The passage of scripture that we're studying today is, if you haven't noticed over the years, it's one of my favorites. I don't necessarily believe in a thing called a life verse, but if there is such a thing, this would be mine. It's Colossians 1, 13, and 14, and in it we have the proclamation of the gospel in two verses, and this is God's Word. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Father, in heaven, as we come to Your Word, we pray that everything we do here would lift high the name of Jesus Christ, and we pray in His name. Amen. The outline is right there in this passage. It's delivered, transferred, redeemed, and forgiven. The word delivered, ryomai, it means to drag out of danger, to rescue, to save, to be rescued or delivered. Think of that, to drag out of danger. To drag somebody out of danger means that the person being dragged was helpless. They couldn't get out themselves. They needed to be dragged. And that's what the Scriptures are teaching us, that when we're saved, it's because we're dragged out of danger. It's the same word that Jesus uses in the Lord's Prayer, or Paul uses when he was delivered from the mouth of the lion in 2 Timothy 4, 17. He says, but the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into His heavenly kingdom to Him be the glory forever and ever. This picture of being dragged out of danger, rescued, saved, is what is such good news. Throughout history, God has been doing this with His people. Beginning in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve sinned and plunged the entire race of humanity into depravity, yet God promised them deliverance. When addressing the devil, He said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel. That was what's called the pre-evangelism, that God was promising a Savior even then. We learn that God chose Abram, rescued him and Sarai from paganism. They were moon worshipers, and He promised to make them a great nation. And remember, God delivered all of Israel through the wisdom of Joseph. Joseph had been sold into slavery by his brothers. His brothers were jealous of him because his father had given him the coat of many colors, and it was obvious that his father favored Joseph. And so his eleven siblings, brothers, despised him. And they threw him in a pit and figured he would die there, and then they decided, rather than kill him, why don't we sell him? So they sold him to a caravan of people coming by, and then they sold him to the Egyptians. And while he was with the Egyptians, he was blamed for a sin he didn't commit with Potiphar's wife. And then, beyond that, against all reason, he rose to second in command in all of Egypt. And it was through his wisdom that he saved all the people from starvation when the famine came. And because of that, his brothers in Israel came to try to get grain, and they were delivered. He promised Israel deliverance from the slavery in Egypt through Moses. He told him in Exodus 6, they say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from underneath the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment. So you can see the foreshadowing of the gospel even then. These are Hebrew words, so they're not the same words, but he's using the words redeem and deliver for what he's doing with his people when he rescued them from Egypt and slavery. I will take you to be my people, I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord. Moses spoke all of this to the people of Israel, but they didn't listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery. And that's what happens when people have been enslaved and they've gotten used to their slavery. It's hard for them to imagine being free. But he delivered them from exile and brought them back to their land. He sent his son Jesus to save us from our sins, to rescue us, to deliver us, to drag us out of danger. And Paul calls this the domain of darkness. And Paul may have had in mind Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt, but he could have also been thinking of deliverance from exile in the words of the psalmist in Psalm 107. They cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from all their distress. He brought them out of the darkness and the shadow of death and burst their bonds apart. The domain of darkness. We see it here in Isaiah. I'm sorry, the psalm. But in Isaiah we see I'm the Lord. I've called you into righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you. I will give you as a covenant for people in the light of the nations to open the eyes that are blind, to bring the prisoners out of the dungeon and to the prison, those who sit in darkness. I will lead the blind in a way they do not know and pass they have not known. I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, saying to the prisoners come out to those who are in darkness appear. So we see that God has delivered us from the domain of darkness. He did the same with Paul in Acts chapter 9. If you remember Paul was about the business of persecuting and even executing Christians. But God saved him. And during his mission, he recounts the conversion to King Agrippa in Acts 26. He said, and I said, who are you Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise, stand on your feet. For I have appeared to you for this purpose to appoint you as a servant and a witness to things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending to open their eyes so they may turn from darkness to light from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. I hope you can see as we go through these scriptures that Paul is and others are recounting over and over again a rescue, a rescue from darkness, a rescue from helplessness, a rescue by which we needed to be dragged away because we're unable to help ourselves, a turn from darkness to light delivered from the domain of darkness, from the power of Satan to God. In his commentary, Douglas Mu writes that those who have not been yet rescued by God in Christ live in a power structure that is characterized by the forces of chaos, evil, and judgment. Which is what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2, you are dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Among them too we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and we're by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. Chaos, evil, judgment, the domain of darkness, and you might say we're still in it. We're still in the domain of darkness because all around us we see chaos and evil. Just ask the people in Gaza, ask the people in Ukraine. Something that's not in the news that's just horrible is tens of thousands of Christians have been killed by extreme Muslim groups in Nigeria. As many as a hundred a day. And it's not published very often in the news. You don't hear about it on CBC or CTV or CNN or any of the other regular news outlets. Why is that? Because Satan is in control of those outlets and they aren't concerned about Christians being executed. But there's all kinds of violence around us. War is increasing, sinfulness, acceptance of sexual perversions, abortion. And you might be wondering are we as Christians the only one who know this? I think all of us instinctively know that something isn't right. Even unbelievers they know that something's not quite right and they're trying to fix it but they don't have a category to fix it. I'm not going to quote him exactly but Francis Schaeffer said something like modern man having rejected God looks for a reason for morality. But he really has no basis for it. Because if we're here by accident if there is no God as Dostraevsky said if there is no God all things are permissible. But all of us instinctively know that something's not right. We all have when we see horrible sinful things we repel, we recoil, we know that something isn't right. Maybe some of you I'm dating myself here remember the movie The Matrix. The Matrix was a modern version of Plato's allegory of the cave. In that allegory he states that imagine there exist prisoners chained together in a cave and that's who we are according to Plato. That's who everybody is. And behind the prisoners there's a fire. And between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying around puppets and other objects. And the prisoners who are chained together can only see the shadows. And they believe the shadows are reality. Now Plato suggests that one of the prisoners happens to be able to become free and he crawls out of the cave into the light. You see from darkness into light even though Plato wasn't a Christian, even though Plato didn't believe, he according to my philosophy teacher Ronald Nash was as close as you can get without being a Christian and he said that the person who came into the light initially was blinded but then he looked around and he saw reality for what it was. And that's us. When we become Christians our paradigm shifts. We see reality for what it is. And so in Plato's analogy, allegory, he says that this person then goes back into the cave because he wants to rescue these people and show them. He wants to deliver them from the domain of darkness and bring them into the light. Plato suggests that one prisoner, once he has seen the outside world, he would try to return to free the other prisoners. Upon his return he no longer accustomed to the dark because he's seen the sunlight and the chain prisoners would see this blindness and believe that if they leave the cave they will be harmed too and therefore they try to kill him. Now you might be thinking what does this have to do with the Bible? Listen to Moses in Exodus 6a. When God brought Moses out and first told his people, I will bring you to the land I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob and I will give you a possession I am the Lord. Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel but they did not listen because of the broken spirit and harsh slavery. You see we can be so used to our sin, we can be so enamored with our sin, we can be so captured by our sin that when someone suggests the way out, when someone suggests that you need to be delivered, that you need to be dragged away, that you need to be changed. We resist. We think our sins are reality and they become comfortable to us but they are deadly. Famous passage in John chapter 3, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already but he is not believed in the name of the only son of God and this is judgment. The light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. Unfortunately there are churches who teach darkness. Three I noticed this last eight days. Last week after the worship we went home and I turned on the television to see if anything had happened in the news that was arresting. There's a church here in Halifax area that has a, they show their services and the pastor was preaching and he was preaching on how to grow a money tree. It would be comical if it wasn't so sad, if it wasn't so heretical. But this is a big church and a lot of people go to it and he's got a series on how to grow a money tree. The idea is if you give, this is part of it, if you give money to this ministry then you will be blessed and you will grow a money tree. It's a damnable lie. Mary C and I were downtown this week and we noticed a church that was advertising a transgender day. I saw on television a pastor assuring a man struggling with same sex attraction that it was his church that taught the sinfulness of such acts. It was his church that was sinning against him by not approving of his lifestyle. So we're still seed the domain of darkness all around us. Some of it in churches who claim to be teaching the truth but are doing anything but. All rights have been delivered from the domain of darkness, transferred into the kingdom of the beloved son. Many commentators say that it's not chronological, it isn't delivered then transferred, rather we are delivered by being transferred, being dragged away. Peter says you're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. For once you were not a people but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy. What I want you to notice is throughout the scripture whenever God talks about rescuing people especially in the New Testament when he talks about delivering people from the domain of darkness, transferring them into the kingdom of the beloved son and who there's redemption and forgiveness of sins. One of the reactions is almost immediately that they will go back into the cave, they will go back into the darkness, they will go back into their culture and warn others and try to tell them the truth. But there's a lot of people and I don't know if any of you are among them who have one foot in and one foot out. And because you have one foot in you're very hesitant to tell the truth to people who are still in chains. Once you're out of the darkness and into the light you see things differently, at least you should. There's a paradigm shift. Things you thought you knew for sure, now you know they are not. The man who led me to Christ, who's now Dr. William Guy, had a sign on his door while he was a teaching assistant at Eastern Michigan University. And this is what it said, it said, it's not what you know that will kill you. It's not even what you don't know that will kill you. It's what you know that ain't so. So many people think they know. They think they know that the gospel is a money tree. They think they know that abominable sin is acceptable. When you're transferred and you're in the light and your paradigm shifts, then you see things the way they are. In the movie The Matrix, when they saw things the way they were it was scary. It was horrifying. What might be your first reaction when you first are dragged away, when you first come to Christ? First Corinthians 2.14 says, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him. And he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it's the power of God. So we're delivered and we're transferred into the kingdom of the beloved son in whom there is redemption. Apolitrosus, redemption, it means to be procured by a ransom. Romans 3.24, they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Since you know that you were ransomed from the empty path, empty way of life handed down from your ancestors not by perishable things such as silver or gold, 1 Peter. When words redeemed were changed, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the houses of slavery. Paul says in Galatians 5, I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. What are the things you want to do? Well, if you've been rescued, if you've been dragged away, if you've been delivered, if you've been transferred, if you've been redeemed, the things that you want to do are the things which please God or the things which are in obedience to Christ. But the flesh wants to stop you from doing those because we still have what's called the old man in the scripture. But Christ assures us through this passage that we're forgiven of our sins. Very familiar passage in 1 John 1. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Now you see there are people that teach that after you become a Christian, after you've been forgiven, you can somehow lose your salvation. You can somehow have it lost. But you see, that's not good news. It's not good news if because of my obedience I have to keep my salvation. It's not good news if I have to perform something in order to get the approval of God. What is good news is that God, through his son, approves of me and out of my gratitude, I want to obey. John went on in second chapter to say, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, but the sins of the whole world. Propitiation means that Jesus has taken the punishment of God's wrath for sin for everyone who believes. That's good news. It's good news that we have an advocate with the Father. The Spirit himself intercedes for us according to Romans 8. The Spirit intercedes for us for the saints according to the will of God. Christ Jesus, the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding for us. You hear that? The one who died for us, the one who is a propitiation for us, the one who left heaven and became a man and lived a perfect sinless life in our place and then died the death we deserved in our place. He's the one who even now is at the right hand of the Father interceding on our behalf. Hebrews 7 says he always lives to make intercession for us. Later in Hebrews 7 it says, for it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. He has no need like those high priests to offer sacrifice daily for his own sins and then for the people since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. Hebrews 9, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. You see, if you can lose your salvation, if it depends on the quality of your obedience, that is not good news. Matthew 1, Jesus will bear a son and you will call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Luke 2, and the angel said, fear not, for I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people for unto you this day is the city of David is the Savior who is Christ the Lord. You've been delivered, transferred, redeemed and forgiven and that is good news.