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Uh thank you everyone for being here. Again, as Liz said, my name's Kyle, one of the elders here at Madison Church. Welcome to those of you who are listening online as well. I'm thankful to be back with you today. There is no sermon series. So Steven was like, hey, you can just kind of talk about whatever you want. And I was like, oh boy. Oh boy. So the teacher in me was like, oh man, boy, do I have some things cooked up. But before I get there, I think over the past few weeks you've probably heard us joke a little bit about fantasy football. Um, there's a few of us in a fantasy football league in this church, and you probably heard us complain about it, and you're gonna hear us complain about it until the end of January as we try to play this very small game without hating each other by the end of it. Like that was an unfair trade, I reject that, uh, etc. But what I found interesting these past couple weeks is that when I go and check my opponent's lineup, I immediately start cheering for the other team. So, say if my opponent has the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, then I immediately start cheering for their opponent. I'm like, please get the ball out of Kansas City Patrick Mahomes' hands. Please. What I really hope for is that my team and my players will control the time of possession. If they can keep the ball, then there's a good chance that my team's gonna score all the points. And that's what I really want. I want them to have the time of possession. It gets extra dicey when my players start losing the football, when they fumble, when they have an interception, something like that. We start losing points. And then I go to my defense and I say, Hey, defense, will you repossess the football for me? Will you take it back, please? Now you look at me and you say, Kyle, I don't know anything about football, so that was all gibberish. To which I say, Well, we can also learn a thing about possession from the 1995 classic, The Lion King. And in The Lion King, I was terrified and I was angry as a young kid as I watched Scar push Mufasa off the edge of the cliff.

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Spoiler.

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Spoiler. Spoiler. But I was. I was angry. I was so angry for Simba at the time because Pride Rock had been taken by someone it shouldn't have. We all cheer as Simba and Nala lead the cause to repossess Pride Rock from the wrongful hands of Scar and Scar's henchmen. Pride Rock was in a wrongful owner's possession. And Simba leads the charge to get it back, or we have to encourage him to get it back. And so this concept of possession and repossession is the concept that I want us to talk about today. It's a picture that helps us clarify how the Old Testament and the New Testament are connected. They're actually connected through this concept of possession and repossession. It's how the God who repossessed the Israelites from Egypt is the same God who repossessed our lives in Jesus. And as we go, we're gonna see some themes throughout today's message. There's repossession, there's redemption, and there's ransom. And I want us to ask two questions. There's two questions that we'll look at today. What does it mean to be redeemed or repossessed? What does that even mean? And then two, how do we go about living a repossessed or redeemed life? What does that look like? How do we do it? Now, to make it easy, I'm gonna tell you the answer right now. The next two slides are just going to be exactly what I want you to take away from today. First one, the truth about redemption is that it becomes the filter through which we see God, ourselves, and our neighbors. It's a filter. It's a filter how we see the world that has been cosmically redeemed. Second, redemption then becomes a catalyst for loving our neighbor and for fighting for their story as much as our own. This isn't a selfish gospel. It's a gospel of action, a gospel that fights for the stranger, that fights for the broken, the poor. So, to do this, we're gonna dive into the New Testament for a second. We're gonna look at some Old Testament stuff. The teacher and me can't help but to at least show a couple things. And then we'll ask, how do we live that out? So let's go, let's connect possession and redemption really quickly in Scripture. If we go to the Gospel of Mark, we come across this really interesting story. James and John come up to Jesus at one point in Mark chapter 10, and they ask Jesus, Lord, can we sit next to you in glory? That's this really interesting question. What they're really asking there is, can they have an elevated status in the kingdom because they were so close to Jesus? Jesus, since we're so close, can we be elevated above the other disciples? Now, when the other disciples hear this, they are extremely upset. When they found out they were, it says they were indignant about it. But Jesus says something really interesting. That's where our main passage picks up today in Mark chapter 10. And that's kind of the cusp of what Jesus is going to do. If we start in verse 42, it says this. So Jesus called them together in response to this, this kind of issue that rose up. And he said, You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life a ransom for many. There's that word, ransom. I've kind of highlighted it there. Our Savior came to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many. If you have been in the church for many years, you've probably heard that before. You've heard that term ransom before. If you're new to the faith, it sounds probably a little bit strange. Paid a ransom to who? Why? Does someone have power over Jesus and Jesus has to pay some sort of ransom? I've highlighted that word today because I want us to do a bit of study unpacking what that word really means here. So in Greek, Greek is the language that the New Testament was written in, we see this word come up as Lutron, Lutron. And that breaks down into two parts. Luo, which means release. So you'll hear the word apolu, that means release you from your chains, essentially like a prisoner is released. That type of release, luo. And then tron means instrument of or means of. So altogether, Lutron mean is the means of releasing. And that brings up another couple questions. Well, a release from what? And into whose possession, right? So if we retranslate that, the son of man came not to serve, but to serve or came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a means of release for many, as an instrument of release for many. So let's re-piece this a little bit by going back to the Old Testament really quickly. I want us to see how these words all come together. If we go back to Exodus, we have this concept of redemption that starts permeating the entirety of the Old Testament. It's throughout the entire Old Testament, all their bondage, uh, all their suffering, all wilderness experiences. There's this redemption, ransom uh word that comes out. And it's the very reason why Jesus in this passage is making this reference in this moment. Now, we talked about Lutron, which is the Greek, in Hebrew, which is what the Old Testament was written in. There are two words that are connected to this. That's Gaal and Pada. Gaal and Padah. And both of these words also show us something significant about what Jesus means when he says he came as a ransom for us all. Geal is first introduced to us in Exodus chapter six. It's when God is speaking to Moses and says, Moses, I want to go and redeem my people. Let's look at it really quickly. Exodus chapter 6, starting in verse 5. This is uh God speaking. You can be sure that I have heard the groans of the people of Israel who are now slaves to the Egyptians, and I am well aware of my covenant with them. Therefore say to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, I will free you from your oppression and rescue you from your slavery in Egypt. I will redeem, aka deliver, kind of seize, ransom. I will ransom you with a powerful arm and a great act of judgment. I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who has freed you from your oppression in Egypt. So what's interesting about that word here is it's the word gaal. It typically gets translated redeem in the Old Testament. But that concept of redeem, there's no concept of payment there. In the English translation, it gets a little bit muddy because we kind of think about redeeming something, we're redeeming a coupon or something like that. There's an exchange there. But at its root, here in the Old Testament, gaal refers to when a family member comes to help another family member in a dire situation, maybe a debt or a debt of slavery to another. If you think about the book of Ruth and Boaz, Boaz being the gaal, the redeemer. That's kind of that dire family situation that it's referring to. But it can also refer to any situation of danger or bad circumstance. The point being here, and this is what I want us to take away from this: God doesn't owe Pharaoh anything. God doesn't owe Pharaoh anything, even though this word redeem is being there. God is repossessing the people of Israel because they are rightfully the Lord's. Now, the word that is closest to Lutron in the Old Testament is Padah. So we talk about Gaal. Now let's look at Padah just very briefly. This comes up a few books later in Deuteronomy, when Israel is retelling the law. They're reminding one another about their delivery out of Egypt. Deuteronomy 7. Let's look at it really quickly. Deuteronomy 7, starting verse 8. That is why the Lord rescued aka Padah, ransomed, redeemed you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Understand therefore that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands. So here's what I'm getting at. If something belongs to me, but it is not in my possession, and I take it back, that transfer is redemption. I redeemed it. Here in the Old Testament, we see that translate in many ways. You can redeem land or property that belongs to you. You could redeem a family member out of slavery. But the most important redemption in all of Scripture is a cosmic redemption. It's about how all of humanity belongs to God, but fell into the possession of sin and death. And for God to snatch us from death and to bring us into life, that is God redeeming us. God didn't know Pharaoh, and he's not even paying off Pharaoh in that moment. He was transferring Israel out of Pharaoh's wrongful possession and into God's rightful possession. So when Jesus says that the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many, it means that God is actively rescuing us, actively redeeming us from the bondage. God does not owe death or sin or darkness. God isn't paying them off. God became human to offer his life in the place for a people who he already possessed. God is the rightful owner. And so instead of making humans surrender their own lives, he came and surrendered his life as the Son of Man. God knew that through his own power, assuming the form of humanity, dying and rising again, that would break and redeem the power of death over all of us. God met us where we were at and he redeemed us. So here we go at the turning point. That's what redemption means. How then do we live in the truth of redemption? How then do we do that? What's the importance? How do I go and do this? There's three ways that I'll briefly talk about today. Number one, we lean into our redemption and our promised land moments. And it feels like a difficult time to talk about promised land moments because the more I talk with people, the more I realize how this national moment has created so much steady anxiety in us all. I think we've lost a sense of wonder or lost a sense of hope of what a promised land might actually mean or might actually look like. We've kind of lost it a little bit. My wife and I were just talking with someone recently who said it feels like we're all living in a fever dream since COVID. Like, is this even all real anymore? Like what happened since then? But I would also say I look out in this room and I see a room full of successful people too. I think we all carry this drive to accomplish. I think we're fiercely loyal to one another. I think we cheer for one another's accomplishments too. In my own life, I enjoy a sense of accomplishment. I enjoy the summit. Whether that's going and doing a literal hike and hiking a literal summit or completing another project, another degree program, a career journey, getting a promotion, I enjoy a summit. But there is a point when the thrill of accomplishment or the pressure of success becomes a lie. And we don't always recognize that in the moment where success is begetting success or accomplishment creates more opportunity, there's a moment where we start to look around and wonder is this all? Is there more? And our successes have this funny way of creating their own issues and their own problems that we lose sight on how to handle. Because we become desperately afraid to lose everything that we fought so hard to get. We start to wrap our hands around what we've accomplished and what we've gained, and we start to forget. We say, we're not gonna lose this. And those moments where we're grasping onto something so tightly, and it's being pried, our hands are being pried open, that we've forgotten our redemption. That we've forgotten it. Now, from time to time, I've been known to listen to a little Billie Eilish. Any uh Billie Eilish fans? A few, maybe? Don't at me, okay? Um and in one of her songs, I actually found some really powerful lyrics. Uh as Stephen shakes his head over there in the back, like, what are we doing? But I'll throw the lyrics up on the screen. You know, it says this, or she says this. I had a dream, I got everything I wanted. Not what you think. And if I'm being honest, it might have been a nightmare. I had a dream, I got everything I wanted, and it might have been a nightmare. What she so aptly captures in this line is the inherent myth of the earthly promised land. We can work, we can achieve, we can earn as much as we want on this earth, but there comes a point when we wake up and we realize that we've missed it. Learning to live in our redemption means learning to see that God rescued us and redeemed us from those earthly pressures to accomplish, to control. And even more so, we were rescued from our own egos, the need to achieve, to have status. When Jesus conquered the power of sin and death, he restructured the cosmos. He created a structure where we live most fully when we live in Him. We go back to the St. Augustine quote that we sing sometimes in worship. Our hearts are restless until we rest in thee. Our hearts are restless until we rest in thee. And we confuse ourselves when we think that the next success or the next job or the next career can somehow provide the promised land that we so you know greatly desire. So the second point I want to talk about really quickly is we lean into our redemption in wilderness seasons. We lean into it in our promised lands, we lean into it in our wilderness seasons. And this is probably the most difficult but the most relatable one for us all. Again, I think right now we probably all feel the immense pressure we're facing each and every day. It almost is like a pressure cooker. And we're looking around at one another to see who's going to lose it next because we're all just kind of stressed out. I think part of that is because we're all working really hard. I think we're all trying really hard right now. We're trying to be faithful to God, we're trying to be faithful to one another, trying to go to small group, we're here today, we're praying, we're trying to get into scripture. We are trying so hard. But yet we're still hearing the no's. We're still hearing the denials. We're being ridiculed unknowingly, we're feeling isolated, and we're watching the debt pile up: personal debt, financial debt, emotional debt, spiritual debt. It all keeps rising. We start to look out and we start to see the wilderness all around us, and we start to wonder: is this what life is supposed to be about? I'm faithful to God, I go to church, I pray, I am trying so, so hard. Why does it feel like the wilderness is going on forever? And unfortunately, I think sometimes that leads us to say, honestly, I'd rather go back to slavery. I'd rather just push myself down into a little bubble and make myself work in the system that I've got. Because that was a thought pattern that actually plagued the Israelites almost as soon as they escaped Egypt. It was three days after they escaped Egypt that they look at Moses, the wilderness gets to them, and they begin to wonder was it worth leaving Egypt to go die in the wilderness? They also begin thinking maybe it would be a good idea to go back to Egypt. Just work within the system there. Hey, you know what? Maybe it wasn't so bad. I can have a little bit of success in Egypt, even if I'm captive. Even if I'm a captive. And in our wilderness moments, we can fall trapped to the same way of thinking. We forget what our redemption means, what we were rescued from, and what it means for our life. And truthfully, we can find ourselves in the wilderness for all types of reasons. Uh, Dr. Tim Mackey from the from the Bible Project, names three. God can lead us into the wilderness for a specific reason. We can lead ourselves into the wilderness through our own choices. Or we can be thrust into the wilderness by the decisions of others. In some ways, it could be a mixture of those. Every single one of your wilderness stories is unique. It's happened through a combination of things. But one truth does remain: as we find ourselves in the wilderness, we must remember that Israel was not redeemed from the wilderness. They were redeemed from Egypt. Likewise, we are not redeemed from the wilderness. We were redeemed from the power of sin and death. And we cannot always control how or why we find ourselves in such painful situations. But we can remember that God has restructured our story. That God has empowered us to come alongside others who are also in the wilderness and to help them find the resources they need. It doesn't mean the wilderness isn't painful, and it doesn't mean that our wilderness experiences need to be reduced down to, well, God works all things together for good. That's a lie. We don't need to lie about our pain. But what we can do is name our pain. We can remember that God was faithful to Israel and that God will be faithful to us. And in turn, we can go out into the world and show the love to one another that we so deeply long for in our own lives. Finding the promised land won't solve all of our problems. Finding a temporary promised land will not solve all of our problems. But returning to Egypt won't either. We must continue to ask ourselves how to live faithfully in our very present moment. The last way we do this, last way we lean into our redemption, is that we lean into it as we acknowledge physical death as well. As we end our time today, I think we do have to acknowledge that physical death still has a say in our world. It does. And to me, that feels a little bit uncomfortable because we profess a Christ who conquered the grave. But it's still somehow a journey that you and I will have to face one day. We still have to go through it. We also have scary moments of loss in our life, whether we have our own close encounter with death ourselves, or we see a loved one who's engaged in a fight for their life, or we lose someone that we are close to. We see and experience the pain of death regularly, even when we know of an eternal redeemed life waiting for us on the other side. I certainly don't think that we can just overcome the grief that death brings. And I think it's actually a responsible thing to grieve and to mourn, especially as we enter those seasons. It's a sign that we care for one another. By grieving and mourning, we're caring for ourselves. It's an opportunity to honor another one one another's lives that we've cherished. It's a delicate balance. We feel the pain, but we can also appreciate it's not just our metaphorical souls that have been repossessed by the power of the cross. Our very bodies and our very lives have been repossessed too. And why? Because it was out of God's love that we were ransomed and that we were rescued. One of my favorite passages, it's ironically just after Romans 8.28, God works all things together for good. Romans 8.38. And I think that applies most for us today. It says this in Romans 8. I'm convinced that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God. Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, neither our fears for today or our worries for tomorrow, not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below, indeed, nothing in creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the power of redeemed living. The same powerful love that rescued the Israelites out of Israel, out of Egypt, rescued us. No power, not death, not darkness, not our even on our fears, not our sin, is ever going to separate us from our rightful owner. We have been repossessed. We are a repossessed people. And as we conclude today, I wonder if you find yourself realizing at a moment in time that the promised land you imagined is not everything that you thought it would be. I wonder if you find yourself today in the wilderness wondering what it was all for. What is the meaning of it all? I hope that today is a time to reset, to re to remember, to live into your redemption. And in just a couple minutes, we're gonna have the opportunity to take communion. The band will come up here, they'll sing, you have the opportunity on your own to get up and go to the back and partake in communion. Anyone in this room can go to the back and take communion. But as we do, it's a reminder of our redemption and our repossession. It's an opportunity to remember, remember our Savior. And my prayer for us today and this week is that the truth of redemption becomes a filter through which we see God, ourselves, and our neighbor. And secondly, I really hope that redemption becomes a catalyst for loving our neighbor and for fighting for their story as much as our own.