And blessed be the name of the Lord, we know who He is, the greatest person in the universe. He is not upon the earth at the present time, but oh how we bless the Lord and praise Him, that He did come to the earth. Well, may the songwriter and another hymn say, Oh, the love that drew salvation's plan, Oh, the grace that brought it down, to man. And oh the mighty gulf that God did span. And where did he do it? At Calvary. May I lovingly and earnestly say the greatest place in human history as well as divine history was Calvary. What a joy What a covenant of blessing to realize why our blessed Savior came to go to Calvary. If you have your Bible, will you turn with me in this wonderful book? The Word of God to the Ephesian Epistle. Chapter one in verse seven only. All the joy of realizing the debt the length and the breadth and the height of the revelation of the Word of God. Honestly, when I declare it, there is nothing in this world with all that it contains, and that's beyond your comprehension and mind, that can equal the Word of God. How well did the prophet write? Those words in Isaiah fifty-four. Though heaven and earth shall pass away, the word of our God abides forever. My beloved, I don't know what we're going to see in all the glory that lies before the believer, but I verily believe One of the great occupations we shall enjoy in the glory will be the Word of God. Well, has the Spirit of God written, it shall never pass away. And in Ephesians chapter one in verse seven, there is one of the greatest truth revealed in the Bible from the beginning to the end concerning the redemption of the human race. Listen to the words after telling that we have been accepted in the beloved. The beloved apostle goes on to write, in whom? And please may I emphasize who he is. This is not an ordinary person. This is the eternal Son of God. In whom? We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. Note particularly the theme of the verse. The theme of the verse is redemption. I don't know what you think of the word of God. But I valued the definition that one servant of God once made years ago. That the Bible is the history of the redemption of the human race. My beloved, there's many things in the Bible. But the great theme from Genesis all the way through to the end of it in the book of the Revelation is redemption. Redemption. What does redemption mean? There are two meanings in the scripture. And how blessed it is to have the truth of it in your heart as we have been singing one old hymn, redeemed how I love to proclaim it, redeemed by the blood of the land. Redemption, what is the meaning of it? And may I say lovingly and earnestly, We believe it's neat to enter into the fullness of it more than we have. And anyone that never has been redeemed, it's a good occasion on this meaning, in this meaning, to become redeemed. What is the meaning of redemption? Looking at it from the scripture viewpoint, we may speak of two facts. It means to be delivered. to be rescued. You may remember the words when you, if you have ever read the story of Moses in Exodus chapter three, when he was before the burning bush. And there he had the revelation of God in the midst of that bush speaking to him. Among the words that God said to him, as he revealed himself, coming down from heaven to speak to Moses on the behalf of the people of Israel in the bondage of the tyranny of Egypt. I am come down to deliver them out and bring them up onto the land flowing with milk and honey. The purpose of it, deliverance, From what? The bondage, the tyranny, the danger, the difficulties they were going through. But may I go very much to the point, to emphasize the greatest danger that faces the human race, and every man, woman, boy and girl in it. I'm sure we believe from the revelation of this precious book, as it has been well stated, There is the heaven to gain, and there is the hell to shun. May I lovingly and earnestly say that every man, woman, boy and girl that is ever brought into this world faces the danger of eternal hell. Well, did the scripture declare, even in the book of Ezekiel, some of the Old Testament prophets, The soul that sinneth, it shall die. And may I be reminded it's not just a literal physical death, but an eternal one. Well, did the Spirit of God write in Romans chapter six and verse twenty-three, the opening words, the wages, the inevitable penalty, the inevitable reward of sin? his death. Now may I be very faithful, as Solomon Well wrote long ago, there is not a man who has not sinned. My beloved, I wish everyone believed that. The greatest thing that can ever happen to the heart and to the soul and to the conscience is to be brought face to face with the reality of his and her sin. I thank God one time at the close of a service many, many years ago a man came to me. He said, I want to talk with you. So we went into a side room to speak together. And the first sentence that he stated to me, I'm the most miserable man in this city. I say, praise the Lord, I'm glad to meet you. I knew what he meant. He was under the conviction that he faced the penalty of sin with its eternal result. And what a blessed privilege it is to lead such a one to Christ. What a deliverance from that penalty as well as the guilt of sin through the death of the Lord Jesus. But there's another explanation for the meaning of that word redemption. Not only deliverance, but to buy back. To buy back something I lost and to bring it back. And one may well say, well, let me quote the words of the Lord Jesus, to realize that universally the world is lost. When in chapter nineteen of Luke, he declared these words, verse ten, for the Son of Man is come to seek and to save what? That which was lost. Let me quote the words of First Timothy chapter two and verse five and part of verse six. There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. Oh, what a debt he paid, as one as well stated. He paid the debt he did not owe. And a debt I could never pay. The ransom price. He paid it. Well, did the hymn writer write properly? Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. But he washed it wide as snow. So take the two thoughts in. The meaning of the word. Deliverance. or a ransom to be brought back. Now may we ask a question from the verse that we have read. We quote it again. In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. Raise the question. Where can we find redemption? It's a good question. Many years ago on the streets of the city where I lived, I happened to meet an acquaintance, an old man to live there, who stopped me and said, Brother Brahma, did you read the morning paper? I looked at him and said, well, I glanced at it. What were you thinking of, particularly? He looked at me and said, did you read? Will Rogers, that noted humorist, a national character, died. I said, yes, I did read that he had passed away. Then he said to me, he must be in heaven. I looked at my friend. I said, what makes you think he's in heaven? Well, he said, I read in that article. He left half a million dollars for the good of humanity in his will. I looked at my friend again. I said, Mr. Lawrence, do you have half a million dollars? Do I have a half a million dollars that I can do that with? I said, if we don't, we're sunk. If that's the way to heaven. You read the forty-nine songs. And you find the psalmist whining. They that trust in their wealth and in their riches, they cannot, by any means, redeem their brother or get to God a sacrifice for him. For the redemption of their soul is what? Precious. and faith is forever. In other words, this is so valuable, no one can ever pay the price. My beloved, let's think it through. Oh, may I say lovingly and earnestly, more than every man, woman, boy and girl would realize their lost condition. and a need of redemption. But again, let's raise the question, where is it found? There's only one answer. As you have it here. In Christ. Not the church, per se. Or the local gathering of believers that I may meet with. They do not hold the power to give me redemption, nor any organization. And nothing in the whole world. There's only one person. And that person is the Lord Jesus Christ. In him we have redemption. My beloved, let me say, earnestly and faithfully, Have you ever been to Christ and accepted His redemption? When you make a confession of the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you're not confessing it. But one fight, you come to one living, loving person, in whom alone is redemption. My beloved, what a joy to realize. Please let me say, why is redemption in Christ? We may probably raise the question. Why is it in Christ? One note the next phrase that follows. In whom we have redemption through. What? His blood? Well, did we happily sing, I hope, and enjoy the songs of redemption that we had in the opening of the service? What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus, and so on. I will sing of my redeemer and his wondrous lust to me. On the cross, cruel cross he suffered, thus from curse to set me free. My beloved, why is redemption found in Christ? No very carefully. In His blood. How true are the words we find? What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. My beloved, as you look at the Bible as a whole, as we make the statement at the commencement of our message, it is the history of the redemption of the human race. And you find through the Bible, from the beginning to the end, redemption by blood is the theme from cover to cover. Let me point out very briefly, it cannot be done thoroughly. But very briefly in outline, through the Bible, the theme of redemption is by God. I believe the first occasion in the Bible we can find it is in Genesis chapter three. You all may know and remember the story of Adam and Eve, our first parent in the Garden of Eden. And may I go on to say they were the first sinners. By one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and that man was Adam. And in the Garden of Eden, did you ever notice something? Did you ever realize the first question that you find in the Bible? And who made it? And it was in the Garden of Eden, it was asked. But may I raise the fact? It was God who asked him. After Adam and Eve had disobeyed the word of God and found themselves wretched sinners and naked and hid from him in the woods of the garden, they heard the voice of God saying, Adam, Where art thou? I remember very vividly, as a young believer in the Lord Jesus, not many years, in my early teenage to be seen, true. In the office where I worked one day, near where I was working at a desk, I heard one of the members of the firm and his secretary talking together about, to my surprise, the Bible. And having just been saved a little while, I was quite interested to know what they would say. And I heard one ask the other one, what is the Bible? And I heard the answer that came. It's the story of man seeking God. Well... Thank God I had been saved. I knew that wasn't the case. And I interrupted without apology. I don't believe it. It's the opposite. It's the story of God seeking man. Please. Look. I say very frankly. May I remind you of the scripture in Romans chapter three. Do you believe it? There is none that seeketh after God. There are all gone out of the way. But oh, thank God. As Paul well wrote in first Timothy chapter one and verse fifteen, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And my beloved one had joined it. Oh, God came looking for Adam and Eve. What did he do there in the garden for them? As he found them and approached them and faced them with the issue of what they had done wrong. He drove them out of the garden, you may remember. away from the tree of life, lest they should eat of that and live in that condition forever. But you remember before they left the garden? They closed then. One of the most strange things I've learned in the Bible, to my surprise, from the time of the Garden of Eden, God has been in the clothing business. And to clothe them is sacrifice a victim. And there in the Garden of Eden you have the fiend, redemption by blood, by the skins of the animal sacrifice that he clothe them. Then you go on in the Bible and read the lives of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac. Jacob, and you read again and again how they approach God by the way of an altar and the sacrifice of a victim. Then you go further on in the history of the Bible. You come to the days of the children of Israel in the land of Egypt, in the book of Exodus. And you well know the deliverance that God effected for them there. And you may remember chapter twelve particularly. when God passed over the land of Egypt with the centers of death upon the whole country and people, including the Israelites. He made a provision of deliverance for them to sacrifice a lamb, to take a lamb and sacrifice it, place the blood of it upon the doorpost and the upper tin lintel of it. And then what did God say in that twelve chapter? When I see the blood, I will pass over you. And the angel of death never entered into a home of an Israelite with the blood upon him. And then in the history of the nation, we think of Leviticus chapter seventeen and verse eleven, when God said, and I'll him pointedly once, The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your soul. For it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul. And my beloved, as you well know, which cannot cover the whole history of it, but all through the Old Testament history of Israel, and even when the Lord Jesus was here upon the earth, until the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in the AD seventy by Titus the Roman general. Blood flowed upon the altar of the temple and of the tabernacle as an approach to God. Not only are yearly sacrifices, there were many daily sacrifices, But as the writer in the Hebrews well wrote, none all the blood of beasts on Jewish altar slain could give the guilty conscience peace, nor take away one's name. But then you come to the New Testament. And what did John the Baptist say when he introduced the Lord Jesus to the people? looking at Jesus as he walked in John chapter one and verse twenty nine we read behold the Lamb of God which beareth or taketh away the sin of the world in Eden it was but a man and a woman on the altars of the patriarchs themselves and their families in Israel the nation. But when the Blessed Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to be a sacrifice, he was the land, God's provision, to take away the sin of the world. He only could do it. And you know, well as I do, as we have been singing it, He died to save us. But then the blood was not only on Calvary. May I say, I think of the words that are written in the book of the Revelation. We find the blood will be revealed in heaven. In chapter five of the book of the Revelation you have this precious truth. Then in that day when all the saints are gathered in the glory of heaven above, around the person of the Lord Jesus, we shall all fall at his feet and sing a new song, saying, Thou art worthy, for thou art slain and hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood out of all people, people, kindred, tongues, and nations the blood in heaven then may I add further in Revelation chapter seven you have the record of a time of trouble upon the world that follows the rapture of the saints the great tribulation John by the Holy Spirit is given in John in chapter seven a vision this is a great multitude one by the testimony of those who will be the true Jehovah's Witnesses. For God will have a testimony in that day of trouble, making known his word. And as John sees these hundred and forty-four thousand, twelve thousand from every tribe of Israel, be the representation of God in that day. after the church has been taken away. He sees a multitude of men and women waving palm trees and singing salvation songs to the land. And John questions the angel that is leading him and guiding him. When did they come from? And did John surprise An elder says to him, They came out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the land. Therefore, they are before the throne of God, redeemed. My beloved, I say again, redemption is by blood from Genesis through Revelation. And may I sadly add, there are many to deny it. I sing it lovingly, and I sing it sorrowfully. For I had, in my youth and years ago, one of my favorite uncles who was a preacher in the Methodist Church, in the old country of England and then back here, and here when he moved over to the United States. But I have sadly to confess, he changed his convictions and spoke to me in a deploring way of the preaching of salvation by the boy. My beloved, I must need to go home by the way of the cross. There is no other way but this. I shall never get sight of the gates of light if the way of the cross I miss. The way of the cross leads home. It is sweet to know as I onwards go, the way of the cross leads home. Oh, beloved, why is salvation in Christ through His blood? I think of the words, and may I quote them, and you know them well. First John, chapter one and verse seven, when John writes for the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, Cleanse us from all sin. Can I lovingly and happily say, it blesses my soul to think of it, the moment that blessed moment when I came as a poor, lost, guilty, held deserving, confessed sinner to the Lord Jesus Christ. I've acknowledged that he had died for me and shed his blood. He covered me with His blood forever. Please let me quote the words that God said in chapter twelve of Exodus. When I see the blood on the doorpost, I'll pass over you. Oh, I think of the words that Paul wrote in Romans eight, verse one. There is now no judgment No condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. And may I say it lovingly and happily, the blood of Jesus Christ has covered me since February, nineteen fourteen, and will cover me forever. Look, I don't put my confidence in my work. Not what I may have done, the little I may have done for the Lord. That matters, that matters. Look, I'm not saved by what I've done, whether before or whether after I profess to be saved. I'm saved by grace, through faith, and that not of yourself. It's a gift of God. None are worth what any man should know. Beloved, may I say it again? Repeatedly, though I may have been sane. Eighty-four years. I've done nothing in those eighty-four years to save my soul. Oh, no. I couldn't. I have to say one to him right or wrong. Jesus paid it all. Every bit of it. The place of redemption. Christ. Make sure you've been to him. The power of it. Through his blood. Then as you read the text on, you have the proof of it revealed. In him we have redemption through his blood. What do we get? The forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins. My beloved the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world to forgive sins. And to some people he did. And many of them were vile sinners. But he came into the world offering forgiveness. And even after he died and went back to heaven, his servants, the apostles, as Paul well did, preached as he did in Acts thirteen. Through this man. His priest unto you, the forgiveness of sins, and all the beliefs are justified from all things, from which they could never be justified by the Lord Moses. What a joy to realize. Please let me say. Do you ever notice something? In Matthew chapter nine, if you've ever read the story, and I'm sure you must have, and it's in Luke's Gospel recorded too, Poor men brought a friend sick of the palsy to the Lord Jesus to be healed. The Lord Jesus was in a home inside of a house. The house was filled with people, and there were many around the door. And they could not get near to the Lord Jesus. But they carried this man. Four of them carried their friend. to bring him to the Lord Jesus. They were so confident and their faith was so strong that the Lord Jesus could heal him and though they could not reach the person of Christ and get through the door, they did what you couldn't do today. They took the roof off. They removed the roof and let the form of the sick person down through the roof As they took the roof off in those days that they could. There were not the firm roofs that we have today. As we well know. But you remember what the Lord Jesus said to that man as he saw? Please know something. When he saw their faith. Meaning the men that brought him. Once you think that men were confident. The right person to bring him to was Christ. And as he lay before the Lord Jesus, the Lord said unto him, Son, be of good cheer. Thy sins be forgiven me. One thing the Lord did, this is more important than his body. Oh, my beloved one, may we rejoice in the fast. It's far more important to have the soul redeemed. And all Pharisees present murmured, Complained, Who is this man that can forgive sin? The Lord proved himself. Who he was? He was very God who'd come to save. But the first thing he did for this man was for his precious soul. Oh, my beloved, let me say. That's the psalmist wrote in chapter forty-nine. The redemption of the soul is precious. You can't put a price on it. But the only price that was ever paid for it was at Calvary. At Calvary. But there's one more thing I'd like to speak. At the close of our text. According to the riches of his grace. Not only the person in the place of redemption is Christ. The power of it through his blood. The proof of it. When you receive the forgiveness of sin. But the plenitude. The plenitude. According to what? The riches of his grace. And what does grace mean? It means undeserved favor. Please let me say this. I've got to say it. It's in the word of God. The vilest man, the most wicked man on the earth, can be saved through the blood of Christ if he wishes to, if he's willing. Oh, I think of a man standing on the street listening to some young Christians preaching the gospel. Not that they were through preaching. He called one over to where he was. He said, young father, tell me something, that stuff you've been preaching. Is it true that the blood of Jesus Christ washes sins away? And what could the young Christian say? But yes, and quote the scripture again, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. He said, son, look, and he put his coat aside, and he had two guns. He was in the Daves. of when the mob drooled over the wicked. And he was one of the gunmen. I'm a guns gangster, he said. And what could a young man say but answer? The blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from all sin. He said, Son, look at these hands. He stretched his hands. And that man said to the young man, the young Christian, there's blood on it. Blood on those hands. He had killed. What could the young man say? But he did, say it. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. Power in the blood. And it's God's unmerited favor. But now in closing, I've got to particularly mention that that's not the end of it. Romans chapter eight in verse twenty-three. The word redemption is found. Unusually. Written by the beloved Apostle Paul. Telling that all creation groans. And even we who are saved groan within ourselves. Waiting for the adoption. And that is, as he goes on the right. waiting for the redemption of our body. My beloved, I'm redeemed, but I want to tell you something. My body's not redeemed yet. And I want to say frankly, I pray for all the dear ones that are suffering amongst the Lord's dear people today and many I know that are suffering and some of them intently and even faithfully. that the Lord would come. For when He comes, we all who are saved will have a new body. The redemption of our body. And may I remind you, Hebrews nine and verse twelve in closing declares, He has obtained for us an eternal redemption. I tell you, I can never lose it. It's eternal. Shall we pray? Oh, beloved Father, the meaning of redemption. We thank you for thy word through Peter. We know that we were not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without thought. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Oh, thank you for your word. And our deep and earnest prayer is that every dear one here can say, I've been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. We ask it as we separate, giving these thanks, Lord. Always thank me for redemption without money. and without Christ, but through the precious blood of Jesus. Dismiss us with thy blessing. And oh, blessed Father, may our thoughts of thy redemption be more precious to our heart, whether saved or not saved, in our Savior's worthy name. Amen. Thank you for listening.