The lesson this morning is on redemption. What does it mean to be redeemed? For some it means a reputation recovered after being lost. I remember one of the Watergate figures, Jeb Magruder, going into the ministry after serving time in the Watergate break-ins. Actor Robert Downey, Jr. has struggled all his life with drug addiction and then a failing career but has recently turned that around and redeemed his career. Others have found lives of service or even anonymity after notoriety for a part of their lives. But all of these are people who have redeemed themselves or their lives. That’s not the same as the topic this morning. We are looking at redemption that is far different from the result of a search for the recovery of a reputation. God’s redemption comes from outside us completely and in surprising ways. He redeems us for himself.

1 Peter 1:13-25:

13 Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. 22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For, “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.

It is not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers.

Sometimes we forget how much of what we believe is what has been handed down to us. It does not mean we are awful people or notoriously unhappy people – like Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus who happen to be in the news currently. It means we have been shaped by forces that are mostly invisible to us. Our experiences, emotions, personalities, associations and family have shaped our way of seeing things. Rather than being immoral and depraved people we could be outstanding citizens, morally upright, good parents and spouses but for reasons that have nothing to do with Christ. We have been taught the definitions of what is normal, what is reasonable, permissible, honorable, sensible and necessary. What has been handed down may not be great sin or pathological behavior but merely the routines and habits of our lives that do not include God. For some, that has made them more immune to the gospel than a life of outrageous sin. Empty and futile does not mean just rebellion or the sins listed in Romans and Galatians. It means a life that points to anything other than God – and sometimes a life that points to good things is as empty and futile as a life of visible sin.

But it is often the routine that is disrupted when God breaks in. You never know when or how. It comes when we least expect it and there is nothing we can do to prepare for it. God’s redemption is out of nowhere.

Do you remember the last time Peter used this phrase “silver and gold”? It was in Acts 3. A crippled beggar was sitting at the entrance to the Temple with no expectations for what was about to happen to him. He just wanted to get through another day in a life that had been handed to him but God had something else in mind for him. “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you.” He gave him his life.

Think about Peter’s vision while praying on the roof-top. “Kill and eat.” “Surely not, Lord. I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Peter was simply living out the values that had been handed to him. They were good values. But, that moment changed the direction of the church and the content of the gospel.

What about the woman at the well? In the middle of a routine trip to get water her life is changed. Or the shepherds in Bethlehem. There was no preparation for what they would see in the middle of their work that night. God’s redemption comes out of nowhere.

This week-end I read the story of George Frederich Handel and the composing of the “Messiah”. Many of us know he wrote it at one long sitting but I never knew the background. He was recovering from a serious illness that could have taken his life. But he was at the low point in his life as a composer. Let me read the account.

“Handel’s financial difficulties grow worse and worse. His creditors are dunning him, the critics are scathing, the public remains silent and indifferent, and gradually the struggling composer loses heart. A benefit performance has just saved him from im­prisonment for debt, but what a disgrace, to buy back his life as a beggar! Handel becomes more and more reclusive, his mind grows ever darker. In the year 1740 he feels a beaten, defeated man once more. His former fame is dust and ashes. Why, he sighs, did God let me rise from my sickbed if men are to bury me once more? A lost man, weary of himself, Handel wanders London by night. Sometimes he stops outside a church, sometimes he sits in a tavern, and sometimes he stares down from a bridge over the Thames and wonders whether it might not be better to cast off all his cares by making one determined leap.

One night he had been wandering in this way again. It was 21 August 1741 and the day had been warm and sultry. No one was still awake in the house in Brook Street. He used to come home from every walk with a melody, but now his desk was empty. There was nothing to begin, nothing to finish. Or no: not bare! There was a package and he quickly broke the seal. A letter lay on top from the poet Charles Jennens, who wrote to say that he was sending Handel a new poem and he hoped the great genius of music, phoenix musicae, would look graciously on his poor words and carry them up on his wings through the ether of immortality. Handel started as if something terrible had touched him. Did this man mean to mock him? He tore the letter in two. “The blackguard! The scoundrel!” he bellowed. Tears broke from his eyes and his body trembled with impotent rage. The disturbed, ruined man lay heavily on his bed.

But he could not sleep. Handel rose, went back into his study and once again lit the candle. Messiah, read the first page. He turned over the title leaf and began to read. At the first words he started up. “Comfort ye,” began the libretto. It was like magic, that phrase – no, not a phrase, it was an answer divinely given, the cry of an angel calling from the overcast skies to his heart. Handel heard the phrase as music, as hovering, calling, rushing, singing notes.

His hands shook as he turned page after page. Yes, he had been called, summoned. Every word entered into him with irresist­ible force. All his weariness was gone. Never before had he felt his powers so strongly, never before known the joy of creation streaming through him like this. Again and again the words poured over him like warm, redeeming light. And suddenly he shivered, for there, in the hand of poor Jennens, he read: “The Lord gave the word.”

He held his breath. Here was the truth: the Lord had given him the word; and behold, there the word was written, there it rang out, a word that could be repeated and transformed for ever: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

Tears blurred Handel’s eyes, so mighty was the fervour in him. Hastily, he picked up his pen and began setting down notes. He could not stop. It carried him away, like a ship with all sails spread, running before a stormy wind.

When his manservant cautiously entered the room the next morning, Handel was still sitting at his desk writing. He did not reply when Schmidt timidly asked whether he could be of any help in copying the music, just uttered a low growl. No one ventured to approach him again and he did not leave the study for three weeks. Handel knew nothing of the hour in those weeks. He lived entirely in the sphere that measures time only by musical beat and rhythm; he moved only with the current that surged from him as the work flowed closer to the sacred rapids of its conclusion.

At last, on 14 September, the work was finished. What before had been only dry, sere language now blossomed and sang, never to fade. The miracle of the will had been worked by the inspired soul, just as the paralysed body had once worked the miracle of resurrection. Handel rose to his feet, with difficulty. The pen dropped from his hand. The strength had gone out of him. His body was tired, his mind confused. He fell on his bed and slept like the dead.

Several months later, two well-dressed gentlemen knocked at the door of the house in Abbey Street, Dublin, that he was then renting. They had heard that he meant to give the premiere of his new oratorio, Messiah here, even before London heard it. They had come to ask whether the master might not donate the takings of that premiere to the Society for Relieving Prisoners and to the sick in Mercer’s Hospital. But, of course, they said, this donation would be the proceeds of the first performance only; profits from the others would still go to the master.

“No,” Handel said quietly, “no money for this work. I will never take money for it, never. It shall always go to the sick and the prisoners. For I was sick myself, and it cured me; I was a prisoner and it set me free.”

He had been redeemed as he later put it. God had broken in and disrupted all his expectations.

The redemption of God does not come from us but it does come with a price – the blood of Christ. We talked about this last week, didn’t we? We hesitate to mention it because it sounds grisly or it might offend people and make us sound cultish. We would prefer to talk about Christ putting our lives back together or God meeting our needs and giving us meaningful lives…but that’s not the heart of the gospel. The heart of the gospel is here – God does not just forgive with no price to himself.

Look at the background of what Peter is telling them. It’s in Leviticus 16 and Exodus 12:

The Day of Atonement
From the Israelite community he is to take two male goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. 6 “Aaron is to offer the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household. 7 Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 8 He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. 9 Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering. 10 But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat. 15 “He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull’s blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. 16 In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been. He is to do the same for the tent of meeting, which is among them in the midst of their uncleanness.  20 “When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. 21 He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. 22 The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.

Christ is both the sacrifice and the goat that carries away our sin. Sin is not merely psychological or imaginary. It is real and it has to be put on something and carried far away where we cannot get to it. Corrie Ten Boom said “God has put our sins into the deepest ocean and posted a sign saying, “No fishing”.

That is the picture we see in Gethsemane. Christ is being loaded up with the sin of the world. It is not just the agony of the cross but the separation from the Father and bearing the sin of the world that is his burden that night.

Bruce Larson tells the true story of a Catholic priest living in the Philippines, a much-loved man of God who carried a secret burden of a sinful past hidden deep in his heart. He had committed a grievous sin during his days in seminary. He had since repented and suffered years of remorse for the transgression, but he still had no peace, no inner joy, and no sense of God’s forgiveness.

In the priest’s parish there was a woman who deeply loved God and claimed to have visions of Christ, where she would speak with Him and He with her. The priest, however, was skeptical of her claims, so to test her visions he said, “You say you actually speak directly with Christ in your visions. Let me ask you a favor. The next time you have one of these visions, I want you to ask Him what sin your priest committed while he was in seminary.”

The woman agreed and went home. When she returned to the church a few days later, the priest asked, “Well, did Christ visit you in your dreams?”

She replied, “Yes, He did.”

“And did you ask Him what sin I committed in seminary?”

“Yes, I asked Him.”

“Well, what did He say?”

“He said, ‘I don’t remember.’”

It is the blood of atonement that takes away our sin where we can never get to it but it is also the blood that protects us from God’s wrath and punishment of sin. It is the blood that covered the doorways of their houses in Exodus so the angel of death would pass over them. It is the blood that delivered them from slavery.

But redemption must lead to something. It leads to obedience and sincere love for each other. Peter does not talk about changing the world but of giving up the ways of the world and being aliens and strangers. The mark of a redeemed person was not changing the world but of giving up the common practices of the world and loving each other from the heart. Our lives are to be lived in such a way that the pagans will see our good deeds and glorify God. Neither evangelism or social justice are the primary characteristics or responsibilities of a redeemed person or community of redeemed people. It is loving each other out of obedience to God. It is not self-centered love or detaching ourselves from the world but everywhere in the letters of the New Testament it is the first responsibility of the redeemed. Not to save the world but to love each other. Without that as an example to the world we cannot expect them to listen. We are to live our lives pointing to God and looking toward, as Peter puts it, the day he visits us.

It doesn’t mean our eyes are only on each other and the world to come. I like the way C.S. Lewis puts it:

“Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more – food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.”

Finally, Jesus redeems us through his resurrection. If Christ was just a sacrifice to reconcile us to God in this life we would have no hope – only a better life. If Christ took away our sins and forgave our iniquities and that is only for this life then we are still hopeless. If Christ is just a perfect example then we have no hope because we cannot live up to his standards. No, it is the resurrection of Christ and our own that gives us hope – in this world and the next.

Look at 1 Corinthians 15:12-32:

The Resurrection of the Dead
12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 30 And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? 31 I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

It’s not enough to believe in forgiveness and reconciliation. It is not enough to love each other. It is not enough to rid ourselves of malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of all kinds. It is not enough to save the world. If we don’t believe in and look forward to resurrection we are hopeless. There are people who say the resurrection is symbolic of the new life we experience in the here and now. They find no need for believing in a physical resurrection of Christ to be counted as Christians. I cannot understand that. I am with Paul. If there is no resurrection then my faith is futile and pitiful and I am back where we started at the beginning – a futile and empty way of life.

We are not just redeemed to save us from our sins. We are redeemed not just to reconcile us to God. We are redeemed not just to love each other or to make the world a better place while we are here. We are redeemed to be new creatures – now and in the world to come.

God may break into our routines and expectations this week. He may show up in a way that is completely unpredictable and when we least expect Him. Don’t be surprised or afraid if He does. That’s just how He is.

The world may be a very discouraging place for us right now. An interviewer talking to former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asked him what was the most serious threat to America right now. His answer? The two square miles of Washington DC and a Congress that is totally self-serving.

There may be every reason to despair and be discouraged. We may be, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, hard pressed on every side, perplexed, persecuted and struck down…but we do not lose heart. “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Go back to Peter’s encounter with the crippled beggar. “So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.” That should be us this week. Giving our attention to God and living in expectation.

I’ll close with a reading from Oswald Chambers this last week:

“Do not look for God to come in a particular way, but do look for Him. The way to make room for Him is to expect Him to come, but not in a certain way. No matter how well we may know God, the great lesson to learn is that He may break in at any minute. We tend to overlook this element of surprise, yet God never works in any other way. Suddenly—God meets our life “. . . when it pleased God . . . .” Keep your life so constantly in touch with God that His surprising power can break through at any point. Live in a constant state of expectancy, and leave room for God to come in as He decides.”