the New Testament scholar Don Carson. But he tells the story of two Jewish guys on the eve of Passover. Joe and Bob with their classic Hebrew names having a discussion around the fire.
[32:33] They're eating everything they're supposed to be eating and they're having a discussion and Joe says, you know Bob, I'm terrified about tonight. I have this beautiful boy here, the son of mine.
[32:44] He's the apple of my eye. He's my life. I'm absolutely terrified about tonight. And Bob says, Joe, I don't know what you're talking about, man. God has got our back.
[32:56] Haven't you seen plagues one through nine so far? God has our back. He's going to come through for us. He has us. I'm totally confident that God is going to come through for us tonight.
[33:09] And Joe's like, well, I just don't know. Wrapped up in anxiety about tonight. That night, after dinner, they both go home. They both take the blood and they paint the door frame of their house and they both go to bed.
[33:24] Whose firstborn son gets saved in the morning? They both get saved. Because it is not about the depth and the quality of your faith.
[33:35] It is about the object of your faith. The true Passover lamb is the one who can save. Trust in him. Even the smallest trust in him saves you from death.
[33:47] We have the one who has ransomed us from death through the shedding of his blood. So put your faith in him. No matter how weak it is, cast yourself into his secure arms and be free.
[33:59] Truly free there. Now quickly, last point here. Cleansing. See, you might say it's great, in fact, more than great that we have been ransomed from death.
[34:10] The penalty for sin has been removed. But what about ongoing sin in our lives? It continues to enslave us in all sorts of different ways. We need more than a ransom and that is we need cleansing. So look at verse 21.
[34:22] This is off chapter 12. Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, Go once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb.
[34:33] Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the door frame. None of you shall go out of the door of your house until morning.
[34:47] Not only are we ransomed from death through the blood of the Passover lamb, we're actually cleansed by it. And how do we know that? Well, because there's hyssop there. Hyssop is a small little plant that basically makes a good substitute for a brush.
[35:03] It was used extensively in the ancient Israelite rituals around the sacrificial system. So it was used to sprinkle blood on certain elements. The high priest sprinkled blood with it on the Ark of the Covenant once a year on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.
[35:18] But you know where it first appears in the Bible? It first appears in the Bible here in the book of Exodus. It first appears here on this fateful night that death passes over the land of Egypt striking down firstborn sons.
[35:30] It first appears here painting the blood of an unblemished lamb upon the doorposts of sinners desperately needing to be cleansed from their sin. That's the first time it appears in the Bible.
[35:43] You know where the last time is that it appears in the Bible? The last time it appears in the Bible is in John chapter 19. Later, knowing that all was now completed and so that the scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, I am thirsty.
[36:01] A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it. They put the sponge on the stalk of the hyssop plant and they lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, it is finished.
[36:15] With that, he bowed his head and he gave up his spirit. That little plant, that little insignificant plant, was there at the first Passover when God's judgment against sin was quenched by the painting of a doorpost.
[36:31] And it was there at the last Passover when God's ultimate judgment against humanity was quenched by Jesus' death on our behalf. Having had his thirst quenched by the hyssop branch, he gave up his life so that God's judgment against sin wouldn't fall on us.
[36:53] That little plant that was used year after year after year to sprinkle drops of blood on the ark of the covenant to purify and to cleanse the nation of Israel of their sin.
[37:05] That little branch was now shoved into Jesus' mouth with a filthy sponge and disgusting wine vinegar which would have stung as it ran down his exposed wounds on his body.
[37:18] But what was really happening in that moment was that the hyssop branch was being flicked one more time. One final time to cleanse us from sin.
[37:31] The hyssop branch is a sign of our cleansing. That ancient Israelite father who's fearfully planting the blood on the doorpost with the hyssop branch, he didn't know it then but he was symbolically enacting the glorious salvation of humanity in that moment.
[37:48] That's what he's doing. Not only is the penalty of sin taken away through the blood of our true Passover lamb but the blood is also sprinkled in us. It's painted on us cleansing us from all our sin past, present, future, saying to us you are no longer enslaved to sin.
[38:05] You're free. You are cleansed. You are free. And so my very, very simple question for you this morning is are you truly free? This morning are you truly free?
[38:17] Have you trusted in Jesus Christ your true Passover lamb? And if your answer to that question is no or I'm not sure then I would say do it. What is stopping you?
[38:28] This very morning what is stopping you from being free by trusting in Christ? If your answer to the question is yes well then praise God this morning.
[38:40] Like the hymn writer says praise my soul the king of heaven to his feet thy tribute bring ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven who like me his praise should sing hallelujah, hallelujah praise the everlasting king.
[38:57] praise God for the gift of his great salvation rejoice in it revel in it. The apostle Peter reminds us of this truth of these words in 1 Peter he says for you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were ransomed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors but with the precious blood of Christ a lamb without blemish or defect.
[39:24] the restraints that this broken world places upon you are momentary and passing.
[39:36] The ransom price for your freedom that we could not pay has been paid. Rejoice and live as somebody who is free because that is who you are through your faith in Christ our true Passover lamb.
[39:52] Let's pray. our Savior and our King we want to be free this morning.
[40:05] We want to be free in the fullest sense of that word. Your word tells us that it is only through the ransom price paid by our true Passover lamb our Lord Jesus Christ that we can be free.
[40:21] And so I ask that you would teach every single one of us who are in this room this morning to cling by faith to that promise to that ransom payment to that cleansing knowing that we are forgiven knowing that the penalty of death no longer hangs over us knowing that we are free Lord.
[40:42] Because Lord when we know that in our bones when we know it in our hearts then we will live as free people. then the passing and momentary restraints of this life will not be as debilitating as they seem to be.
[40:58] And so I pray you will show us our true freedom in Jesus this morning. And for any person who is sitting here Lord who is still enslaved to their sin because they have not trusted in Jesus Christ I pray that you would bring about faith in their hearts this morning.
[41:10] That they would repent of a life lived ignoring you and they would turn to you and trust in you their saviour. Father let us live lives of rejoicing in this great truth.
[41:22] We ask this for Christ's sake and his glory. Amen.