Mark Jones – In His Dust

Redemption is synonymous with being liberated, freed, or rescued from bondage and slavery to a person or thing.

In Exodus, God’s people (the Israelites) were enslaved to Pharaoh (which I’m assuming is a fancy Egyptian word for ‘king’), who rules over the most powerful nation on earth, Egypt. He was worshipped as a god, and he didn’t exactly treat his slaves very well. The slaves cried out to the one true God, and he heard their pleas. God raised up Moses to speak on his behalf to Pharaoh, demanding that the slaves be set free in order to worship the true God. God nicely but authoritatively called Pharaoh to righteousness, but Pharaoh became hard hearted (just as God said he would!), and he refused to let the slaves go free. Big mistake. God sent a bunch of plagues as judgements and warnings upon Pharaoh, giving him more than a few opportunities to repent and do what God demanded.

Pharaoh repeatedly refused to repent, and release the slaves, so God sent a series of pretty awful judgements upon the entire nation of Egypt. The wrath of God was eventually poured out on the firstborn son of every household, who were all killed in one night. The only families that were spared were those who took a lamb without defect, (sorry vegans!) killed it as a substitute, and used it’s blood to cover the door posts of the entry of their homes. Because they done this, the wrath of God skipped them out.

God redeemed his people. He set them free. Whatever you want to call it.

The interesting thing about this is that we see a theme of ‘redemption’ throughout the bible. God ‘redeeming’ his people a bunch of times in the old testament. Then in the new testament Paul talks about Jesus being our redeemer (Rom 3:24, 1 Cor 1:30, Gal 3:13 etc).

Before I was ’saved’, I was a slave to sin.

But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. (Romans 6:17)

Jesus Christ is MY redemption. Not only did he take the punishment for our sins, and cleanse us from our sins and the sins done against us like I talked about in my previous blog, but he also set us free from the slavery to sin!Just as he freed the Israelites from their slavery, he freed me from my slavery to sin through death on the cross.

Jesus Christ – My Redemption.